Baba Ali have dropped a new single, <strong>‘Black + Blue’</strong>.
The track forms a double A-side 7″ alongside previous track ‘Living It Up’, released via ZEN F.C. – the label of Yard Act’s James Smith and Ryan Needham.
With the two bands set to hit the road together later this week, Baba Doherty explains: “We ended up reacting to the beginning of lockdown by writing a tonne of new songs in my basement in New Jersey. Some of the tracks ended up forming a mixtape that we put out on Bandcamp. Black & Blue was a song from that collection of songs, and one we were really happy with at the time, so this was an interesting opportunity to open the track up again and see how our experiences since that period had changed our approach to recording.
“It is a song I am always trying to convince Nik (Balchin – guitarist/synths) to add to our live set, but I don’t even think he can even remember the tuning he used for it. Hopefully giving the song an official release will kind of force his hands on that one.”
Yard Act’s James and Ryan say of the release: “We loved Baba Ali’s music from the moment we heard it. They’re joining us for our debut album tour in February. When Baba sent through some new tunes he and his bandmate Nik were working on we saw an opportunity to reboot Zen F.C., and to preserve on wax and share some great music with the world. It was a no-brainer for us. We are honoured, we are buzzed to have Baba Ali as the first ever non-YA release on Zen F.C. – follow the label, there will be much more to come in the future.”
You can check out ‘Black + Blue’ below.