Post-Rock-Chamber-Pop's Balmorhea Release 'New Conditions' Single

"New Conditions", a key composition from Balmorhea's second album for Deutsche Grammophon, will be released as a single on May 10, 2023. It offers an irresistible taste of the music of Pendant World, a collection of thirteen tracks created by Balmorhea's co-founders Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller set to come out on June 16.

Like the group's recently issued single "Step Step Step", "New Conditions" is accompanied by a companion video made by Odd.One. Its monochrome visuals, familiar yet strange, suggest a universe in a state of constant flux, always changing, never rigid.

Rob Lowe notes that "New Conditions" marks Pendant World's furthest point of departure from the core Balmorhea sound. "I'm not really sure how to describe it," he says. "That track is definitely new territory for us, even though it relates to the whole album and the wider world of Balmorhea. 'New Conditions' felt like the right title for what that represents for us: something fresh and different."

The Texan duo found inspiration for the track in an interview given in 2017 by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto to Kennedy Magazine. "In response to the question 'What does this time look like in your daily practice?'," they recall, "he answered: 'I do simple things almost every day. I don't go out so much, now, but I try to look at the clouds. The moon. I try to listen to the wind every day. Every hour, hopefully, I do something unusual: I walk very slowly inside the house, on the street ... Walking slow, it's a very different experience. It's a simple thing to do. You get the different sense. The streets you see every day look different. There are a lot of things you don't see. By walking slowly comes to you, the input.' 'New Conditions' and the accompanying film were made in this spirit."

Pendant World, named for a line from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, grew from Lowe and Muller's desire to reunite with friends and perform with like-minded musicians after a long break.

Joining Balmorhea on the new album are regular collaborators violinist/vocalist Aisha Burns and cellist Clarice Jensen, and an equally distinguished line-up of guest artists, including experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor saxophone and flute, clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff, percussionist Jason Treuting and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern.

Pendant World dissolves hard genre boundaries to reveal a spectrum of musical styles, instrumental textures, propulsive rhythms and multihued tonal colours. The music was recorded in ideal conditions in rural Vermont in collaboration with three-time Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens).

Balmorhea - upcoming tour dates:

7 July - CSO ADA, Ankara · 8 July - Maximum Uniq Açıkhava, Istanbul
12 July - Silent Green, Berlin · 14 July - Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican, London

Photo © Donavon Smallwood