Photo: Takuji Aoyagi
Captain of None, the new album from Colleen, came out earlier this month via Thrill Jockey. We fell head over heels for the album when we first heard the marvellous and enveloping title track. The French multi-instrumentalist and composer is now offering a video to accompany ‘Captain of None’, directed by Naoko Tanaka. Watch it below.
Petrels, the solo project of London based musician and illustrator Oliver Barrett (Bleeding Heart Narrative) has announced the release of his fourth album, Flailing Tomb. The effort is due out in late May via Denovali.
Flailing Tomb draws from a wide palette of influences and sources as the press release describes, quoting “Ursula K. Le Guin’s speculative fiction, Indian-Celtic connections, self-mummification, Jude The Apostle (patron saint of lost causes), and Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal sci-fi masterpiece, Alphaville, weaving all this and more into six intricately-layered parts – at once forthright and ambiguous.”
‘Orpheus’ is the first track to emerge from the album and it features lead vocals from Never Sol and choir vocals from Helen Mead, Holly Stead, Jemima Headey, Sarah Kaldor, and Sarah Wayman. Stream it below.
Haley Fohr has announced the release of a new album under her moniker Circuit des Yeux. Entitled In Plain Speech, the album is due out on May 18th and it will be her first release on Thrill Jockey.
In Plain Speech is a more collaborative affair than her previous works, and saw Fohr invite some musicians from the Chicago music community, including Cooper Crain (Cave, Bitchin Bajas), Whitney Johnson (Verma), Rob Frye (Bitchin Bajas), Adam Luksetich (Little Scream), and Kathleen Baird (Spires That In The Sunset Rise).
“These new songs were composed after a move to a collective living space, giving Fohr an opportunity to break free of the isolation that informed her previous albums”, describes the album’s blurb. “Fohr brought her community, literally, to the recording”.
‘Fantasize the Scene’ is the first single lifted from In Plain Speech, a stunning cut, both dark and gentle, showcasing Fohr’s powerful baritone voice. Take a listen to ‘Fantasize the Scene’ below and check out the album’s trailer straight after.
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.
Kuwaitian electronic multimedia artist Zahed Sultan is getting ready to release his second album, eyeamsound, next month. In support of the album, Sultan is taking the album’s live audio-visual experience to several places around the world for nine months. The journey is being documented and in partnership with PledgeMusic, Sultan is also sharing it and offering other treats.
The groovy ‘Hakatha’ is the first of three singles to be shared that has now emerged. The track is a rework from an original release of his 2012 Reuse Me EP. Known for his entrepreneurial projects and commitment to the environment and social causes, ‘Hakatha’ is also inspired by social events. It “pays tribute to the social frustrations that have plagued the Middle East region prior to the Arab Spring and thereafter”, as the press release says. “In classical spoken-word Arabic, the narrator calls upon Arab people to stand in unity, against tyranny, with a sense of civic pride.” Listen to ‘Hakatha’ below.
We’re greatly excited about this new electro-acoustic quartet on the block, High Risk, spearheaded by legendary jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas. The project sees Douglas join forces with a stellar cast of musicians – bassist Jonathan Maron, drummer Mark Guiliana and producer/beat maker Shigeto. Exploring and experimenting with jazz and electronic elements, High Risk is a new departure for Douglas as he explained, “a new vision of where improvisation and electronics can go”. Here’s how he described the project:
“The biggest element is this meeting of the worlds; an openness and willingness to put everything at risk. I wanted to create a situation where we really were at risk, we were on a high wire, where the exigencies of being in the moment and creating with your wits from one second to the next was what it was about.”
Comes June 23rd, the quartet will release a full-length album entitled High Risk via Douglas’ own imprint Greenleaf Music. They have already shared two tremendous tracks from the album, ‘Molten Sunset’ and ‘Cardinals’, and if they are anything to go by, High Risk is definitely an album to wait for with hunger. Listen to both tracks below.
