Talking about the inspiration behind the song, Greet Death’s Sam Boyhtari explained:
At the end of 2020 I was living with my partner Larissa in an apartment on the North side of Chicago. I was staying up until 5 or 6 in the morning every night and experiencing some terrible panic attacks. One night Larissa woke up and sat with me on the couch, talking me through an especially awful attack. The living room was dark, there was a CTA station across the street that gave us a little bit of light at night. It was our first time living together, and a time I now look back on very fondly. Larissa would go to work and I would work from home all day in her former roommate’s empty bedroom. At night, we would hang out until she went to bed, then I would put a horror movie on the TV and listen to music through headphones at the same time like a fucking weirdo. Despite the turmoil I was going through, I felt very comfortable in that place. So one day while Larissa was at work and I was alone in the apartment, I wrote a song about it.
The Range, the moniker of producer James Hinton, has announced his first album in six years, Mercury. The follow-up to 2016’s Potential arrives on June 10 via Domino and includes a new single called ‘Ricercar’, which you can check out below.
“A Ricercar in a musical context is a prelude fugue that kind of sets the tableau of a piece to follow,” Hinton explained in a press release. “I first heard about the concept of a Ricercar in a biography of Bach, who famously encoded his own name in a piece (H having been interchangeable as the name for B-flat at the time). At the time I wrote this song I was listening to a lot of rap from the 90s, specifically DJ Premier beats. As such I was rapidly collecting breaks and had just stumbled upon the Chief Kamanawanalea break by the Turtles and found that if I reordered the sections I could make this kind of palindromic composite break that seemed to propel the song along.”
He added: “This song features a vocal sample from Instagram of a singer covering Tamar Braxton’s ‘My Man.’ The lyrics are quite personal to me and are a good example of what I try to do in a lot of my songs. I tend to try to find a way to say something that I would never be able to say out loud. I think of my editing of lyrics as a pressure release.”
Mercury Cover Artwork:
Mercury Tracklist:
1. Bicameral
2. 1995
3. Urethane
4. Ricercar
5. Nor For Me
6. Relegate
7. A Tree Day
8. Balm
9. Cantor
10. Every Good Thing
11. Violet
Zola Jesus has announced her sixth full-length album, Arkhon. The follow-up to 2017’s Okovi is slated for release on May 20 via Sacred Bones. Lead single ‘Lost’, which samples a Slovenian folk choir, is out today alongside a music video directed by Mu Tunç and shot on location in the Cappadocia area of Turkey. Check it out below, and scroll down for the LP’s cover artwork and tracklist.
Talking about the track, Nika Roza Danilova said in a press release: “It’s true. Everyone I know is lost. Lost hope, lost future, lost present, lost planet. There is a collective disillusionment of our burning potential. As we stray further from nature, we drift from ourselves. ‘Lost’ is a sigil to re-discover our coordinates and claim a new path.”
Of the video, she added: “I wanted to shoot the video in a place that carried a lot of energy, with someone that I felt understood the spiritual backbone of the song. It was a surprisingly natural process to make this video with Mu Tunc in Turkey. I put my faith in him and in Cappadocia, a labyrinthine city built within 60 million-year-old caves. Throughout human history these caves have served as a citadel for so many different groups of people who went there to get lost. It is a testament to the resilience of humanity, and the durability of our earth.”
Tunç commented: “The story of ‘Lost’ is a visual litany of devotion. Reflects the exodus of the true self through the mystical environments of Cappadocia. Zola Jesus is for me like an outcast philosopher of today’s confused society.’’
On Arkohn, Danilova collaborated with producer Randall Dunn and percussionist Matt Chamberlain. “When I look back at my work, I see there’s a theme where I fixate on my fear of the unknown,” she said. “That really came into fruition for this record, because I had to let go of so much control. I had to surrender to whatever the outcome would be. That used to be really hard for me, and now I had no other choice.”
The title of the album means “power” or “ruler” in Ancient Greek, and is also relevant in Gnosticism.”Arkons are a Gnostic idea of power wielded through a flawed god,” Danilova explained. “They taint and tarnish humanity, keeping them corrupted instead of letting them find their harmonious selves. I do feel like we are living in an arkhonic time; these negative influences are weighing extremely heavy on all of us. We’re in a time of arkhons. There’s power in naming that.”
Arkhon Cover Artwork:
Arkhon Tracklist:
1. Lost
2. The Fall
3. Undertow
4. Into The Wild
5. Dead and Gone
6. Sewn
7. Desire
8. Fault
9. Efemra
10. Do That Anymore
Melbourne power pop outfit Romero have shared ‘Halfway Out the Door’, the second single from their upcoming debut album Turn It On!. The track arrives with an accompanying video from Megan O’Keefe, which you can check out below.
“I dated this guy on and off for years, who wouldn’t leave me but wouldn’t exactly love me either,” vocalist Alanna Oliver said in a statement. “‘Halfway’ is written about him and my eventual commitment to myself.” Of the video, O’Keefe added: “[Drummer] Dave [Johnstone] had a strong vision and pushed to use my mum’s old Panasonic camcorder to film this video. It makes for a more authentic storyline and the aesthetic of this footage was really fun to play with in the edit. This is an emotional song, the ‘flashback’ footage helps convey that. This video is a beautiful chaos, take from it what you will.”
“’Nothing Gives Me Pleasure’ is about trying to love yourself when it feels like no one else will,” the duo’s Harmony Tividad explained in a statement. “It was written during a time when I was working so hard to get someone specific to love and recognize me. On the path to doing that, I diluted myself so much that I lost sight of my own needs. This video plays with the lengths we go to to feel loved and how so many faces of intimacy may disguise what love actually looks like to us specifically. I have a history of getting lost in the labyrinth in the struggle for affection. In this video I wanted to interface with my own patterns in the attempt to better see and love myself.”
Disclosure have teamed up with singer-songwriter RAYE for their new single ‘Waterfall’. Check it out below.
“Raye is such a dream to work with in the studio,” Disclosure said of the collaboration in a press release. “Best way to describe her is as a hook machine! You get the beat rolling & vibes going & she gives you like 5 chorus melody options straight away… she makes writing the way we do so easy & enjoyable. We all knew within 5 minutes we were gonna make a UKG summer sunshine banger & that’s exactly what we ended up with. We all had London & it’s beautiful musical history in our hearts that day & we hope that comes across to the listener.”
Raye added: “This was really the first song Disclosure and I had created together, and everyone loved it, it came together really quickly and organically. The boys led with a garage vibe and I think it’s summertime warm energy! I hope people love it as much as we enjoyed making it.”
Back in January, Disclosure shared ‘You’ve Got to Let Go If You Want to Be Free’, a collaboration with DJ and producer Zedd. They’re set to head out on a US tour next month, including a stop at Coachella.
Dama Scout have shared a new single, ‘pineapple eyes’, the latest offering from the art-rock trio’s forthcoming debut LP gen wo lai (come with me). Check out a visual for it, created by the band themselves, below.
“‘pineapple eyes’ is a much loved bisected finger food piled high on a platter of disappointment,” Dama Scout remarked in a statement. “Full bodied and finely balanced, sweet and umami notes give way to a full frontal sourness.”
Luke Steele, the Australian musician best-known as half of the electro-pop duo Empire of the Sun, has shared a new track from his forthcoming debut solo album Listen to the Water. Check out ‘Pool of Love’ below.
Speaking about the song, Steele said in a press release:
I’m finally getting the answers to questions, after so many years. For me I think I’m so impatient. So head strong when I want the deliverance or something resolved if it doesn’t happen on my time table I’d become disappointed and confused. Grasping that ideal that you literally have everything you need on the inside or you, your own pool of love, the keys to the kingdom.”
Sonically I wanted it to sound warm and approachable, like an ear cocoon. A lot of these songs on the album I’d write little guitar patterns, then attack the vocals separately, which is a trick I use to switch your brain when writing so you can break out of habitual musical patterns.
Listen to the Water is set for release on May 13. It includes the previously unveiled singles ‘Common Man’ and ‘Armageddon Slice’.
Lizzie Reid has returned with a new single called ‘Bible’. It marks the Glaswegian singer-songwriter’s first new material since her 2021 debut EP Cubicle. Take a listen below.
“’Bible’ is about being nervous about falling in love again. I was feeling something, and that scared me,” Reid explained in a press release. “I wanted to get things right this time, be important to someone, and not to bring my anxieties into the picture. Becoming involved with someone tends to bring up things within yourself. It holds a mirror up and forces me to look at myself through someone else’s eyes.”
Röyksopp have previewed their upcoming project Profound Mysteries with a new song, ‘Breathe’, featuring Norwegian singer-songwriter Astrid S. The track follows the previously shared singles ‘This Time, This Place’ with Beki Mari, ‘Impossible’ featuring Alison Goldfrapp, ‘(Nothing But) Ashes…’, and ‘The Ladder’. It comes alongside a short ‘Breathe’ film titled I Hate My Shelf, which was directed by Swedish filmmaker Andreas Nilsson, a longtime Röyksopp collaborator who worked on short films for their albums Junior and Senior and the music video for ‘This Must Be It’. Watch and listen below.
“I have always wanted to collaborate with Röyksopp, they have been and continue to be a huge inspiration for me,” Astrid S said in a statement. “I’m really excited for the music to finally come out!”
Röyksopp’s last album was 2014’s The Inevitable End, which the Norweigian duo called their “goodbye to the traditional album format.” The 10-track Profound Mysteries is described as “an expanded creative universe and prodigious conceptual project.”
