Dance & choreography: Lucy Suggate.
Video: Dan Tombs.
With special thanks to Norwich Arts Centre.
James Holden recently announced his third album recorded together with his newly-expanded band as James Holden & The Animal Spirits. The Animal Spirits will be released 3 November via his own Border Community label. Following the announcement and the sharing of the relentless, elastic and hypnotic polyrhythms of lead single 'Pass Through The Fire' and the joyously naive 'Each Moment Like The First', today he has shared the video for the album's title-track.
The video is directed by Dan Tombs (who also contributes visuals to Holden's expanded band live show) and stars dancer and choreographer Lucy Suggate clad in a neo-folk costume of colourful ribbons. The hypnotic video layers up multiple takes of Lucy's unique improvised interpretations of album title track The Animal Spirits, where bestial howls of wind and brass collide with the ebb and flow of Holden's tightly-wound arpeggios. James first met Lucy after she began performing her own durational solo dance show 'Pilgrim' set to the entirety of Holden's epic 2013 album The Inheritors. Holden and his drummer Tom Page have since gone on to contribute the live music for selected dance performances in a three-way improvisation, whilst Holden and Suggate's continuing shared interest in folk trance rituals should provide fertile ground for future collaboration.
Speaking of the video collaboration Holden said:
"Lucy is a part of this record even though she doesn't make a sound on it: She and I met regularly throughout the time I was writing - in dance studios & rehearsal rooms, her practising her improvised dance, me practising my improvised music to a perfect audience of one. This song became what it is in those sessions, her wildness was in the record before we made this film of it."
The Animal Spirits will be the first full length release from Holden since 2013's critically lauded The Inheritors which saw top-twenty 'Album of the Year' mentions from the likes of FACT, MOJO and Clash as well as #2 from Loud & Quiet and Resident Advisor's 'Album of the Year'. The band consists of longtime collaborators Tom Page (RocketNumberNine) and Etienne Jaumet as well as Marcus Hamblett, Liza Bec and Lascelle Gordon.
Recorded live in one room in single takes and born out of of the sheer unbridled joy of live performance, Holden’s third artist album The Animal Spirits is the momentous culmination of a radical transformation, as the former trailblazer of the early noughties computer music revolution is dramatically reborn as live musician and band leader.
Holden also recently announced his first London show since 2015 at Islington Assembly Hall on 6 December as well as his curated stage at this year's Le Guess Who? with artists including Maâlem Houssam Guinia & Band, Sex Swing, Hieroglyphic Being and Mario Batkovic.
24 авг 2024