Bell Orchestre are set to release their new full-length next month, and are previewing it with a second track, ‘IV: What You’re Thinking’.
The album is titled ‘House Music’, and is set for release next month on 19th March via their new label home, Erased Tapes.
The record will be preceded by an accompanying performance film, set to premiere as part of Southbank Centre’s ‘Inside Out’ series in London, and the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York. It’ll also stream online for a UK premiere for 24 hours from 8pm on Saturday 13th March, with tickets on general sale today via Dice.
The six piece, including Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry, recorded the album in September 2020 between lockdowns in the Canadian woodlands.
Talking about the recording, Neufeld explains: “If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section — with so many different things going on — down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sund would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious”
“Most of my favorite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas,” adds Parry. “I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea — not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out. In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas, deeply listening to each others’ wide open minds and also totally immersed in our own strange and beautiful little internal musical worlds.”
You can check out ‘IV: What You’re Thinking’ below.
