New Album
My band Young Man in a Hurry's first instrumental record (featuring an array of incredible guest musicians) is out now
Good morning,
My band just released a new album, exactly one year since our last one. It’s called man in suit levitating with cigarette emoji. You can listen here:
Stream for free: Spotify & Apple Music
Download / purchase: Bandcamp
The new release is an instrumental record, our first of this kind, with a conceptual title and origin. Here goes:
After we wrapped production and prepped the release for our album that was released a year ago, titled Actor Brought a Vice, I called our producer/engineer Brian Deck to share some thoughts about what we might be able to do with the extra material written and recorded by the nearly dozen guest musicians/contributors to Actor.
I suggested we mine the beautiful instrumentation and create something new. I envisioned an instrumental record that would be ideal for listening to while writing, reading, doing crosswords, emails, drinking coffee, and having conversations. Brian loved the concept and created a nearly hour-long soundscape that evokes what a collaboration between Brian Eno, Trent Reznor, Pharaoh Sanders, and Grouper might sound like. (And for the record, if you hit play on both Actor and man in suit at once, you get a Pink Floyd Dark Side of Rainbow or Flaming Lips Zaireeka-type experience).
During Actor’s production, we incorporated ideas from Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematograph to shape the songs. We approached the making of the album more like a film, with each song unfolding musically and narratively like a scene. In hindsight, the existence of man in suit as a companion soundtrack to Actor feels like kismet.
Because man in suit has no vocals, I wanted the titles to contain no words. I looked at the song titles and attached an emoji that would fit instead. After I tried to upload the songs into Spotify and Apple, I found out that they do not accept emojis as song titles, therefore I wrote out the official emoji names and used them instead. (These two albums have been years in the making – I swear I came up with the emoji concept before Drake’s Certified Lover Boy was released!)
I hope you can give it a listen during a time in your day when you’re getting things rolling, see if you like it as a soundtrack to your routines.
Stream for free: Spotify & Apple Music
Download / purchase: Bandcamp
CREDITS:
Jack Baron - sax
Tim Daisy - marimba
Brian Deck - electronics
Ben Lamar Gay - flugelhorn
Nick Harris - synth
Meyer Horn - percussion
Emma Hospelhorn - flute / voice
Teddy Rankin-Parker - cello
Sebastian Steinberg - bass
Macie Stewart - violin
David Vandervelde - drum machine + moog
John Whittemore - pedal steel
(easter egg flickers of guitars by David Vandervelde + Matthew Baron)
Arranged, Mixed and Mastered by Brian Deck at Narwhal in Chicago, 2022
Additional arrangements by David Vandervelde and Matthew Baron
Produced by Matthew Baron
Until next time,
Matt