Letta Dreams Of Home On “Where I Left You”

Though he now lives in L.A.'s Skid Row, melancholic producer Letta was homeless for a time. In a press release for his debut album Testimony, he explains that after leaving home at the age of 13, he fell into addiction, and after a spell in the Mexican desert, had a long journey back to a stable life. That's why "Where I Left You," the final track on his debut, is the one that sinks the deepest. Almost beatless, save the occasional crack of a gunshot or crunching glass, the track's stutters have that familiar feeling of restless sleep; dreaming of home, its chopped vocals bubble like half-remembered conversations, and there's the distant sigh of rain on a window.

"I was thinking about home when I wrote this song," Letta explained over email to The FADER. "When my life was at it its darkest, I would always think about being a little kid and sitting in my grandparents' back yard in Bellingham [WA]. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I always wondered if I would find a way back, if my family would still be there, if there was some way to get back to that place that seemed so out of reach. I actually did make it back after 14 years, and that place was still there waiting for me. Here's a picture [see below] of that memory I had locked in my head for so many years." Testimony will be released on Coyote Records in September 2015.