New music from sax super hero and composer Colin Stetson is always marvellous news. After composing the soundtrack for Hereditary last Spring, Stetson has scored a new series called The First, which debuted this month on Hulu. His music was crucial for the series as a creative element, as Executive Producer Beau Willimon explains:

“More than anything, it was Colin Stetson’s music that inspired the creation of The First. His compositions and performance style were unlike anything I had ever heard. They take you on a vast journey, both epic and intimate.”

Stetson also commented on it:

“The music of The First is built on a foundation of stark and intimate qualities as exemplified by much of my solo saxophone repertoire, enhanced and expanded upon in every direction, from the epic orchestral character of horn and low brass fanfare, to the fragility and humanly intimate nature of muted solo piano. The breadth and scope of the overall narrative, comprised of these many real and extremely human stories of ambition, of love, and of grief and loss, has made it possible for me to fully explore such a multitude of aural approaches, resulting in a score which is as sonically and stylistically disparate as the personal stories of each of our characters, woven together by the common thread and themes of this grand shared purpose and of the sacrifices made by all in it’s service.”

The soundtrack came out last Friday on New Deal/Record Collection, with a vinyl edition due out later this winter. The chilling and magnificent ‘The End’ is now available to stream. Take a listen below.

Sax super-hero Colin Stetson gets us every time with his extraordinarily staggering and powerful compositions. After teasing his new solo album, All This I Do For Glory, with the sublime and breathtaking ‘Spindrift’, Stetson got us even more excited offering a new track called ‘In the Clinches’. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“For those who have heard ‘Spindrift,’ this track is in all ways it’s antithesis. I always try to build into the arc of an album some point of juxtaposition, and this one is where that happens. Whereas ‘Spindrift’ is serenity and expanse, ‘In The Clinches’ is violence and immediacy. I wanted the experience of the song to be one of total immersion like the listener is inhabiting the instrument itself, hearing and feeling it from the inside out. There’s this hyper-realised, exaggerated character to the percussive sounds and a brute brashness to the sound of the horn. If ‘Spindrift’ is a memory of a peaceful past then ‘Clinches’ is the fear of a future of struggle. The present is that point of silence between the two.”

‘In the Clinches’ also comes with a live video shot and edited by Derrick Belcham. Watch it now.

All This I Do For Glory is out on April 28th through Stetson’s own 52Hz label via Kartel Music Group.

You’ll know by now that we’re huge fans of sax super-hero Colin Stetson. Last year he released a dream of an album, SORROW: A reimagining of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony, based on the Polish composer’s 1997 classic piece, featuring an incredible cast of musicians including Sarah Neufeld, Rebecca Foon, Greg Fox and Gyda Valtisdottir amongst many more. In 2015, Stetson released a marvellous collaborative album with Sarah Neufeld following his 2013’s outstanding New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light, which was one of our Album Picks of the Year, and remains an absolute favourite. So we couldn’t be happier to know that four years on from this solo record, the Montreal based composer and multi-instrumentalist is ready to unveil its follow-up, All This I Do For Glory. Drawing influences from early nineties electronica of artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre, the album’s sounds and imagery are described as being “more tangible and immersive than previous offerings”. As the press release explains, the album “is a reasoning and exploration of the machinations of ambition and legacy, an examination of the concepts of afterlife, and the first half of a doomed love story in the model of the greek tragedies”.
All This I Do For Glory was also engineered and mixed by Stetson and it will see the light of day on April 28th through his own 52Hz label via Kartel Music Group.

The wonderful news comes paired with the album’s first single, the sublime and breathtaking ‘Spindrift’ and an accompanying video shot and edited by Derrick Belcham.

Colin Stetson‘s upcoming album SORROW: A reimagining of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony, based on the Polish composer’s 1997 classic piece, is simply a dream of an album. Envisioned by Stetson for nearly two decades, the record is finally seeing the light of day on April 8th on his own 52Hz via Kartel.

The composer and sax magician had already enticed us with two staggering excerpts from the album. He’s offering another majestic taste from it, with a new excerpt from the third movement, ‘III (Extract I)’, featuring Stetson’s sister Megan on glorious vocals and Liturgy’s Greg Fox on drums. Being “the heaviest part of the symphony”, as the press release describes, ‘III (Extract I)’ combines classicism and black metal”. Listen to it now.

As we had already mentioned, Colin Stetson has a new album on the way, one he envisioned for two decades. SORROW: A reimagining of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony, is based on the Polish composer’s 1997 classic piece and it will see the light of day on April 8th on Stetson’s own 52Hz label via Kartel Music Group.
Following the staggering excerpt of ‘Mvmt I’, the Montreal based sax super-hero has shared another incredibly beautiful and poignant taste from the album, in the form of an excerpt from the third movement. Marvel yourself with ‘III (Extract II)’ below.

In other related news, Colin Stetson will grace UK audiences with a string of solo shows, including a London date on March 16th at Scala.