“Chocolate Souffle” is a scorching, electrofunk standout and the second official video from Shabazz Palaces‘ The Don of Diamond Dreams, directed by David Shields and James Nugent (Marshawn Lynch: A History). The performative visual stars Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler amid a dizzying array of images set to match the songs rapid-fire lyrics, and was compiled by Shields, Nugent, and Butler (who acts as the video’s director of photography).
Recently, Butler sat down with his son Lil Tracy while in Los Angeles for Interview Magazine, where they discussed their lives, their music, and more (read the interview here).
Shabazz Palaces The Don of Diamond Dreams will be available April 17th, 2020 worldwide on Sub Pop. The album is now available for preorder from Sub Pop over here. Preorders of the LP through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on clear vinyl with a silver swirl (while supplies last). All LP preorders through the Sub Pop Mega Mart will also receive The Mushroom, a 90-page, 8x8 inch zine from the elusive author TTT, inspired by The Don of Diamond Dreams (the book will also be available for purchase at Shabazz Palaces live shows).
Meanwhile, LP preorders through select independent retailers in the U.K. and Europe will receive the limited Loser edition on sky blue vinyl (also, while supplies last). There will also be a new T-shirt design available.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever announce their second record, Sideways to New Italy, out June 5th on Sub Pop, and today present a new single + video, “She’s There.” For the five-piece, returning to Melbourne after long stretches looking out at the world through the windows of airplanes and tour vans lead to a dislocation, like being the knot in the middle of a game of tug-o-war. Sideways to New Italy sees the band interrogate their individual pasts and the places that inform them. In clicking the scattered pieces back into place, they have crafted for themselves a new totem of home to carry with them no matter where they end up.
Lead by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White, Fran Keaney, and rounded out by bassist Joe Russo and drummer Marcel Tussie, the band began grasping for something reliable after emerging from relentlessly touring their critically regarded debut Hope Downs. Rather than dwell in the displacement, Keaney was determined to channel how he was feeling into something optimistic. The album is inspired by New Italy - a village near New South Wales’s Northern Rivers – the area Tussie is from. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pit-stop of a place with fewer than 200 residents, it was founded by Venetian immigrants in the late-1800s and now serves as something of a living monument to Italians’ contribution to Australia, with replica Roman statues dotted like souvenirs on the otherwise rural landscape.
”I wanted to write songs that I could use as some sort of bedrock of hopefulness to stand on, something to be proud of,” says Keaney. “A lot of the songs on the new record are reaching forward and trying to imagine an idyll of home and love.” This is the bulk of Sideways to New Italy, which boasts love songs, and familiar voices and characters, grounding the band’s stories in their personal histories.
“She’s There” is about love and heavy delusions. Over pummeling guitar and fundamental percussion, White sings: “I should’ve done better but the time rolls on // Open the window, in the air, in a mirror, she’s there // Every time I speak her name there’s a cold shiver in my veins.” The accompanying video was directed by Nick McKinlay at Melbourne’s Coburg Motor Inn. “We tried to convey that feeling in a dream where you need to be somewhere, and you don’t really know why, but you are determined to overcome every obstacle to get there,” says the band.
[Photo credit: Peter Ryle]
“We tried to make these little nods to our friends and loved ones, to stay loyal to our old selves,” Russo explains. There’s something comforting, too, in knowing the next time they’re buffeted from stage to stage around the world, they’ll be taking the voices of their loved ones with them, following cues from their neighbors and ancestors and anyone else who responded to their newfound displacement by crafting a utopia in their own backyard.
Sideways to New Italy is now available for preorder from Sub Pop. Preorders of the LP through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America, the U.K., and Europe, will receive the limited Loser edition (while supplies last). There will also be a new T-shirt design available.
Sideways to New Italy Tracklist:
1.The Second Of The First
2. Falling Thunder
3. She’s There
4. Beautiful Steven
5. The Only One
6. Cars In Space
7. Cameo
8. Not Tonight
9. Sunglasses At The Wedding
10. The Cool Change
