• News

• All

Feb 21, 2018 Simian Mobile Disco By Christopher Roberts

Find It At: {article-find} {name} {/article-find}

British electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco (James Ford and Jas Shaw) have announced a new album, Murmurations, and shared a video for its first single, “Caught In a Wave.” Murmurations is due out May 11 via Wichita. The album features London’s The Deep Throat Choir. Kiani Del Valle directed the “Caught In a Wave” video, which is the first of three interconnected videos for the album. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as their upcoming tour dates.

A press release describes the album as such: “Murmurations is as perfectly pitched for headphones as it is for clubs, named after giant cloud formations of starlings and themed around the stunning emergent behaviors that appear within them.”

Del Valle had this to say about the three videos in a press release: “After [creative directors] Kazim [Rashid] and Carri [Munden] shared their concept of emergent behavior and communal techno-experience with me, I dreamt of a female character that moves through different emotional stages while she travels across environments between real life and the subconscious. This female character becomes the umbilical cord of the three chapters, spiraling in and out of first-person narratives. Each chapter explores three different forms of movement so as to reflect the various states of the psyche. Playing with the idea of murmurations, and communal frequencies leading us to psychological discoveries of oneself, these cycles ultimately remind us that endings are hidden beginnings taking us elsewhere. For ‘Caught In a Wave’ I wanted to explore the idea of chaos. I’ve been fascinated by mosh pits and have always been deeply moved by all the codes in its’ culture and the science of adrenaline and endorphin release. From pogo to slam dance and hardcore dancing, what mainly excites my eye is the physical impact and the sense of trust and commitment between strangers. Juxtaposing a mosh pit with a choreographed contemporary dance routine, I wanted to create an atmosphere for these two things to not only meet but also to elevate each other. The glue between the two also being the underlying friendship/love story where both characters are continually in the midst of a turning point.”

The Deep Throat Choir’s director Luisa Gerstein had this to say in a press release: “Working with James and Jas has been a total pleasure. It’s been exciting to combine our use of raw female voices with the electronic sensibilities of SMD - the conversation between the two, how they have informed and responded to one another. The result feels like something warm, rippling and kaleidoscopic!”

Murmurations Tracklist:

1. Boids
2. Caught In a Wave
3. We Go
4. Gliders
5. Hey Sister
6. A Perfect Swarm
7. Defender
8. V Formation
9. Murmuration

Simian Mobile Disco Tour Dates:

4/04 - London, UK @ The Barbican Centre (Tickets), Presenting Murmurations with The Deep Throat Choir
6/07 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
6/08 - Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
6/14 - Seattle, WA @ Neptune
6/15 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
6/16 - Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.