Tag: Ruination Records

Jackie West Pushes Perspective on “Silent Century”, Announces New Album | Single Premiere

January 6th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Photo courtesy of Ruination Records

Always testing the boundaries of perspective and “surrendering to the loneliness of having a good time”, Brooklyn’s Jackie West is no stranger to writing from the multitudes stacked within her surroundings. Today, West returns with her new single, “Silent Century”, the title track of her upcoming LP out on February 27th via Ruination Records.

Simple and steady, West becomes entrenched in the rhythmic display of “Silent Century”, embracing the sonic vibrations that she has been foraging for so long now, giving space to root and to blossom both her and the track’s natural progression of growth. Playing alongside Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel), Sean Mullins (Moon Mullins), Nico Osborne (Nicomo), “Silent Century” shifts between instinctive folk melodies and colorful pop hooks, where the complexity of feelings can rummage through different sonic interpretations that really bring life to this expressive and enduring motive – something that has made West such an absorbing and poignant songwriter to watch over the years.

About “Silent Century”, West shares, “some experiences—especially intimate or spiritual—communicate without language, moving through us like traditions or instincts that endure quietly for generations. “Silent Century” draws on the Taoist idea that silence is a medium of understanding—the flower doesn’t explain itself, and water doesn’t lecture the stone; yet both express and reshape the world over vast spans of time.”

Listen to “Silent Century” here.

Silent Century is set to be released February 27th via Ruination Records. You can listen to the single out now, as well as preorder the album on vinyl.
Adeline Hotel Opens the Windows in Watch the Sunflowers| Album Review

November 25th, 2025

Written by Arden DeCanio

Music holds the power to wake us up, lull us to sleep, or transport us to dreamlike realities – Adeline Hotel’s new record Watch the Sunflowers unwraps a unique culmination of all three. In a long string of critically acclaimed releases out of Ruination Records, Dan Knishkowy is no stranger to the quiet spell it takes to create a record that feels dense yet holds the ability to float on air like this. Here, he’s less concerned with revelation than presence – the slow, patient art of noticing.

Where earlier Adeline Hotel albums drifted in the gentle haze of folk minimalism, Watch the Sunflowers feels almost meditative. Knishkowy sits somewhere between the fragile intimacy of Sufjan Stevens and the pastoral melancholy of Nick Drake. His voice, both literal and compositional, feels steadier, communal in spirit – like a speaker straight from the soul.

The opening track “Dreaming” sets the pace – as Knishkowy speaks directly to the listener: “some things take a little while”. A slow-building lattice of fingerpicked guitars that seem to shimmer in and out of sync. While Whodunnit’s openers were tentative, this one feels confident – an invitation that is reflective and authentic.

Stretching out the stillness, “Nothing” layers brushed drums and soft synth into something reminiscent of early Iron and Wine, yet with a maturity in the arrangement that hints at the slow and steady growth over the past few albums. The refrain feels like a heartbeat: steady and unhurried. While his voice blurs at the edges, a reminder that vulnerability can live in conjunction with strength.

“Swimming” catches you mid-current, tumbling you into its stream. Guitar fragments appear like sunspots, somewhere between longing and amusement. At the center of the record, it’s a track that could feel heavy handed. Instead, its light – buoyant in its sadness, as if noticing the color of the leaves as the storm passes through them.

“Ego” strikes differently. Accompanied by the sly tension of the piano, Knishkowy begs the looming questions of the human experience: “Do I need to be kind?”. It pulses, even slightly ironically – as if he’s testing whether or not you’re paying attention. The track introduces a shift, with hidden twang and undercover woes – it exemplifies a willingness to deconstruct and rebuild. The shift continues into “Just Like You”, which reimagines sound into the nostalgic experimentation of the early 2010s. You feel transported to somewhere serene, familiar, comfortable. It’s a kaleidoscopic experience that melts together into something nearly indescribable.

“Spaces” returns to the album’s homebody heartbeat, offering reflection on the gaps between moments and people. The instrumentation is sparse, allowing the space to resonate deeply. The final title track “Watch the Sunflowers” closes the album with a gentle crescendo, leaving a lingering sense of warmth and resolution – the perfect ending to a record that moves carefully between reflection and the light.

William Blake quotes “As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.” Knishkowy understands this intimately; Watch the Sunflowers isn’t about what’s seen, but how it’s seen. Stillness can sharpen sight, and the smallest moments can open to infinity.

You can listen to Watch the Sunflowers out now as well as order it on vinyl via Ruination Records.
Adeline Hotel Breaks Pattern on New Single “Just Like You” | Single Premiere

September 22nd, 2025

Dan Knishkowy, the creative stamina behind the New York project Adeline Hotel, recently announced the project’s return with his new record Watch the Sunflowers out October 24th via Ruination Records. Today, the ugly hug is premiering the second single “Just Like You”, a stunning display of attachment and self-agency in the face of a deeply rooted patterns.

“Dog tooth violence, rare blood run. Where’s my wild rose? Where will I become,” Knishkowy begins, his words linger like footsteps in an empty hallway, each step more and more pronounced as the direction and distance becomes more clear. As the track falls into its groove, ruminating in varying textures of strings and rich colors of instrumental shadows, a defiant guitar solo breaks through, dripping with distortion and unaligned with any classic structure, as “Just Like You” becomes a dynamic exchange, a transfer of self as Knishkowy pulls from this deep need to disengage with what he knows best. It’s a song that grapples with the ghosts that we have yet to become acquainted with, but Knishkowy’s writing has always held an edge to perspective, animating their presence with both curiosity and foretold hindsight when the moment comes to look those ghosts in the eyes. And in classic Adeline Hotel commotion, he shakes out the dust of folkloric expectations as the fluent instrumentation, the crack of the drums and the weightless harmonies begin to pack up their belongings and make their way to the door.

About the single, Knishkowy shares, “We started Sunflowers and left it unfinished for years. On returning, we felt inspired to totally reimagine it, ripping it apart to its bones and rebuilding it into a kaleidoscopic experience. We very much took the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot approach of ‘well, we made it, so we can also destroy it if we want to.’

The song itself mirrors that process, taking a hard look at ingrained patterning and the attempt to grow beyond that. Whether inherited generational trauma (‘in the hallways of my skin’), or the safe appeal of culturally sacred institutions, the narrator decides not to acquiesce any longer to the ease of familiarity (‘I cannot kneel’).

The titular line remains elusive still, even to me. Is it ‘I’m just like you’, a self-aware acknowledgement of how deep that conditioning goes, or ‘I just like you’, the rare feeling of connection you find with a person also committed to breaking these cycles?”

You can listen to “Just Like You” anywhere you find your music as well as preorder Watch the Sunflowers on vinyl.

Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Jackie West
Adeline Hotel Moves Forward on New Single “Isn’t That Enough” | Single Premiere

September 23rd, 2024

The tender voicings of New York-based project Adeline Hotel return today with their fourth and final single “Isn’t That Enough” before the release of their new album, Whodunnit, out this Friday. Fronted by Dan Knishkowy, Whodunnit so skillfully captures a snapshot of an individual’s journey to redefine joy in their life as the aftermath of an ended marriage begins to fade in time. “Isn’t That Enough” serves as the companion piece to the album’s title track as an emotionally freeing piece that circulates through grief, beauty, anger and understanding.

“In a sympathetic world, I saw right through you and you saw through me,” becomes representative of the complex hindsight that Knishkowy paints throughout “Isn’t That Enough”, yet this lyrical curiosity, hanging on to each breath with a protruding edge, grasps the conversation as it catches up to where he is now. In a tender pacing, sparse and warm with an acoustic drone, the band begins to find a progression, growing in the slight sonic voicings that tinker and play underneath the heavy stanzas with heightened synths and harmonies that revel in the track’s depth as it moves forward. “Isn’t That Enough” becomes a story of a relationship left baron – where the ideas of people, places and things turn against each other in depravity and a chance to gain ground, where the question feels less inclined to ask ‘isn’t that enough’?, but rather ‘will it ever be?’

You can listen to “Isn’t That Enough” below.

Whodunnit will be released this Friday, September 27 via Ruination Records and you can preorder the vinyl here. Adeline Hotel will be playing a release show at Union Pool in Brooklyn, New York on Friday, September 27 with Sima Cunningham and Katie Von Schleicher. Get tickets here.

Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Amghy Chacon