Back in May, sax superhero Colin Stetson announced the release of his new solo album, The love it took to leave you, and enticed us with its magnificent title track. The Canadian-American saxophonist, multireedist, and composer is teasing the upcoming album again with an absolute beast of a new track called ‘The Six’. “One of the first songs I wrote for this record, ‘The Six’ is a vengeful strut”, Stetson comments. “Played on solo bass saxophone, this one’s big and mean with long arms and a toothy grin.”

‘The Six’ is offered with an accompanying video directed by Derrick Belcham and you can watch it now.

The love it took to leave you is out on September 13th through Invada Records and Envision Records.

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.

Next month will see 7K! Records release a new compilation entitled Wind Layers, marking the latest edition in their compilation series Layers. Featuring twenty-one songs by twenty-one artists, this collection “focusses on wind instruments and their influence on the contemporary classical multiverse, with musical creations that delicately balance acoustic expression, electronic refractions and ambient recall”, as the label explains. The compilation includes tracks from celebrated trombone player and composer Peter Zummo, Hamburg pianist, producer and composer Niklas Paschburg, Norwegian maestro Håkon Kornstad, Sardinian sound researcher Eugenio Caria aka Saffronkeira, Hungarian jazz trumpeter and composer Barabás Lőrinc, seminal multi-reedist Doug Wieselman and many other stellar artists.
Wind Layers opens magnificently with ‘Beyond the Break’, an unreleased track written and recorded by sax super-hero Colin Stetson. He commented:

“Originally recorded as part of my last solo record, ‘All This I Do For Glory’, ‘Beyond the Brake’ is a turning of attention back towards where and what was left behind. It is that one last look before the page turns, before the next thought emerges and this one falls away. ‘All This I do for Glory’ was always intended as one side of a coin, and so I thought it fitting to share this piece now, in the time before the flip side comes to be.”

Listen to ‘Beyond the Break’ below.

Wind Layers is out on June 25th through 7K! Records