GORDI ANNOUNCES OUR TWO SKINS ALBUM + SHARES NEW SONG AND VIDEO FOR ‘AEROPLANE BATHROOM’

Our Two Skins will be released on June 19 via Liberation Records (Jagjaguwar internationally).

The writing of the album began after a nervous breakdown while pacing around an Etihad flight from Australia to Europe in late 2017.  Having finally completed her medical exams after years of painstaking study, and against the backdrop of Australia’s marriage equality vote, Sophie was grappling with a new truth in her identity. That internal struggle, which was compounded by her Catholic upbringing, led to an isolated internal state.  It was a turbulent, unsettled and isolating period. Our Two Skins chronicles this intense chapter of Gordi’s life, as she renegotiated who she was and how she fit into the world.

This stark sense of isolation and upheaval permeates the album and comes to the fore on ‘Aeroplane Bathroom’, which was penned in 20 anxious minutes whilst pacing around the stern of an Etihad flight from Australia to Europe.

Later, upon arriving home, Gordi recorded a single vocal to an out-of-tune piano. At her parents’ farm in Canowindra, with the help of Bon Iver production duo Chris Messina and Zach Hanson, these original parts were teased out to add soundscape. If you listen closely to the track, you can hear elements from the farm shining through – gates and chains, creaking doors, and a revving Subaru Impreza. This stripped back approach to the recording process was applied to the album in its entirety with all ten tracks laid down at the farm, using minimal equipment.  Eager to bottle the isolation and emptiness she felt during that period of rediscovery, the remoteness of Canowindra proved the right location.

Messina and Hanson flew from Wisconsin to Canowindra with several cases of gear and set up a temporary studio in an old cottage on the farm, dialing into the isolation of the songs’ subject matter; a musical quarantine. There was no phone reception, no wi-fi, and a tin outhouse located in a nearby shearing shed.

‘Aeroplane Bathroom’ arrives complete with a cinematic video from Kasimir Burgess, appropriately filmed across two aeroplane graveyards outside Bangkok. “To get in we had to negotiate with the squatters that live there,” says Gordi. “It was one-million-percent humidity and there were wild dogs and a small crocodile so any fear in my eyes is genuine.”

It follows the release of the album’s first official single ‘Sandwiches’, which was swiftly added to triple j and has seen strong support from both Apple Music and Spotify. Earlier this year, Gordi also released ‘The Cost’, (a standalone track in support of the Australian Bushfire Relief and regional drought efforts), and ‘INDIFFERENT’ (a haunting collaboration with Willaris. K).

Gordi’s previous full-length offering, 2017’s J Award-nominated Reservoir, established her place as an in-demand collaborator, seeing her release music with Troye Sivan, and touring with Sam Smith, Julien Baker and Fleet Foxes. In addition to sold-out local tours, Gordi has performed at Eaux Claires, Big Red Machine, and PEOPLE Festival amongst others, working with a dream list of like-minded artists, including Feist, Damien Rice, Alex Somers and Justin Vernon.

Gordi is due to tour the US with Of Monsters And Men later this year, keep an eye on  www.gordimusic.com for the full run of dates. Australian and further international tour dates will be announced as soon as is appropriate, in light of current COVID-19 advice.

Our Two Skins will be released on June 19 via Liberation Records for Australia/ New Zealand and Jagjaguwar for the rest of the world.