–––__––___, the new collaborative project of Seth Graham and Mari Maurice (More Eaze), are set to release their debut LP, The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid, on September 10 via Orange Milk Records (vinyl/digital) and Mondoj (CD). The album features contributions from Karen Ng, Nick Storring, Rob Magill, Metoronori, spoken word from proxy.exe, and guest vocals from recovery girl and Metoronori. We’ve already heard the singles ‘In Memory of Simon Kingston’ (featuring recovery girl) and ‘rock bottom ohio’ (featuring proxy.exe), and tomorrow, the duo are sharing the opener ‘When you’re hot around the narcs’, a minimal, deeply vulnerable track that sets the mood for the rest of the album. You can check out a video for the new single, directed by Graham, below, premiering early with Our Culture.
“This track was written after I got back from visiting my brother in the hospital, he almost died of sepsis from a syringe infection due to drug use,” Graham explained in a statement. “There is a sincere sadness to this, I was really sad and worried my brother would not survive the infection.”
Mari Maurice added: “this is one of the first tracks seth and i worked on together for this album and to me it feels like one of the most traditional tracks formally. the sense of deep melancholy was immediately apparent to me so i tried to match this lyrically and vocally. for this song, i wrote lyrics that reference and reframe brief phrases from borges, the last novel by david markson, and daytripper by fabio moon and gabriel ba. i was largely thinking of a sort of blasé sense of despair-that your life has perhaps ended or peaked before you really sensed it even beginning. a sort of numb sense of treading water. it was one of the few tracks that didn’t involve much layering or processing of the voice and the mixing in general reflects a naturalistic approach to the alien.”
