LOS ANGELES, CA- Click play on Vinyl Williams’ new video “Sunlight” and you’re instantly transported—not just to a sonic landscape, but to a whole atmosphere. The jazz-infused lo-fi groove radiates warmth, evoking the effortless, plant-whispering glide of Secret Life of Plants–era Stevie Wonder and the quietly soulful tones of Ramsey Lewis at his most meditative. It’s not flashy. There are no lyrics. And that’s exactly the point.
“Sunlight” is part of Portasymphony, one-half of the upcoming double LP Polyhaven / Portasymphony due June 13 via Harmony Records. It’s a bold concept—a dual release of two full-length albums, one high-fidelity (Polyhaven) and the other low-fidelity (Portasymphony)—that reflects Vinyl Williams’ commitment to audio as multidimensional experience. In an era that often favors algorithm-friendly brevity, Vinyl Williams is crafting a cosmology.
Born Lionel Williams, the LA-based multimedia artist has been creating under the Vinyl Williams moniker since 2007, cultivating a style that defies easy categorization: shoegaze textures, ambient jazz, chillwave aesthetics, psych-pop melodies, and metaphysical lyricism swirl together to form what he’s dubbed celestial pop. And that’s not just a poetic gesture. His catalog is a galaxy of interlinked visuals, interactive videos, and even a self-developed Musical Astrology app that lets users hear the pitches of planets based on their birth date.
The titles of the two albums—Polyhaven and Portasymphony—invite some reflection. The former, Polyhaven, suggests a sanctuary of multiplicity: “poly” denoting many, and “haven” signaling refuge. It may allude to the idea of many styles, identities, or emotional states coexisting in harmony—mirroring the layered, hi-fi complexity of those tracks.
Portasymphony, by contrast, reads as an invented term—a fusion of “porta” (Latin for “gate” or “door”) and “symphony.” Taken together, it implies a “gateway to symphony” or perhaps an entry point to cohesion through sound. If Polyhaven is the celestial observatory, Portasymphony is the mossy doorframe you pass through to get there.
This kind of conceptual thoughtfulness appears to be nothing new for Williams. His entire output seems to operate like a vast interconnected universe—art, music, technology, and metaphysics orbiting a central gravity: the belief that sound and image can be more than entertainment. They can be revelation.
And with “Sunlight,” Vinyl Williams gives us one of the more elegant and easy-to-enter portals into his multiverse. It’s serene. It’s exploratory. And if the rest of Portasymphony follows this blueprint, I may need to clear space on my record shelf.
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