Empress Of and Bryce Dessner Join isomonstrosity on New Song ‘Take Me Back’

    isomonstrosity – the new project helmed by producer Johan Lenox, composer Ellen Reid, and conductor Yuga Cohler – have shared a new single from their self-titled debut LP. Following lead single ‘Careful What You Wish For’, a collaboration with Danny Brown and 645AR, ‘Take Me Back’ features Empress Of and is built around a piano excerpt from The National’s Bryce Dessner. Listen to it below.

    “This track had a long journey,” Reid explained in a statement. “At first we had Empress Of’s vocal line over a pop track, but I felt like it needed something less conspicuous to evoke the mood we were going for. After a few conversations, we threw the vocal line over Bryce Dessner’s hypnotic piano line, and we were immediately excited about this direction.”

    “We made the song through text and email, typical of 2020,” Lorely Rodriguez, aka Empress Of, said. “I was starving to go out and be surrounded by people and I feel like you can hear that energy on this piece of music. It’s an unconventional song for an unconventional time in all our lives.”

    “At the very start of the pandemic, I had my first sustained break in travel and touring in over 15 years,” Bryce Dessner added. “The request from my friends Johan and Ellen to write music, any music, which would be collaged into this larger isomonstrosity project gave me something to meditate on in that moment of quiet. I wrote several simple little pieces including this piano excerpt. Through processing they’ve transformed it into something surprising and beautiful to hear the amazing Empress Of on the track.”

    isomonstrosity will be released on November 18 via Brassland.

    Konstantinos Pappis
    Konstantinos Pappis
    Konstantinos Pappis is a writer, journalist, and music editor at Our Culture. His work has also appeared in Pitchfork, GIGsoup, and other publications. He currently lives in Athens, Greece.

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