Dirty Projectors & Chamber Orchestra S t a r g a z e Announce Collaborative LP 'Song Of The Earth'
Thursday, 09 January 2025
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Kyle Thomas
Dirty Projectors have announced a new album.
Described as a "song cycle for orchestra and voices", 'Song Of The Earth' will arrive via Transgressive in the UK and Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in the US on April 4.
Composed by the group's David Longstreth in six weeks for the Berlin-based chamber orchestra S t a r g a z e, work-in-progress shows took place in Hamburg, Amsterdam and London between 2022 and 2024. The US premiere then took place at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles with the LA Philharmonic in March last year.
Following three years of tweaking, rewriting and rearranging 'Song Of The Earth', Longstreth recorded it with his band members Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell, and S t a r g a z e, in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles and New York City.
Contributing guests include Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie, Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits Of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells.
The first preview of the project comes in the form of track Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One, featuring Longstreth reading the first paragraph of Wallace-Wells' 2019 bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth. Head below for the accompanying lyric video, featuring drone footage of Lake Tulare in California shot by Longstreth's brother Jake. David said:
"The need for this music arose in a few days in Fall of 2020, when T was pregnant with our daughter. The fires in California were insane, as they are right now. We got on an empty flight to Juneau. It was the middle of the pandemic; no one was flying. The irony of escaping the fires by burning more carbon.
"The beauty and restorative cool of Alaska. A muddy bald eagle sitting on the shale stone bank of a coastal slough surrounded by rotting carcasses after the salmon run."
He continued to explain that 'Song Of The Earth', "is not a ‘climate change opera," revealing that he wanted to "find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humour, rage."
'Song Of The Earth' marks the first project from Dirty Projectors since '5EPs', a collection of the band's five 2020 EPs, 'Windows Open', 'Flight Tower', 'Super João', 'Earth Crisis', and 'Ring Road'.
'Song Of The Earth' tracklist:
1. Summer Light
2. Gimme Bread
3. At Home
4. Circled In Purple
5. Our Green Garden
6. Walk The Edge (with Anastasia Coope)
7. Opposable Thumb
8. More Mania
9. Spiderweb At Water’s Edge (with Patrick Shiroishi)
10. Mallet Hocket
11. So Blue The Lake
12. Dancing On Our Eyelids
13. Same River Twice
14. Armfuls Of Flowers (Feat. Steve Lacey)
15. Twin Aspens (Feat. Mount Eerie & Patrick Shiroishi)
16. Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One
17. Kyrie / About My Day
18. Shifting Shalestones
19. Appetite (with Tim Bernardes)
20. Bank On (with Portraits Of Tracy)
21. Paper Birches, Whole Scroll
22. Raven Ascends (with Patrick Shiroishi)
23. Blue Of Dreaming (with Ayoni)
24. Raised Brow
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
