Cold Specks Announces New LP; W Magazine Debuts Title Track

Today, Ladan Hussein, known on stage as Cold Specks, announced her highly anticipated new album Fool's Paradise, set to release on September 22 via Arts & Crafts. The announce via W Magazine includes the premiere of album's sultry title track "Fool's Paradise."

The single "Fool's Paradise" shows Hussein singing in Somali for the first time, calling out to a semi-mythical Somali queen of female empowerment named Araweelo, who was rumoured to castrate male prisoners. Like Cold Specks, Araweelo is a polarizing dream, always dangling between varying abstracts. Within the track is a Somali idiom, "kala garo naftaada iyo laftaada," which translates in English to "understand the difference between your bones and your soul."

LISTEN TO AND SHARE "FOOL'S PARADISE" HERE

"Fool's Paradise" arrives on the heels of the recent single "Wild Card". Quickly receiving accolades from The New York Times, Indie Shuffle, Consequence of Sound and more, both tracks were produced and mixed by long-time collaborator Jim Anderson at Easy Life Studio in Toronto, with Tim Kingsbury of Arcade Fire performing bass.

Intimately exploring her identity as a Somali-Canadian woman, Fool's Paradise is Hussein's most personal work yet. The album encapsulates the naturalness of existing during difficult times. Hussein recently learned about her family's former life in Somalia - including her father's musical legacy. During her 2015 Neuroplasticity tour in Australia, Ladan discovered that her father helped form a famous band in the 1970s called Iftin. During the writing process, she dug deep into grainy VHS recordings found online of Iftin, and of many other Somali musicians, songs and videos that had survived war. "My parents never talked much about life in Mogadishu growing up" Hussein explains, "the war split up my family, scattered them around the world, left many missing, and those that made it were forever changed." Saling her way to shore after grueling trial, error, and musical acclaim - Fool's Paradise is the sound of finding home, identity, and self-love.

Cold Specks is set to launch the FOOL'S PARADISE WORLD TOUR 2017 with an extensive European tour and a slew of North American dates announced today with stops in NYC, Los Angeles, DC, Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville and more! Full dates can be found below. In 2015, Hussein followed her critically acclaimed debut LP, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion, with the release ofNeuroplasticity, both of which were nominated for the Polaris Music Prizewith the former also earning a JUNO Award nomination for Breakthrough Artist Of The Year. Between albums, when Cold Specks wasn't writing or touring, Hussein was pinballing between asks from an enviable roll call of collaborators. She was asked to work on Moby's album Innocents and was invited to play with Joni Mitchell at the singer's 70th birthday alongside the likes of Herbie Hancock. She contributed to Ambrose Akinmusire's 2014 record for Blue Note and Swans' 2014 album To Be Kind. These last two partnerships left a significant impression on Neuroplasticity resulting in the indomitable Swans founder Michael Gira and Akinmusire to both appear on the album. Most recently, she has worked with Massive Attack on the track "Dead Editors" featuring Roots Manuva from their 2016 Ritual Spirit EP.

To post a comment, you must register and login.