Moses Sumney has today announced his three-track EP Black In Deep Red, 2014 will see release on 10 August, via Jagjaguwar. You can stream the track ‘Rank & File’ from it below on Gigwise now.
The track features a mesmerising soundscape: samples, loops, vocals that lean on bluegrass, yet soar into future with tone and emotion that’ll draw goosebumps. The sonics are ominous and convey fear, which comes as no surprise when thinking about the topic of the track.
The below quote from Moses Sumney about the EP as a whole is very relevant to 'Rank & File':
“Black in Deep Red, 2014 was ignited by the first and last time I attended a protest. It was in the fall of 2014, after a grand jury decided not to charge the offending officer in the Mike Brown murder, delivering the verdict just in time for them to get home for Thanksgiving.
"I felt like a camouflaged outsider at the protest, like an anthropologist performing a study amongst his own kind. I took to the mountains soon after that and wrote these songs, wondering if power was a transferable device that could change hands through the vocalizing of unrest.
The EP release follows May’s Make Out In My Car that featured Sufjan Stevens and James Blake, to name a couple.
Last month, Moses Sumney made headlines after cancelling his Montreal Jazz Festival festival performance over the festival's defense of the musical theatre production SLAV.
The play drew huge protests for being about slavery and involving a predominantly white cast. In an open letter to the festival Sumney said: "There's nothing wrong with white people wanting to make work about slavery. The way it is executed in this show, however, is appropriative, hegemonic, and neo-imperialistic."
Ill-content to leave fans in the lurch after cancelling last minute, though, he moved venues, putting on a DIY show on 3 July. Gigwise’s Marie-Ange was in attendance and praised the show as a symbol of resistance. A day later the festival pulled SLAV from the programme.
Sumney has had a strong summer playing Field Day, Governor's Ball, Pitchfork and Bonnaroo Music Festivals . He has a European tour still to come. UK dates are below:
20 Sep - Leeds, UK @ Howard Assembly Room
21 Sep - London, UK @ Royal Festival Hall
Black in Deep Red, 2014 tracklist:
1. Power?
2. Call-to-Arms
3. Rank & File
