Photo: Chris Almeida

There’s wonderful news from Bex Burch, who turned our heads back in 2015 with the outstanding debut album from her band Vula Viel. The gifted composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker went on to work and collaborate with various artists and projects, becoming a central figure of the contemporary UK scene. She has announced the release of There is only love and fear, the first album to be penned under her own name. The album was prompted by an invitation from Chicago-based IARC for her to spend a month in the US last summer. Armed with her hand-made xylophone, Burch got involved with the label’s creative community and transposed the energy of the collaborations and environments she found herself in into what became There is only love and fear. The sessions for upcoming album took place in various spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago and a canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, with an astonishing cast of musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Dan Bitney of Tortoise.

There is only love and fear is set for release on October 20th through International Anthem. Alongside the announcement today, the album’s first single, the stunningly deep and beautiful ‘Dawn blessings’, is now streaming. Burch’s recording of a cuckoo on the Baltic coastline sparked the track’s inception as she explains:

“Dawn blessings were the start of all of this. I started a 90-day practice to make a tune a day for my friend Dawn. My only job was to breathe, let go, and ask “what sounds do I like today?”. One of these days I heard a Cuckoo at dawn, this moment of listening opened up my identity from musician to listener.”

‘Dawn blessings’ comes with a gorgeous accompanying video directed by Louise Boer, who had this to say about it:

“The music video for ‘dawn blessings’ is a meditation on the joy and subtle magic that can be found during a slow and solitary walk through landscapes of sand, stones and pine trees; sometimes wild, sometimes heavily damaged and disturbed, but always full of life. It’s a hypnotic exploration of human and more-than-human entanglements in which the body dissolves into the environment and the invisible slowly becomes visible. Filmed during walks in Beerze (NL), Kennemerduinen (NL), Gaujas Ieteka Jūrā (LV).”

Watch the video below.

To tide you over until the album’s release, check out the excellent guest mixtape Bex Burch put together for us back in May 2018.