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Jan 17, 2024 By Caleb Campbell

Ultra Contra is the new project from Seattle-based songwriter, guitarist, and producer Justin Schmidt. Schmidt has cut his teeth playing in a variety of garage bands and experimental outfits over the years, but Ultra Contra is his latest solo foray, one which finds him drawing on the atmospheric and explorative corners of art pop. That commitment to a carefully cultivated mood and texture is one of the defining elements of the project.

Schmidt explains, “I’ve always had a ‘vibes first’ approach to making music. I can’t commit to a song idea unless I’ve got a clear picture of what the overall sound and feel of it will ultimately be. Maybe that’s working backwards. But it’s like there’s this finished song being played in the room next door and you can kind of hear the general shape of it, but it’s cloudy and muffled. My process is to try and break through that wall however I can to figure out how to actually put together an actual song that fits that impression I have of it.”

Schmidt debuted last year with the single “Walk the Terminal,” and today he’s back with another track, “White Shore,” premiering with Under the Radar.

Though “White Shore” evokes some of the same dreamy haze as Schmidt’s previous single, it also comes packaged with a host of jangly guitars, inviting melodies, and hypnotic rhythms. As Schmidt says, he intentionally tried to conjure a midnight beach setting, an element that runs throughout the track. The propulsive undercurrent and waves of guitar are contrasted against Schmidt’s shadowy vocals and the song’s looming sinister edge, lacing hints of disaster admist the track’s hazy vibe.

Schmidt says of the track, “‘White Shore’ came together from two separate ideas - one was this musical theme I had been kicking around inspired by a midnight beach setting, the other was a story idea about someone running away from a life they can’t live anymore. The story is ultimately tragic, and that helped me understand a more solemn meaning behind fantasizing about some paradise beach somewhere. There are the places we find ourselves living everyday, and then there are the places we imagine ourselves - places where all the noise and dangers of life are shut off from. Whether it’s some idyllic mountain grove or beautiful house or a White Shore, we see ourselves there and we’ll always feel that instinctive pull, even just a little bit, to up and leave everything behind and just run for it. But everyone who does this has to run through the real world on the way there. And running to your imagined better place through an uncaring world that isn’t interested where you’re going can lead to dangers of all kinds. But for some people the pull is irresistable, and they chase after that new life, their personal green forest or blue mountaintop, or White Shore. And the fact that not everyone makes it doesn’t stop the rest of us from wanting to go there any less.”

Check out the song below.