A sax superhero like no other, Colin Stetson has dazzled us time and again throughout the years with his absolutely staggering and powerful compositions. So we’re ecstatic to know he is gearing up to release a new album, his first solo recording since 2017’s All This I Do For Glory, which was one of Album Picks of the Year then. Entitled The love it took to leave you, the record arrives on September 13th through Invada Records and Envision Records.
The Canadian-American saxophonist, multireedist, and composer recorded the album last year at Montreal’s The Darling Foundry, a nineteenth-century metalworks factory converted into a contemporary art complex, with a giant main room still keeping its raw architecture of brick, concrete and steel. Speaking about recording the album there, Stetson says:

“We were using the same live setup as I normally would to amplify – a full PA in the building’s spaces – so we were really able to move the kind of air that I can move, really saturating the room, hitting the walls hard. And then we further fleshed it out.”

Speaking further about the upcoming album, he adds:

“The essence of it is me. It’s the most personal thing that I do – and can do. There’s an evolution of my body and technical capabilities that keeps on, so every time I make another record, there are things that I could only have played now.”

September is a long way away but Stetson has already shared the magnificent title track as the first single, a track that despite being written some years ago, was always intended as a pillar of an album. ‘The love it took to leave you’, in Stetson’s own words, “is a love letter to self and to solitude and to tall old trees that sway and creak in the wind and rain.” The singles comes with an accompanying video directed by Derrick Belcham. Watch it below.