On June 11th, Azure Ray will release Remedy via Maria Taylor's Flower Moon Records (pre-order). The album marks the 50th release on Taylor's label, Flower Moon Records and Azure Ray's first full-length album in 10 years.
The new 10 song LP will be available on digital platforms, CD, and vinyl in three color variants with a special illustrated lyric booklet, plus limited edition bundles featuring a custom-blended "Remedy" essential oil roller.
Today the band is pleased to share the album's title track. The song debuted today at Paste Magazine and will be on all streaming services this Friday. About the song the band says, "We chose Remedy as the title track for our new record because we felt like it spoke to our collective experience of the last year (when this record was written and recorded). Many of us experienced grief, anger, isolation, and fear, and in those times when you can't find solace in your usual places, you have to look for it on the inside. In the end, you are your own source of power, your own source of hope. 'You're a remedy, or there's none.'"
Twenty years have passed since Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink released their self-titled debut record as Azure Ray. Those familiar with their work now know that it was the tragic death of Taylor's then boyfriend which abruptly transformed the duo's relationship to music - their alt-rock roots gave way to the now signature, dreamlike soundscapes that became known as "whisper core" with songs like "Sleep" & "Rise." The influence of Taylor & Fink's hushed & intimate, ASMR-like delivery combined with hypnotic atmospherics is unmistakably apparent in (and openly acknowledged by) today's chart- topping songwriters. After four full length albums, multiple cities, two hiatuses, and one pandemic, their timeless, genre-defining sound returns with a bold new fortitude with Remedy.
Produced by Brandon Walters (Lord Huron, Joshua Radin), the band worked individually through the COVID-19 pandemic across three separate recording locations in southern California to craft Azure Ray's first full length album in 10 years. With Remedy, Taylor and Fink sought to explore new structural arrangements and sonic dynamics, providing Walters with both the creative direction and freedom to expand upon the bands long-established ambient sound. Reoccurring themes of tragedy, chaos and anxiety present from the very first Azure Ray record (as a result of immense personal loss) reveal themselves with new meaning set against a world - not just their own lives - in turmoil. However impartial it sounds, the result is the best version of Azure Ray ever captured to tape (or computer). It's the same Maria and Orenda who have lulled us through devastating agony and lifted our hearts over the last two decades, unchanged in their ability to find beauty in darkness, hope in desolation.
Flower Moon Records was founded in 2016 by Maria Taylor (Azure Ray) and is now home to Taylor, Orenda Fink and Azure Ray's complete discography. FMR has also released records from Radnor & Lee (actor/director Josh Radnor and Australian pop-folk singer Ben Lee), Taylor Hollingsworth (of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band), Louis Schefano (singer-songwriter, producer/engineer), as well as reissuing O+S and Art In Manilla's catalog.
