Kae Tempest has announced their fourth studio album, The Line Is a Curve, which is set for release on April 8 via Fiction Records. The follow-up to 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons is led by the new single ‘More Pressure’, which features Kevin Abstract of BROCKHAMPTON. Check it out and find the album’s cover artwork (shot by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans) below.
In addition to Abstract, Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, ássia, and Confucius MC contributed to the new LP, which was produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey. “The Line Is A Curve is about letting go,” Tempest explained in a press release. “Of shame, anxiety, isolation and falling instead into surrender. Embracing the cyclical nature of time, growth, love.” They continued:
This letting go can hopefully be felt across the record. In the musicality, the instrumentation, the lyricism, the delivery, the cover art. In the way it ends where it begins and begins where it ends.I knew I wanted my face on the sleeve. Throughout the duration of my creative life, I have been hungry for the spotlight and desperately uncomfortable in it. For the last couple of records I wanted to disappear completely from the album covers, the videos, the front-facing aspects of this industry. A lot of that was about my shame but I masked it behind a genuine desire for my work to speak for itself, without me up front, commodifying what felt so rare to me and sacred. I was, at times, annoyed that in order to put the work out, I had to put myself out. But this time around, I understand it differently. I want people to feel welcomed into this record, by me, the person who made it, and I have let go of some of my airier concerns. I feel more grounded in what I’m trying to do, who I am as an artist and as a person and what I have to offer. I feel less shame in my body because I am not hiding from the world anymore. I wanted to show my face and I dreamed of it being Wolfgang Tillmans who took the portrait.
The Line Is a Curve Cover Artwork:
