Owen Pallett Plots Early 2014 Release for New Album, Scores 'Unearth' Ballet

BY Alex HudsonPublished Nov 15, 2013

It's been more than a year since Owen Pallett revealed that his next album would be called In Conflict, and he promised that he would stop tweeting until the LP was done. He has long since resumed tweeting, but the album still hasn't arrived. This will apparently soon change, however, since the record is slated to drop in 2014.

In an interview with The Grid TO, Pallett revealed that he completed the album earlier this year, but it was delayed to early 2014 due to mixing revisions. The tracks are split between synth compositions and trio recordings made with guitarist Matt Smith and drummer Rob Gordon.

Saying that the record had a "brutalist quality," the openly gay Pallett revealed that many of the lyrics concern his sexuality.

"For the first time, I tried to write a record that was not metaphorical or fantasy-land hippie-dippy stuff, to mine my own autobiographical treasures, as bare as that cupboard is," he said. "And in doing so, I recognized there were a lot of anti-essentialist qualities to my own state of being — like a simultaneous acceptance of my masculinity and also a revulsion to that masculinity. It's not like it's my gender-identity-disorder record, because I don't have gender-identity disorder — but it's very much a rejection-of-gender-norms kind of record."

He said that some of his transgendered fans loved the lyrics when he recently shared them online. Many of the lyrics are available to read over at the Owen Pallett fan site Alpentine, along with a tentative tracklist.

The record is apparently being mixed by returning studio collaborator Leon Taheny (Sebastien Grainger, Austra). He's been posting about the full-length on fan message boards, so more information can be dug up here.

A live version of the title track is below.

In Conflict will follow Pallett's new orchestral score for Unearth, a ballet choreographed by Robert Binet. It will be performed at Toronto's the Four Seasons Centre from November 22 to 28 as part of the National Ballet of Canada's "Innovation" series.

He told The Grid TO that it was inspired by spectralism, "which is basically about retuning instruments to follow natural harmonic order. I was so happy with this slightly more pop method of composition—of harmonic choices being a little less obtuse and a little more whimsical—and that it didn't just sound like Andrew Lloyd Webber."

This style is apparently distinct from both his usual chamber music and his studio albums.

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