Today, Deerhunter release ‘Element’, the second single to be taken from their forthcoming studio album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? out Friday 18th January via 4AD / Remote Control Records.
Described by Atlanta-based frontman Bradford Cox as “an elegy for ecology (a landscape done in toxic watercolors)”, ‘Element’ follows in the footsteps of album opener ‘Death in Midsummer’.
Deerhunter’s eighth LP Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? forgets the questions and makes up unrelated answers. It gets up, walks around, it records itself in several strategic geographic points across North America. It comes home, restructures itself and goes back to bed to avoid the bad news.
What they spend their time doing instead is reinventing their approach to microphones, the drum kit, the harpsichord, the electromechanical and synthetic sounds of keyboards. Whatever guitars are left are pure chrome, plugged straight into the mixing desk with no amplifier or vintage warmth. The result is as thrilling, haunting, and unpredictable as anything in their roughly 15-year career.
Deerhunter have made a science fiction album about the present. Is it needed right now? Is it relevant? Perhaps only to a small audience. DADA was a reaction to the horrors of war. Punk was a reaction to the slow and vacant 70’s. Hip Hop was a liberated musical culture that challenged the notions presented wholesale about the African-American experience. What is popular music today a reaction to?
1. Death in Midsummer
2. No One’s Sleeping
3. Greenpoint Gothic
4. Element
5. What Happens To People?
6. Détournement
7. Futurism
8. Tarnung
9. Plains
10. Nocturne
Deerhunter – Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?is out Friday 18th January
via 4AD / Remote Control Records.
