San Francisco-based band Cold Beat announce their new album, War Garden, out September 17th via Like LTD, and share its lead single/video, “See You Again.” The name War Garden is both a reference and a revelation. Although it gets its namesake from the self-sufficiency of World War II civilians to plant and grow their own food, in a more metaphorical sense it sprouted from a sense of connection, during a time where it was physically impossible to do so. The distance caused by the pandemic strengthened the bond between members Hannah Lew, Sean Monaghan, Kyle King, and Luciano Talpini Aita, resulting in an album that’s a remarkable leap from their earlier guitar-forward work. Following multiple albums and EPs, plus collaborations with notable contemporaries and icons such as Los Angeles artist Cooper Saver and Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder, War Garden presents Cold Beat as a fully realized unit. They openly embrace a synthesized landscape with rich harmonies and 80s pop flourishes, all while maintaining a complex emotional depth.
Rather than the sound reflecting the surrounding despair, the music is often suitable for the dance-floor, driven by steady, machine-like rhythms and ethereal vocals. War Garden calls to mind some of the greats: The melodies of Human League, the syncopation of Oppenheimer Analysis, and everything about New Order. While Lew is the front person, all members all contributed to the songwriting.
Lead single “See You Again” was written via zoom, like the rest of the album. This particular track was created in the first three months of lockdown and chronicled the feelings that came with the realization that they wouldn’t see each other for an unknown stretch of time. After Lew sat a shiva for a family friend, Monaghan sent another version of the song, and it developed into meditation on the unknown possibility of reconnecting with loved ones in the afterlife. “I had spent many months toiling in the dirt, tending to my War Garden,” says Lew. “Working with the soil is so hopeful, but also morbid. I had to bury some bulbs instead of being able to be present for the burial of a close friend. It became almost fetishistic to bury seeds, like a physical way to be there without actually being able to be there.”
The accompanying video, directed by Mimi Pfahler and shot in Lew’s yard and at Ocean Beach, was the first reconnection opportunity many had. “Among people on set I know there was a sense of transcendence – just a moment to give form to the feelings of isolation and physical need for each other that had built up,” says Lew.
War Garden’s complexities reveal themselves piece by piece—an instrument at a time. Although some of its explorations are heavy, there’s a sense of optimism in the final beat build-up and fading choral and keyboard arrangement—a harbinger of much better things to come.
War Garden Tracklist 1. Mandelbrot Fall 2. SOS 3. Tumescent Decoy 4. Weeds 5. See You Again 6. Arms Reach 7. Year Without A Shadow 8. Rubble Ren 9. Part The Sea 10. Leaves And Branches 11. New World
Today, Jyroscope – the project of MCs I.B. Fokuz, Collasoul Structure, and DJ Seanile – and producer Montana Macks release “Take It Easy,” the newest single from their recently announced collaborative EP Happy Medium, out July 23rd. “Take It Easy” is an equally composed lesson in jazz, hip-hop, and meditation. It sees the group finding a ‘happy medium’ in their lives, appreciating what they have and who surrounds them. “It just seemed like I was going through this gauntlet of horrible shit that just kept coming,” Collasoul Structure says of the single’s genesis, explaining, “I literally closed my eyes for a moment and said to myself, ‘take it easy, bring it down.’” On “Take It Easy,” Fokuz offers his rebuttal to life’s myriad of challenges: “Peace is an everyday practice when ya conscious/ just a little levity can shake up the monotonous/ I sit and meditate when I awake and let the mind rinse.”
Happy Medium is a potent manifestation of an endless journey for balance. Over sleepy jazz samples layered in well seasoned beats courtesy of Montana Macks, the aptly-titled Happy Medium EP sees Jyroscope exploring the difficulty in maintaining a focus on one’s craft, career, and the life responsibilities that come with putting down roots and starting a family.
Preceding Happy Medium, Jyroscope released several projects including the Hip House mixtape, On The House, and the bouncy boom bap-filled, MUTEEP. With a reputation around Chicago and beyond for their polished, high energy live performances, Jyroscope teamed up with long time friend and producer Montana Macks (Chicago Reader’s 2020 runner up for Best Hip Hop producer) for Happy Medium, their best effort to date. Happy Medium is the result of over a year’s worth of work that began with a wildly fruitful session in late 2019. They felt the title best reflected where they currently are as artists and people. With their poetic rhymes and heart-felt imagery, Happy Medium makes for a captivating listen, one that is sure to have fans new and old itching to run it back well before the final note has faded away. Pre-order Happy Medium EP
“Hollywood” is the first single from Berlin art punks Plattenbau‘s upcoming album Shape / Shifting. Sounding like Joy Division on a dark VHS soundtrack, derailing into an explosive chorus soaked in overdrive, ‘Hollywood’“ is a song about greed and infatuation depicting man’s primal impulses to take, to extract, to possess – rather than to give and to share, but ultimately evinces the belief that this cycle can be broken.
Combining icy digital synthesizers and mechanical percussion with wiry, brutal post-punk and an explosive, fiery chorus hook, “Hollywood” is a corporate ghost story dancing on the grave of ideology with howling laughter and reckless abandon. The song artfully straddles the noise-pop boundary with layers of squelchy electronics, bouncing rhythms, and lyrics about the excess and brutality of our changing world. Yet it remains fun—a disco ball reflecting the burning light of post-capitalist Armageddon across your Wi-Fi network.
“Welcome to the Plattenbau club, come in for some sweaty wall-banging group therapy under strobe lights. The video represents the safe space of the club, the concert – where we can all connect on an intuitive level, interact with mutual respect and transform our shadows in darkness, through movement, into light.”
Plattenbau formed in 2011 in the dark basement of the former Stasi HQ in East Berlin. Originally strictly a recording project, they jammed over slow grinding death rock for hours and listened back to the tapes into cold dark nights, talking alternate realities, corporate ghost stories, and the death of ideology.
In the years since they have joined the likes of Idles, Preoccupations, Flasher, The Garden, La Luz, and Naomi Punk on stage. Their first US tour in Spring 2016 included dates at Silent Barn (NY), Empty Bottle (Chi), and a run of shows at SXSW. They subsequently toured Europe extensively, and returned to the US for two tours in 2018.
Over the years, frontman Lewis Lloyd’s songs have evolved from wiry and jagged post-punk to taut, ironclad synth fortresses, mechanical and repetitive, brutal and hypnotic. Early themes of fleeting youth and wasted nights have given way to lyrics embodying the excesses and brutalities of our world. Yet somehow these songs remain fun, straddling the ever-fruitful territory between noise and pop.
“Hollywood” is the first single from Plattenbau’s sophomore album which will be released later this fall. More details to come soon.
Irish producer and DJ Mano Le Tough releases a new single, “Aye Aye Mi Mi,” from his forthcoming album, At The Moment, out August 20th on DJ Koze’s Pampa Record, and announces new tour dates with more to come. Following lead single “No Road Without A Turn,” “Aye Aye Mi Mi” is an indie dance ear-worm that’s hard to shake, and is the only track on the record that survived his original batch of demos and sketches. Beat and bass heavy, it highlights Mano’s skills for melodies and compelling vocal inflections. Mesmerizing instrumental flourishes, like ascending keys, filter in and out. “It’s a kind of reflection on narcissism, social media saturation and the ego,” Mano says.
After more than a decade of releases and touring, Mano has spent the past year at home in Zurich, rearing his young family and focusing on the positives of 14 months without performing, amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. In the face of horror, Mano channelled inspiration. With At The Moment, the follow-up to 2015’s Trails, those struggles have produced a record which balances the ambivalence of the current moment, with wistful streaks of unguarded optimism.
At The Moment shows Mano’s modes of expression evolving too. The synths and rhythms common to earlier works are now complemented with less familiar sounds and influences. Jangling guitars and sun-bleached chords envelop his own tender, plaintive vocals in a dappled wash of summery pop. Another track grounds overlapping melodies and sci-fi soundtrack pads with hip hop beats, creating a hypnotic slice of slinky retro-futurism. Where there is reflection, there is also a sense of being unafraid. Listen to Mano Le Tough’s “Aye Aye Mi Mi”
Fri. July 23 – Las Vegas, NV @ Art of the Wild Sat. July 24 – New York, NY @ Teksupport Sun. July 25 – Miami, FL @ Space Thu July 29 – Athens, FR @ Island Sun. Aug. 15 – Bloemendaal, NL @ Woodstock Sun. Aug. 16 – Berlin, DE @ TBD Mon. Aug. 17 – Verbier, CH @ Electroclette Fri. Aug. 27 – Lincolnshire, UK @ Lost Village
Legendary South Sudanese pop star Gordon Koang announces his Coronavirus / Disco 12”, out August 4th via Music in Exile. This double-A-side release shares Gordon’s messages of peace, love and positivity, and is his first offering since 2020’s “idiosyncratically joyous” (Bandcamp) Unity. “Coronavirus” was penned by Koang in July 2020 as a response to his personal experiences of the global pandemic. As his hometown of Melbourne went into lockdown, Gordon resided in the city’s outer suburbs with his cousin, Paul Biel, and his four-stringed, guitar-like instrument, the thom. Throughout this single, Gordon offers his condolences to those affected by the pandemic, alongside messages of his faith in frontline workers and the hope that circumstances will improve soon. “People suffer a lot. I ask that God gives the doctors the big wisdom to defeat the coronavirus. When people hear my song, I hope that this music counsels them. The song has a lot of meaning, it is telling them to be hopeful.”
With the cancellation of a national tour and numerous festival appearances, Covid-19 had not only impacted Gordon’s career here in Australia, but also his opportunity to visit family he hadn’t seen in five years. After receiving Australian permanent residency, Gordon and Paul were now able to visit family in Uganda, however this was made incredibly difficult due to border closures and the potential health risks. Taking a last minute opportunity, Gordon and Paul travelled to Africa and whilst excited to visit their families, they also experienced the impact of the pandemic on their home communities. “In Africa, it is not like us here, there is no medicine and in Africa there is also no Centrelink if you are in lockdown. It is difficult getting services. Even getting food is difficult.”
After two weeks in hotel quarantine, Gordon and Paul returned to Melbourne, eager to record music once more. With lockdown lifting, Gordon headed to the studio with a new band featuring Zak Olsen (ORB, Traffik Island) Jack Kong (Baked Beans, Traffik Island), David “Daff” Gravolin (ORB), and Jesse Williams (Leah Senior, Girlatones). This new release is the result of these studio sessions, jamming and recording at Button Pusher in Preston, Melbourne.
The Coronavirus / Disco 12” will feature a pull-out poster from Gordon, encouraging listeners to stay positive during this difficult time:
“My condolences to you, my audience in lockdown. We are all suffering from coronavirus. Let us stand firm and be strong. Let us look after each other, until the time comes when God brings us together. I give my condolences to people who have died of coronavirus, in aged care and disability. We are heartbroken for everyone. Let us take it easy, and pray in our houses, all around the world. If you believe in God, pray to the God you believe in, and they will help you. God will give us the chance to go back to normal and open all events. Even if it is a bad time now, there will be a change and it will be a good time for us. Thank you to everyone.” – Gordon Koang
Anika – the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson – shares the new single/video, “Rights,” from Change, her first new album in over a decade, out July 23rd on Sacred Bones and Invada. Following “Change” and “Finger Pies,” “Rights” drones with Anika’s beautifully plaintive voice and oscillating percussion. In her words, the song is about “turning the tables, giving power to those who normally feel disempowered. This song is about unification not division. This song is about female (/queer/non-binary/marginalised communities) empowerment – the joining of forces, not pitted against each other. This song is about wanting to escape reality but then we can never truly escape it, it will always be there to collect its dues. We can only ever achieve temporary escape. The better option is to bring whatever we want into reality.” During the song’s peak, Anika chants encouragingly: “Feel the power // feel the power // show me power.”
The accompanying video, directed by Anika and Sabrina Labis, features Anika and Mueran Humanos’s Carmen Burguess. The video toggles between the virtual and real worlds, playing with the ideas of dreams and displacement, and seeking places of empowerment. Anika elaborates: “At the end of the video, the memory of the feelings, the knowledge that it was possible, remained, that is enough to start bringing it into our own life. We all have rights.” Co-director Sabrina Labis adds: “Making videos is my way to feel power. The power of changing perspectives, escaping conservative structures and landing on a very close and free power-planet where everything is possible. Press play, take off and enjoy.”
2021 is shaping up to be the year of Alan Vega. Every year should be but, this year is definitely it. The announcement of the opening of the Alan Vega archives, which will be unleashing an untold amount of unreleased material dating back to 1971 via Sacred Bones, the release of Mutator (a lost album from the mid 90’s) which has gained rave reviews, a massive feature in the New York Times…Alan has been celebrated everywhere of late. In The Red is over the moon to participate in this celebration with the release of Alan Vega After Dark – an album that captures a late night rock n’ roll session with Alan backed by Ben Vaughn, Barb Dwyer and Palmyra Delran (all members of the incredible Pink Slip Daddy as well as countless other cool projects). This album serves as a reminder that Alan Vega was an incredible rock n’ roll/blues/rockabilly vocalist. He was one of the best.
From the desk of Jason P. Woodbury: I only spoke with Alan Vega once. It was over the phone and the topic of discussion was the 2015 reissue of Cubist Blues, the phenomenally out there album he’d originally released with collaborators Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn in 1996. I was in a noisy stadium for reasons that no longer matter at all, on a cell phone, but even with all that extra noise considered, Alan was exceptionally difficult to understand. At first at least. He’d suffered a stroke a few years earlier, in 2012, which still had lingering effects on his speech. But even before that, his heavy East Coast accent had sometimes made him hard to decipher, lending his voice the character of “a cab driver describing fine art,” Vaughn says. If you weren’t from New York—specifically Alan’s New York, an older version of Gotham that may have died with him on July 16th, 2016, when he passed on his sleep—it could be hard to keep up. But after a few minutes, I adjusted to the rhythm. Suddenly, without warning, I found myself able to dance to the peculiar beat of Vega’s jutting back and forth, his Jewish mystic cadence, the kind you hear in gasps and yelps on the transgressively savagely conceptual records he made in the late ‘70s with Martin Rev as Suicide, or the solo records he made starting in the 80s and continuing through to his final studio album “IT” finished in early 2015 and released posthumously in 2017, collages of machoismo-powered rockabilly, space cadet hard rock, renegade cowboy soul, and neon-drenched pop art Americana. You acclimate and then boom: You’re immersed in the “one-man subculture,” to borrow Vaughn’s description, of Alan Vega.
Though his relationship to the mainstream was flirtatious but never a fully committed one, Vega’s sub rosa influence on a disparate but extensive list of punks, new wavers, industrial deconstructionists, garage rockers, and pop stars is clear. His admirers included Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a frequent collaborator, and Bruce Springsteen, whose 1982 album Nebraska, particularly the creeping song “State Trooper,” explored the same haunted backroads Vega sang about. “The bravery and passion he showed throughout his career was deeply influential to me,” Springsteen noted on his Facebook page, memorializing Vega. “There was simply no one else remotely like him.”
No one else like him. That was certainly the case in 2015, when Vega decamped to Renegade Studio in New York City’s West Village with Vaughn on guitar, bassist and keyboardist Barb Dwyer, drummer (and Sirius XM DJ) Palmyra Delran, and engineer Geoff Sanoff. Sporting sunglasses, a knit cap and long rider coat, Vega looked tough as nails in his 78th year, and as always he was dedicated to the moment, to capturing the ghosts for what would prove to be his final live band recording.
Years before, the stroke had slowed Vega down, but he’d recovered and continued making music, often remotely, vocalizing over pre-recorded tracks by electronic musicians. He wanted a different feel for this project, wanted “to feel connected,” Vaughn says, to the musicians in the room, the way it had worked when they made Cubist Blues with Chilton, a music industry rebel in his own right. That record had taken two frenzied, off-the-cuff nights, this album required only one. “We got better at it,” Vaughn says with a chuckle, his velvet voice—the one I’ve so often heard on his essential and always joyous radio program and podcast The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn —underserved by my cellular telephone (once again).
Vega was obsessed with the enormity of any given moment, and to that end, he insisted the band be assembled with absolutely no preparation. They would be responsible for creating, ears tuned to each other and Vega’s incantations, a spontaneous space for his magical recitations. “It’s the only way I’ve ever worked with him,” Vaughn says. “We would start playing, and Alan would wait a little bit,” drawing in a notepad the entire time, working on his “zillions of sketches” — potential self-portraits, though he’d be loathe to indulge you asking if they were — or reading his copy of the New York Post. Eventually he’d rise to the microphone. “Some of the stuff he comes up with, it’s really unbelievable,” Vaughn says, citing the elementally profound lyrics for “River of No Shame,” delivered for the first time as the band churned on. “The animals are hunting, the animals are hunting/Making a break for the river/Making a break for the river/The river of no shame,” Vega riffs, over a motorik groove that’s somehow equal parts Neu! and John Lee Hooker.
Vega didn’t consider the marketplace at all, never considered what would become of his art after he made it, living like the embodiment of what visionary director David Lynch would describe as “the art life.” For Vega creating was the sacred act. Creations? He could take them or leave them. “Liz, Alan’s wife, has told me that when he would finish a painting, he’d immediately paint over the canvas — she’d have to snatch them away from him,” Vaughn says.
Luckily, Vaughn and company have been able to do something like that with Alan Vega After Dark, a set of songs that exist fully in their genesis, realized and recorded one night in New York City. They snatched one away from Alan, so we can pore over it. Listening to it, Vega’s words sometimes slip past me, like they did early in our single phone call. Wait, what was that he just said? It might have been the secret of the world! But I have the luxury of knowing that even as I can return to the LP over and over again, I’ll never hear the same thing twice. “Alan was writing from the future,” Vaughn says. I think back to 2015 when, during my interview for Aquarium Drunkard, Vega swatted away my inquiries about where his visions originated: “I don’t know where it comes from. People ask, ‘Why?’…There is no why. Who gives a shit? It’s not supposed to be why. It’s supposed to be the world. The mystery.”
London-based label Def Pressé is thrilled to announce its exclusive partnership with KPM/EMI to officially open KPM’s iconic music and sound design library for the first time ever. A production music label dating back to 1956, the KPM library contains over 30,000 original recordings of non-commercial music made for licensed use in television, film, radio, or any other media outlet. Ranging from cinematic symphonic themes to bizarre sound effects, elaborate environmental landscapes of computer-synth orchestras to film scores, these licensed recordings, commissioned without the pressure of generating commercial hits, have long been a treasure trove for producers digging for samples. This adventurous undertaking, initiated by Def Pressé in affiliation with EMI Production Music’s hip-hop outfit The Real Fifth, will see a handful of carefully selected composers and sound-excavationists creating all-new records alongside an array of featured singers, rappers, and instrumentalists, to be released by Def Pressé in two forthcoming series: KPM Crate Diggers and KPM Originals.
The KPM Crate Diggers series will consist of new albums by select producers made entirely of samples from the KPM archives, as well as other renowned library music labels including Coloursound, SelectedSound, ThemesInternational, ConroyRecordedMusicLibrary, and Francis, Day& Hunter, all of which Def Pressé artists also have exclusive access to. These releases will be entered into the KPM archives for future use as “library music,” making these producers “KPM Artists” in their own right. The KPM Crate Diggers series will kick off with Damu The Fudgemunk, and see forthcoming releases from JazzyJeff, StroElliot (of TheRoots), J-Live, ChrisDave and many others to be announced in the coming months.
The KPM Originals series will see new albums composed of entirely new, sample-free compositions, released by Def Pressé and added into the KPM catalogue, also for future use as “library music.” Artists confirmed to participate in the KPM Originals series include BastienKeb, CoreyKing, and ChrisDave, with more to be announced in the coming months.
Kicking off the KPM Crate Diggers series is Conversation Peace (out September 3rd), a new album from Damu The Fudgemunk, the Washington, DC-based musician and producer known for his many collaborations with RawPoetic, ArchieShepp, Blu, and others, in addition to his own acclaimed solo work. “The music that would become Conversation Peace began with a trip to KPM’s London HQ in late January of 2020,” says EarlDavis (aka Damu the Fudgemunk). “I had just finished wrapping up post production on my album Ocean Bridges with Archie Shepp and Raw Poetic. As a record collector, I’m very familiar with the legacy of the KPM brand. Listening to the entire catalogue was a history lesson and the amount of great composers and compositions in the recordings was endless. As a producer looking for textures, inspiration and grooves, the abundance of those things made it extremely difficult to narrow down what I wanted to use. From drums to sound FX to orchestras to small rhythm sections to ambient noises, I heard a wide variety of things and they were all so well produced and recorded. The history of KPM and the opportunity to collaborate with the prestigious lineage made the stakes very high for me and I knew I needed to deliver a quality product. It’s an honor to be the first artist to release a KPM Crate Diggers title.”
“Damu the Fudgemunk came to our studio in London to carefully dig his way through the whole KPM 1000 series,” says Peter Clarke of EMI Production Music. “If anyone is in doubt about sampling being an artform, they just need to watch him work! It’s great to breathe new life into all these old recordings, too. And then place it straight back into library music for use in media. Exactly how it was originally intended.” Listen to “Four Better Or Worse (Pt. 1)” Feat. Nitty Scott by Damu The Fudgemunk
Developed in the mid-’60s, the now-iconic KPM 1000 series launched the golden years for KPM, with the birth of the “Greensleeves” albums (named after their consistently plain-green record covers). Currently, the classic KPM archives boast over 30,000 original recordings by acclaimed library composers such as KeithMansfield, JohnCameron, TheMohawksfounderAlanHawkshaw, TheShadowsdrummerBrianBennett, DavidBowie and The Beatles’ collaborator, Alan Parker, and ExoticapioneerLesBaxter. KPM has extensively recorded at studios such as London’s Angel and AbbeyRoad (The Beatles recorded most of their albums here during the KPM 1000 recording era).
A massive amount of work has gone into taking care of these aged reel-to-reels, vinyl records, and DATs. They have been painstakingly digitized and made available to Def Pressé and the selected artists working on these projects.
“For years, all of these old archive tracks have sat dormant on the LPs—undigitized and only discoverable by those that had copies or had enough money to get them via Discogs or Ebay,” says Paul Sandell, Senior Content and Distribution Manager at EMI Production Music. “There’s a huge amount of pride here at EMI PM about KPM, and the other archive libraries. Not only is this music an important document of television music from the time, but it has a far wider cultural impact – whether from the theme music to a cult TV show, the sleazy funk of an erotic exploitation flick or as music sampled by the likes of Jay-Z, Drake, Florence and The Machine, and many more.”
“KPM has always been there with us for as long as I collected records,” says Def Pressé founder Matt Moat. “While digging for records, it would always be a straight pick-up, no need to listen. Their records were collectibles and coveted as such. It was always a dream to somehow be connected with this library in a fuller way. The moment I met Pete and we discussed what EMI Production Music had been doing with the catalogue, I had to dream up a way Def Pressé and our friends could take this stuff, flip it, and end up as ‘Library Musicians’ ourselves. To be able to contribute to the KPM Library means the world to all of us.”
“The relationship between hip-hop and library music has always been strong,” adds Sandell. “But this project really unifies the process between the library and the creative input of the producers. It’s a high five between the two to say ‘look what’s possible’.”
Following last single ‘Better Late Than Never’ (video here), a song about self-discovery, the ever intriguing Wings Of Desire share new single ‘Choose A Life’, plus announce their new EP Amun-Ra to be released Friday 13th August 2021 on WMD Recordings.
Filmed in 8mm pre-covid, the video for ‘Choose A Life’ is meant to feel freeing from responsibility and life in general. Somehow that feels even more poignant now.
One the track, the duo say: “Choose A Life is about our automated programming which convinced us that once we get ‘there’ we will be happy. That once we’ve acquired the material check list we will be fulfilled, but this is never the case. The song explores finding joy in the smaller moments of the everyday, the mundane, those micro expressions that we take for granted. And realising that you don’t have to bend the world to make your mark. That it’s better to just enjoy it.“
Amun-Ra which is released on 13th August, moves on from the observant nature of debut EP End Of An Age and into a more inwardly focused journey of self-discovery. It is named after the ancient Egyptian deity, the transcendental creator of the universe and the god of light. It represents unlimited and boundless freedom. It explores the trappings of time, ageing, and looks back with a nostalgic glow on past misdealings and successes. Amun-Ra leaves breadcrumbs for anyone growing up and asking the big existential questions on life, lighting the way for the disenfranchised.
Sonically the EP continues the exploration of 60s pop songwriting, noise rock, and euphoric atmospherics, and lifts it into new horizons. Produced by the band and mixed by kindred spirit Vincent Cacchione (Caged Animals). It will include both ‘Choose A Life’, and ‘Better Late Than Never’.
The new EP Amun-Ra is out 13th August 2021 via WMD Recordings
Visual artist and singer-songwriter Morly (aka Katy Morley) announces her debut album ‘Til I Start Speaking, out August 20th on Cascine, and shares new single/video “Dance to You.” Morley’s soft, swooning strain of storyteller pop has distilled across the past half decade into an increasingly hushed and heartfelt private language, as lived in as it is lyrical. Her debut full-length took shape slowly during stints in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and London, stripping back the melodies to their essence, driven by a yearning to “reach ‘the other side,’ to live in and be art and music.” The songs that emerged are time-worn, aching, and acoustically rich, like hymns or traditionals, traced in piano, voice, and percussion. She describes the creation process as almost a “subconscious exorcism,” casting out old ghosts and outgrown loves.
After establishing her singular style with a series of EPs — In Defense of My Muse (2015), Something More Holy (2016) and Sleeping In My Own Bed (2017) — Morley took some necessary time away from the public eye as she battled chronic illness. She returns now with newfound strength and focused sound. Much of ‘Til I Start Speaking revealed itself as she found herself falling in love with someone across the Atlantic. The Minneapolis-born artist relocated from her homebase in Los Angeles to London this year, joining her partner, who was “a beam of light irrupting into the darkness” of her deteriorating health. The album paints a portrait of realizing you’re in love. It’s also the result of Morley finding herself at the crossroads of graduate school and considering pursuing music full time. Morley felt adrift and estranged from herself, but year by year she’s closed that gap in incremental ways: studying piano, pursuing painting (her artwork adorns the sleeves of her entire discography), unlearning self-doubt, trusting one’s inner voice.
Working with frequent collaborator Christopher Stracey, Morley followed a muse of stillness and naturalism, allowing each composition to flower in its own fluid, elegant way – arriving finally at a sequence he quipped as “nine sleep bangers and a bop.” There is indeed a sensuous, low-lidded mood to this music, as though sung at a quiet hour in an intimate setting, a quality she ascribes to her affinity for conscious listening: “It’s in my own silence that the world really comes alive, and I see the deep connections.” Morley’s voice moves in reflective pools, spotlit but subdued, full of lilts and breathy pauses. The effect is one of patience and hidden wisdom, transmuting sorrow into strength, inspired by her hero Nina Simone’s ability to “take the saddest feeling and alchemize it into joy.”
‘Til I Start Speaking represents a stylistic movement towards organic sounds that was hinted towards in Morley’s previous works, blending her love of classic acoustic songwriting and minimal electronic music. This manifests in new single “Dance to You,” the follow-up to previously released single “Twain Harte.” “Dance to You” opens with piano before expanding with Morley’s soothing voice and a velvety bass line and a mellow beat. Morley elaborates: “‘Dance to You’ is about the need for–and is the vehicle for–a benevolent exorcism. It sprang from an encounter with someone so radiant to me that they helped light my way, but that I had to outgrow in order to see my own brilliance: I can’t grow/inside your glow.”
The incredible accompanying video, directed by Lawrence Pumfrey and choreographed by Katya Bourviski, explores the sort of dream state and rush of inspiring infatuation, but also its malleability and destabilizing effect. “Katya and I talked about my experiences as a young artist finding my feet in a difficult industry, especially with flagging health, and the constant pressure to define and sell yourself which helped to inform the structure of the piece,” says Morley. “It’s also partially inspired by Pina Bausch’s dance, Kontakthof.” Watch “Dance to You” Video
Stream “Twain Harte”‘Til I Start Speaking Tracklist 1. Til I Start Speaking (I & II) 2. Dance to You 3. Sleeping in My Own Bed 4. Wasted5. Twain Harte 6. Up Above 7. Jazz Angel (Bill) 8. Savior Mind Tattoo 9. Superlunar 10. Eliogy 11. Feels (Bonus Track)
Keep your mind open.
[Dance on over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
