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Jan 29, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Guy Lowndes These New Puritans

These New Puritans (brothers Jack and George Barnett) have announced a new album, The Cut [2016-2019], and shared its first single and opening track, “The Mirage,” which features a children’s choir. The Cut [2016-2019] is due out February 14 via Infectious Music/BMG and is a companion album to 2019’s Inside the Rose, which was the band’s first album in six years. The Cut [2016-2019] collects material initially recorded for the Inside the Rose sessions and also includes some remixes and alternate versions. Check out “The Mirage” below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

In a press release Jack Barnett had this to say about the album: “A lot of these songs were started during the Inside the Rose sessions, but we didn’t have the right momentum to finish them. So we came back to them and turned them inside out.”

“The Mirage” features the Rushmore Primary School Choir from Hackney, London.

Jack had this to say about the song: “George’s original idea was to get a group of kids to shout abuse, things like ‘Are you awake? Do you still exist? Hello yuppies, hello cunts,’ but the idea evolved away from that, maybe for the best.”

George adds: “The process of recording the choir was like our own Opportunity Knocks, I think the children thought ‘This could be IT. Hollywood here we come,’ but we didn’t discard any of their voices, we wanted the realness and purity. We intentionally sought them: went to Hackney - didn’t go for West London’s finest, ‘I can hit any E you like’ professional type stuff. ‘The Mirage’ is strange in that it’s something Jack wrote when we were 16.”

The Cut [2016-2019] will be available digitally, but also via a limited edition CD format that features “hand-cut slit fabric artwork.”

“I wanted to get across in a more literal way what Inside the Rose is,” says George about the artwork. “The slit through fabric - brutality, fragility, beauty, life, birth, sex, death. It’s unsanitized. This sounds quite wanky, but ‘tis the truth my dear, hahah.”

UK fans can catch These New Puritans performing a special one-off show at London’s Barbican on February 23. The performance is dubbed The Blue Door and will feature a 16-person band and a full stage show, including film projections and a lighting installation. The press release promises “the performance will explore themes of sex, death, transcendence, and love at the end of the human age.”

The Cut [2016-2019] Tracklist:

1. The Mirage
2. Infinity Vibraphones Orchestral Mirror
3. Beyond Black Suns [Scintii remix]
4. If I Were You [Love At The End of the Human Age]
5. Infinity Vibraphones Postlude
6. Angels Come Down
7. Anti-Gravity Piano Mirror
8. A-R-P Piano Mirror
9. Beyond Black Suns [Andrew Liles Ambient Mix]
10. New Fire
11. Sphinx In Pieces
12. Inside the Rose Orchestral Mirror
13. Where the Trees Are On Fire [Maenad Veyl Remix]
14. Inside the Rose #MeToo mix [Andrew Liles]
15. Angels Brass Canon
16. Where the Trees Are on Fire Phone Note
17. Into the Trees [Ossian Brown Recomposition]
18. Intro Tape (Live 2019) Part 1
19. Intro Tape (Live 2019) Part 2

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