Sufjan Stevens & Angelo de Augustine – A Beginner’s Mind // Asthmatic kitty records// (Released 15th October)

Description

£19.99 – 1xLP, Limited Edition, Indies Exclusive Green Vinyl

£19.99 – 1xLP, Standard Edition

A Beginner’s Mind began when the two musicians and Asthmatic Kitty labelmates decamped to a friend’s cabin in upstate New York for a monthlong songwriting sabbatical. Watching a movie to unwind after each day’s work, they soon found their songs reflecting the films and began investigating this connection in earnest.

The resulting album is 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films-highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between. They wrote in tandem-one person writing a verse, the other a chorus, churning out chord progressions and lyrics willy-nilly, often finishing each other’s sentences in the process. Rigorous editing and rewriting ensued. The results are less a “cinematic exegesis” and more a “rambling philosophical inquiry” that allows the songs to free-associate at will. Plot-points, scene summaries, and leading characters are often displaced by esoteric interpolations that ask the bigger question: what does it mean to be human in a broken world?

Tracklisting:

Reach out 3:43
Lady Macbeth in chains 3:42
Back to oz 4:25
The pillar of souls 4:04
You give death a bad name 5:11
Beginner’s mind 2:36
Olympus 3:07
Murder and crime 3:43
(This is) the thing 3:13
It’s your own body and mind 2:27
Lost in the world 3:20
Fictional california 3:03
Cimmerian shade 5:01
Lacrimae 2:05