Louis Cole Taps Sam Wilkes, David Binney, & Genevieve Artadi for Single 'Life'

Louis Cole releases his new single and video “Life,” the latest from his upcoming album nothing, releasing August 9th (Brainfeeder), an orchestral collaboration with the Dutch Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley. In April, Cole shared the lead single “Things Will Fall Apart.”

Beginning with a Bernard Herrmann-like string fakeout, “Life” initially lands as a cinematic symphonic number. Cole’s voice, his drum set, and Sam Wilkes’s bass all join in at breakneck speed, the high velocity something for Cole and longtime creative partner Genevieve Artadi to flit over. Eventually, David Binney (saxophone) enters the fray with an equally blistering solo. 

“I really like this song,” Cole shares about the track. “There’s not a lot of crunchy, nuclear bomb orchestra funk out there with pretty chords, and I think this track helps fill that void.”

Many still see Louis Cole foremost as a drummer. nothing, Cole's fifth album and his third on Brainfeeder, is bound to change that impression. Collaborating with the Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley, he rejected the well-trodden path to orchestral renditions of his greatest hits and instead opted to compose a suite of brand new music for this project – bigger, bolder, and more expansive than ever. Yes, there are nods to his GRAMMY-nominated 2022 album Quality Over Opinion, but 15 of the 17 tracks included here are brand new. This is jazz. This is classical music. It's got that funk. You'll hear synths and loops. You'll hear a band and live drumming. There's a world class orchestra playing. Some pieces are ultra concise, whereas the sprawling ‘Doesn’t Matter’ surpasses the ten minute mark. To Cole, jazz has always been the one place where you can really let go of all expectations – on nothing, he is putting the music where his mouth is. 

The Metropole Orkest proved to be the ideal partner for this endeavor. Over the course of its 80 year history, it has worked with legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, and Herbie Hancock – exactly the kind of border-crossing mentality Cole was looking for. Add into the equation the conductor, arranger, curator and composer Jules Buckley and this really is a triple threat of epic proportions. Buckley is a unique and rare breed of artist – a GRAMMY winner who has redefined the rulebook of orchestral music and the role of a conductor. 

Together, the ensemble embarked on a multi-date sold-out tour through Europe with the 50-piece orchestra, Cole's band, as well as guest stars like his long-time creative partner Genevieve Artadi. With the exception of a few vocal re-recordings and instrumental overdubs, everything you'll hear on nothing was culled from these ecstatic live dates. 

This is remarkable because, almost until the very end, nothing was not actually an album. It was a collaboration, a series of concerts, a cross-over between two worlds. Cole had been eagerly waiting for an opportunity like this for years. His father had been a big classical music fan and as a kid, he'd absorbed a lot of that. Once he got the call to work on a project involving an orchestra, he instantly “went hard” with the writing. The finished recording encompasses 17 tracks and stretches across more than an hour of music – and still, a few more tracks had to be left on the cutting room floor.

Cole was looking for something very specific. The challenge was to create music that had a deep emotional impact, while also being really simple and straight-forward. Already at the earliest stages of his orchestral ambitions, he had tried and failed to achieve this ideal. It would remain an obsession for years. Even when nothing was still a live project, it didn't seem like he would be able to pull it off. And then, at the very last minute, Louis decided to give it one more go. One night, he sat down at the keyboard and instantly realized: “This is it!” He struck on the ideas and themes which would become the pivotal title track of the album.

Just as with many of the orchestral pieces, there was a clear vision of the feeling and the sound he was looking for. For “Ludovici Cole Est Frigus,” he based everything on a 30-40 chord progression at a pace of “one chord at a time.” Then, he went back in with the pencil tool and Logic, finding and weaving together little melodies. It was a slow, assiduous process. But working with an outside arranger was never an option: “It was the only way I was ever going to be happy with the results. This is my pure vision. It doesn't get blended in or mixed with anyone else's.”

Having already written and arranged the suite, Cole is also very proud of the mixing, an epic task in its own right. For a full nine months, he selected the best takes, tweaked the sonic balance and adjusted frequencies until the orchestral parts really shone. “I was sad when the mixing was over,” he laughs, “Sometimes, when I'm mixing my own solo stuff, I'll feel like a song needs a little magical dust. But mixing an entire orchestra and your own rhythm section, there's so much human energy! You don't have to add any magic. It was there the whole time.”

nothing is released on 9th August 2024 via Brainfeeder Records. It will be available in two vinyl prints as well. There will be a 2LP white vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve, with black paper inners. Cover artwork by Louis Cole and design by Adam Stover. There will also be a limited edition 2LP clear/black marbled vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Upcoming European Live Dates

Louis Cole & Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley

06 Oct – Philharmonie Essen, DE

07 Oct – TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht (Ronda), NL

08 Oct – Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, NL

09 Oct – SPOT, Grote Zaal, Groningen, NL

10 Oct – Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, NL

About Louis Cole

Louis Cole is an LA singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for wearing animal prints, silly t-shirt slogans and skeleton bodysuits. Sometimes he likes to film himself playing the drums topless and sporting a plastic waffle suspended on a rope chain. These are all things that many of us would struggle to pull off with any style or panache, but Cole absolutely bosses everything he does because his off-the-wall style is matched, nay surpassed, by the sheer weight of his artistry. As Pitchfork describes Cole, “his best-known songs are maddeningly catchy, relentlessly irreverent, and nearly impossible for ordinary humans to play.” Tipped by the likes of Quincy Jones and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cole has been designated by close friend Thundercat as “one of Los Angeles's greatest musicians.” The pair have frequently written together including on the aptly titled “I Love Louis Cole” from Thundercat’s Grammy-winning album It Is What It Is.

Continuing his mission to create deep feelings through music, Cole is the figurehead of an LA jazz-adjacent scene that includes Genevieve Artadi (with whom Cole co-founded the alt pop / electrofunk band KNOWER in 2009), Sam Gendel, Sam Wilkes, Jacob Mann, Pedro Martins and more. The release follows his 2022 album Quality Over Opinion that garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork, The Guardian (“Stunning musicianship and irreverent lyrics have taken this LA jazz drummer from bedroom to stadium”), Rolling Stone, Stereogum, The Needle Drop, Clash and Libération.

His 2023 project, Some Unused Songs, included an early demo of the GRAMMY-nominated “Let It Happen” (Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals), Some Unused Songs highlights the understated, ethereal end of Cole’s musical spectrum, focusing on hazy, soft focus piano balladry, looped vocal textures and pretty chord progressions. Raw and unpolished, there’s a beguiling charm and beauty in their innocence.

Louis Cole / nothing (Brainfeeder) Tracklisting

1. Ludovici Cole Est Frigus

2. Things Will Fall Apart

3. Life

4. It All Passes

5. Cruisin’ for P

6. A Pill in the Sea

7. nothing

8. Who Cares 1

9. Who Cares 2

10. Wizard Funk

11. Weird Moments

12. High Five

13. These Dreams are Killing Me

14. Shallow Laughter : Bitches (orchestral version)

15. Let it Happen (orchestral version)

16. Doesn’t Matter

17. You Belonged

Photo credit: Louis Cole

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