Grails have detailed their first new album in six years. The Portland instrumental outfit will share Anches En Maat on September 22 via Temporary Residence.
The follow-up to 2017's Chalice Hymnal, Anches En Maat is also the first Grails album recorded with all members in the studio together since 2008's Doomsdayer's Holiday.
Founding members Alex Hall and Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons) joined Jesse Bates, Ilyas Ahmed, and AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure) in Atlanta, GA, to record the seven-song set, characterized as a meld of "melted 1980s softcore and daytime soap opera soundtracks, cosmic minimalism, aching Westerns, melancholy electronic pulses, and massive soul-disco strings."
You can hear what that sounds like with album opener "Sad & Illegal," whose cinematic guitars and strings you can luxuriate in below.
"We all have a bizarre lust to try and not sound like ourselves at times… which is usually the first and last thing you fail at. But with 'Sad & Illegal' maybe Grails got a little closer to getting outside ourselves," drummer Amos shared of the song.
"There are emotions represented in film music that just aren't things one experiences in a normal day. Like the immense suspicion baked into music from a repelling scene in a diamond heist film... the way the hi-hat simmers, the filthy fretless bass and an out of tune piano that skitters around the beat. This is the dimension where 'Sad & Illegal' was born in… out of a sense-memory we never got to experience, but that film music told us was real."
Pre-order Anches En Maat.
Anches En Maat:
1. Sad & Illegal
2. Viktor's Night Map
3. Sisters of Bilitis
4. Pool of Gems
5. Evening Song
6. Black Rain
7. Anches En Maat
The follow-up to 2017's Chalice Hymnal, Anches En Maat is also the first Grails album recorded with all members in the studio together since 2008's Doomsdayer's Holiday.
Founding members Alex Hall and Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons) joined Jesse Bates, Ilyas Ahmed, and AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure) in Atlanta, GA, to record the seven-song set, characterized as a meld of "melted 1980s softcore and daytime soap opera soundtracks, cosmic minimalism, aching Westerns, melancholy electronic pulses, and massive soul-disco strings."
You can hear what that sounds like with album opener "Sad & Illegal," whose cinematic guitars and strings you can luxuriate in below.
"We all have a bizarre lust to try and not sound like ourselves at times… which is usually the first and last thing you fail at. But with 'Sad & Illegal' maybe Grails got a little closer to getting outside ourselves," drummer Amos shared of the song.
"There are emotions represented in film music that just aren't things one experiences in a normal day. Like the immense suspicion baked into music from a repelling scene in a diamond heist film... the way the hi-hat simmers, the filthy fretless bass and an out of tune piano that skitters around the beat. This is the dimension where 'Sad & Illegal' was born in… out of a sense-memory we never got to experience, but that film music told us was real."
Pre-order Anches En Maat.
Anches En Maat:
1. Sad & Illegal
2. Viktor's Night Map
3. Sisters of Bilitis
4. Pool of Gems
5. Evening Song
6. Black Rain
7. Anches En Maat
