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Feb 08, 2023 By Mark Redfern

British experimental post-punk five-piece Squid have announced a new album, O Monolith, and shared its first single, album opener “Swing (In a Dream),” via a music video. O Monolith is due out June 9 via Warp. Yoonha Park directed the “Swing (In a Dream)” video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

O Monolith is the band’s sophomore full-length and follow’s 2001’s debut album, Bright Green Field.

Squid features Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, and Anton Pearson. Long-time collaborator Dan Carey produced O Monolith, which was mixed by John McEntire (of Tortoise).

Squid started working on O Monolith just two weeks following Bright Green Field’s release. At the time the band was on tour, playing seated and socially distanced shows, as the pandemic was still very much a factor. On that tour they tested out some new material. “Without that tour we wouldn’t have any of these tracks,” says Judge in a press release. “People were so looking forward to seeing live music that we thought we could just play anything, even if it was unfinished. In some form or another we played about 80% of O Monolith, mostly without lyrics.”

Of the themes on the album, Borlase says: “There’s a running theme of the relation of people to the environment throughout. There are allusions to the world we became so immersed in, environmental emergency, the role of domesticity, and the displacement you feel when you’re away for a long time.”

The press release says that “Swing (In a Dream)” was “inspired by a dream Judge had about a painting called The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard.”

“In my dream, I was in the painting but it was flooded and everything was floating away,” Judge explains.

Park had this to say about directing the “Swing (In a Dream)” video: “I was interested in exploring visual ideas from Where’s Waldo, Richard Scarry, and Brueghel as a means to express anxieties about the climate crisis.”

Read our 2021 interview with Squid.

O Monolith Tracklist:

1. Swing (In a Dream)
2. Devil’s Den
3. Siphon Song
4. Undergrowth
5. The Blades
6. After The Flash
7. Green Light
8. If You Had Seen The Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away

Squid Tour Dates:

Fri. May 5 - Wrexhman, WS @ Focus Wales
Sun. June 18 - Wicklow, IE @ Beyond The Pale
Fri. June 30 - Werchter, BE @ Rock Werchter
Sun. July 2 - Lars, DE @ Fusion
Fri. July 21 - Hertfordshire, UK @ Standon Calling
Sat. July 22 - Oxfordshire, UK @ Truck Festival
Wed. Aug. 16 - Portugal, ES @ Paredes De Coura
Fri. Aug. 18 - Brecon, WS @ Green Man
Sat. Sep. 2 - Vlieland, NL @ Into The Great Wide Open
Fri. Oct. 13 - Bristol, UK @ SWX
Sat. Oct. 14 - Bristol, UK @ SWX
Mon. Oct. 16 - Birmingham, UK @ Town Hall
Tue. Oct. 17 - Leeds, UK @ O2 Academy Leeds
Thu. Oct. 19 - Manchester, UK @ New Century
Sat. Oct. 21 - Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland Ballroom
Sun. Oct. 22 - Newcastle, UK @ Boiler Shop
Wed. Nov. 1 - London, UK @ Troxy

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