Pino Palladino & Blake Mills featuring Sam Gendel & Chris Dave

Pino Palladino and Blake Mills don’t make obvious music.
Instead, their collaboration moves with a deep, unwavering rhythm—even when the beat feels elusive—and carries a harmonic language that is as rich as it is mysterious. There is a subtlety in their playing, but it’s not softness. It’s precision, intention, and a quiet kind of boldness.

Their second instrumental album, That Wasn’t a Dream, builds on the spirit of exploration that defined their 2021 release Notes With Attachments. Rooted in a deep musical chemistry that makes spontaneous composition feel effortless, the music floats between structure and freedom.

Grammy-winning Pino Palladino is a songwriter, bassist, and producer known for reshaping the idea of what the bass can be in popular music. He has performed with everyone from D’Angelo to Nine Inch Nails, Erykah Badu, and John Mayer. Blake Mills—also Grammy-winning and twice nominated for Producer of the Year—is one of today’s most sought-after producers and multi-instrumentalists, having worked with artists like Alabama Shakes, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, and Perfume Genius.

About the album That Wasn’t a Dream

That Wasn’t a Dream is the second instrumental album by Pino Palladino and Blake Mills, continuing the exploration that began with 2021’s Notes With Attachments. The music moves between composition and improvisation, melody and abstraction, in a contrapuntal interplay marked by ambiguity, restraint, and the beauty of deep listening.

While Notes With Attachments was recorded in various studios and cities, That Wasn’t a Dream was tracked over a two-month period in the legendary Studio A at Sound City Studios, which Mills has led since 2018. Their sessions drew both long-time and new collaborators—most notably Sam Gendel, who played on the entirety of Notes With Attachments and contributed final touches to nearly every track on That Wasn’t a Dream. But ultimately, the album is a deepening of the core relationship between Palladino and Mills.

If Notes With Attachments was about creating unity from layers of spontaneity, That Wasn’t a Dream finds coherence through restraint. The compositions emerged from harmonically dense ideas that were later stripped down to their bare essentials.

“It came to light, really, that if we could make something work with the least possible ingredients, space could become the centerpiece.”
— Pino Palladino

The album also offered room for innovation. An early sketch by Palladino, “What Is Wrong With You?”, gave Mills the chance to experiment with the prototype of a new instrument: a fretless baritone sustainer guitar, which he helped luthier Duncan Price develop in 2021. Since then, Mills has pioneered its use in several productions and live performances—including with Joni Mitchell.

“The fretless sustainer can sound almost like a cross between a woodwind, brass, and bowed string instrument. It’s a tough instrument to control or define.”
— Blake Mills

The guitar’s undefinable sound, paired with a playful approach to minimalism, set the tone for the rest of the writing and recording sessions, which would take place almost three years later.

Focusing on counterpoint is one of the album’s distinguishing features. It’s a subtle approach with at times radical results, but it also lends the music a unique voice. Palladino likens it to futuristic pop, with impressionistic tonal colors and esoteric rhythms performed with the same power and restraint as the boldest Top 40 arrangements. As a result, the music on That Wasn’t a Dream shifts from seemingly intimate to beautifully chaotic.

The more time you spend with That Wasn’t a Dream, the more comforting its mystery becomes: What kind of music is this, really? It’s music that rewards close, open-minded listening. Mills describes it as something sensational in holding tension without resolution. The sensation lies in a melody that lands in an unexpected harmony, the thrill of hearing sounds from instruments you can’t quite identify—maybe ones that don’t even exist.

The characters are often in disguise: fretless guitar imitates wind, wind controllers mimic harp. The musicians constantly trade roles, becoming more present than their instruments, creating a kind of beauty that doesn’t always reveal itself in familiar ways.

Lineup:
Blake Mills - gitarr
Pino Palladino - bas
Sam Gendel - Saxofon
Chris Dave - Drums