Dirty Projectors have announced their new album, Song of the Earth, out April 4th via Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in the US and Transgressive in the UK.
Song of the Earth started as “a song cycle” that frontman David Longstreth composed for the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e. Following its 2021 premiere at Hamburg, Germany’s Elbphilharmonie, Longstreth staged performances of the work-in-progress in Amsterdam, London, and Los Angeles.
The full project was recorded with s t a r g a z e in those same cities, featuring contributions from Mount Eerie, Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells. Pre-orders are ongoing.
“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,” Longstreth said in a statement. “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.”
As a preview, Dirty Projectors have shared “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One,” Longstreth’s reading of Wallace-Wells’ bestseller of the same name. The visualizer was shot by Longstreth’s older brother, Jake, and features drone footage of California’s Lake Tulare. Check it out below.
Dirty Projectors’ last project was 2020’s 5EPs, a compilation of their year-long 5EPs series.
Song of the Earth Artwork:
Song of the Earth Tracklist:
01. Summer Light
02. Gimme Bread
03. At Home
04. Circled in Purple
05. Our Green Garden
06 Walk the Edge (with Anastasia Coope)
07 Opposable Thumb
08 More Mania
09 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 and 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