Leifur James will release his third album on Night Time Stories in November.
Magic Seeds is a rebirth of sorts, and his most collaborative and personal offering yet. “It feels more vulnerable and open,” James says. “I’ve never felt like being front and centre, but I found myself there on this record.”
At the origin of the recording of the album, James went into the studio in London with drummer Leo Taylor (from Floating Points Ensemble), violinist Raven Bush (Speakers Corner Quartet), and producer/engineer Oli Bayston.
“It was just the four of us in a room for one day, improvising and enjoying the thrill of playing together,” James says. “I wanted that feeling of a real room of musicians, nothing too sampled—like the old records.”
He was thinking of the Talk Talk record Spirit of Eden, “the way they wrote it for months in the dark and then heavily edited it afterwards,” James adds. “I wanted that feeling of a real room of musicians, rather than using samples.”
Relocating to Lisbon, Portugal in 2022, James embarked on the mammoth task of editing those sessions down, rearranging everything over the following two years.
Alone in a new place, he could focus on rearranging everything “with laser-like precision.”
The live recordings, as well as the analogue synthesisers, “lends the album an organic pulse and rhythmic looseness,” we’re told, “while its cavernous atmosphere and grainy layers call to mind trip-hop giants Massive Attack and hip-hop producer Madlib.”
Alongside the announcement, James has shared “Smoke in the Air.”
We’re told that the album illuminates James as a composer who is “capable of taking listeners to great highs and plunging them into inky depths; moody and moving music that feels equally airy, as if it was composed outside, under the moon.”
James released A Louder Silence, his debut album, in 2018, and Angel in Disguise followed in 2020.
Tracklisting
01. Smoke In The Air
02. Magic Seeds
03. Measure Of Mind
04. Euphoria
05. Forest Of Love
06. Inner Child
07. Lay
08. Wake Up Spring
09. Room 68
10. Alive
Magic Seeds LP is scheduled for November 8 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Smoke In The Air” in full via the player below and pre-order here.
