Sometimes you just gotta take your sweet time, you know? This can be one harsh-ass universe to hang out in, and let’s face it: whenever some wacky internal shit is going on — or the outside world is doing its best to screw you into the ground — it can be tough to concentrate on the little things…like, I dunno: making records. Maybe that’s partly why it’s taken good ol’ husky-throated Tindersticks vocalist Stuart Staples some thirteen years to find the proper heart (and head) space to carefully out his latest new solo album, Arrhythmia — which will be released June 15 on City Slang.
Touted as “immersive and experimental,” the new effort came together over what Staples describes as “a lost year,” starting on Christmas Day of 2016 when he suddenly found himself recording the album’s glitchy hypno-funk opener “A new real.” A year later…POOF: an entire album’s worth of rhythm-conscious experiments was complete, all resulting from a compulsive desire that Stuart describes as “a growing need for each song to take a turn, to lead them into strange places, keeping the feeling or effect of the song, but only as a memory.”
The album’s artwork (pictured above) consists of a unique “three-colour woodblock print, hand-cut and hand-printed,” created from an original photo of Staples’, and the very limited vinyl edition (read: 300 copies) comes with original prints and can be pre-ordered now from City Slang.
Listen to the languid, melancholic, and faintly jazzy album track “Memories of Love” down below, and grab the full album on your choice of CD, digital, and standard vinyl editions right here. But do feel free to take your time. It ain’t going nowhere.
Arrhythmia tracklisting:
01. A real new
02. Memories of love
03. Step into the grey
04. Music for “A year in small paintings”