We’re only a couple of weeks away from the release of Never were the way she was, Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld’s much anticipated collaborative album. The effort will see the light of day on April 28th via Constellation. To keep us excited, the pair have just unveiled a video for a glorious new track off the album, ‘The rest of us’. Watch the video below, directed by Dan Huiting.
A match made in heaven: the musical union of sax magician Colin Stetson and extraordinary violinist Sarah Neufeld. The pair have been composing together for a while now whilst carrying on playing with other outfits and keeping busy as soloists. 2015 will bring us the Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld duo‘s debut album. Entitled Never were the way she was, the album was recorded at their farmhouse attic studio in rural Vermont by Hans Bernhard and mixed in Montreal by Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire). As is usual with Stetson and Neufeld, in both recording and live formats, they didn’t use any looping/layering or multi-track/overdubs technologies. You’ve probably already heard us raving about Colin Stetson, and you’ll know of his superhuman powers and how he plays tremendously and uninterruptedly using circular breathing, which allows him to produce multiple sounds simultaneously in real time.
“Never were the way she was is guided by the metaphorical narrative of the life of a girl who ages slow as mountains; excited, exalted, and ultimately exiled in her search for a world that resembles her experience”, explains the press release. “The album’s expansive sonic trajectory and multiplicity of structures and voicings belies the fundamental economy of two acoustic instruments combining in real time. The result is a musical chronicle that powerfully establishes its own spatial and temporal horizon, a soundtrack that requires no images but profoundly compels the imaginative.”.
‘The sun roars into view’ is the first wonderful and staggering track being offered from the album. We can’t wait to hear more.
In other Stetson and Neufeld related news, and coinciding with the album release, the pair are bringing their compositions for horns and violin to Europe in April. Their tour includes a stop in London at the Islington Assembly Hall on April 17th. Head over here to check all their other dates.
Last November, we were delighted to have Colin Stetson curate our monthly mixtape. If you’ve missed it, check out now an incredible selection of tracks that inspire him.
The compositions of Michigan-born, Montreal-based sax magician Colin Stetson are staggering and intense, like nothing we've heard before. On stage, his extraordinary songwriting is distilled into powerful, physical and raw performances where he layers sounds relying solely on his saxophone and breathtaking circular breathing skills. Needless to say he quickly became our favourite undercover super-hero, so we're ecstatic to present to you the tracks that Colin Stetson has handpicked for us this month. Get ready for a journey through a bonkers vortex of references and genres, from Ivo Papasov and Mobb Deep, to Liturgy and Jimi Hendrix!
As the year draws to a close, we picked our favourite Albums of 2013.
The ingenious Montréal based saxophonist Colin Stetson has just premiered a beautiful new video for the breathtaking ‘Who the Waves Are Roaring For’, off his recently released album New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light. Isaac Gale & David Jensen, who had previously directed the video for ‘Among the Sef’, take again the director seat. ‘Who the Waves Are Roaring For’ is one of the four songs from the album which features vocal guest contributions from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Watch the video on Constellation Records‘ Vimeo channel.
With only a week to go for Colin Stetson‘s New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light to drop, the sax magician has unveiled a new video for his latest magnificent single ‘Among the Sef’, directed by Isaac Gale and David Jensen. Here it is.
