Dirty Projectors today announced that their new album, Swing Lo Magellan, will be released on 9 July in Europe and 10 July in North America. This follows Friday’s airing of new track Gun Has No Trigger which is released digitally today on iTunes. It was further announced that Angel Deradoorian, a member since 2007, is on hiatus from the band. Below are full details from Domino’s press release. For the latest Dirty Projectors news, as it happens, follow Useful Chamber on Twitter or scroll down to view the Twitter feed on this page.
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Where prior DPs albums investigated 20th-century orchestration (The Getty Address), aerated the aesthetics of 80s hardcore and west African guitar music (Rise Above), and explored complex contrapuntal techniques in human voices (Bitte Orca and Mt Wittenberg Orca), Swing Lo Magellan is a leap forward again.
“It’s an album of songs, an album of songwriting,” says Longstreth.
The songs of Swing Lo Magellan are culled from a sprawling twelve months of constant writing and recording in a weird house in Delaware County, New York (four hours northwest of the city). Longstreth, who produced and mixed, wrote seventy new songs and beats. The band - Amber Coffman (vocals & guitar), Nat Baldwin (bass), Brian McOmber (drums) & Haley Dekle (vocals) (vocalist Angel Deradoorian is on hiatus) - joined him periodically, rehearsing the new music more or less constantly in the house’s A-frame attic The twelve songs of Swing Lo Magellan were winnowed down from about forty finished demos. The finished recordings bear the impress of this informal working style: the album is a collection of moments: accidental, fortuitous, spontaneous. The performances feel warm and imperfect. Unguarded intimacy is somewhat of a new look for this band, and it turns out it’s a very good look.
Swing Lo Magellan is an album that comes from the hearts of one of the most fearlessly thoughtful bands of the last ten years. The album has both the handmade intimacy of a love letter and the widescreen grandeur of a blockbuster, and if that sounds like a paradox - it’s because it was until now.
Swing Lo Magellan will be available on CD, vinyl and via digital download. The tracklisting is as follows:
Offspring Are Blank / About to Die / Gun Has No Trigger / Swing Lo Magellan / Just From Chevron / Dance For You / Maybe That Was It / Impregnable Question / See What She Seeing / The Socialites / Unto Caesar / Irresponsible Tune
