Throughout a storied career as a musician, producer and engineer, Daniel Lanois helped push the ambient genre forward into celestial new territory as Brian Eno’s foremost protégé; he has recorded landmark albums for U2 and Peter Gabriel and helped to revitalise the sonic dimensions of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. But Flesh And Machine, out through Anti – on 27th October, marks the first time Lanois has truly deployed every sonic weapon in his arsenal in hopes that it may reach the position of ‘headphone album of the year’.
You can now hear a new track off the album, by watching a video that was premiered by the Los Angeles Times. The song “Iceland” finds a stately simple melody evolving into something absolutely haunting and transcendent. The sound and building structure of the track are greatly reminiscent of Lanois’ groundbreaking work with Brian Eno.
The song also comes with an appropriately evocative film created by Jim McKay who has directed episodes of shows The Wire, Treme and Big Love. He explains his unique vision below: “The invitation to find or create images to accompany one of Daniel Lanois’ songs was exciting for me. I was especially drawn to the track, ‘Iceland,’ firstly because it’s absolutely beautiful but also because of its deceptive simplicity.”
Daniel Lanois on the video: “What a wonderful surprise to have my music elevated by this beautiful Jim McKay film. A striking one camera, one shot, no edits journey through the imagination of a young girl dancing in a forest setting. The origin of this music was a one take performance by Brian Blade on drums with me on piano. Jim’s one shot reflects this perfectly. My sound manipulations are then visually echoed by the visual manipulations added to Jim’s work by my colorist friend, Adam Vollick. A sweet little film with a big emotional result. Thank you, Jim.”
“Iceland” exemplifies the beautiful and elegiac side of Flesh and Machine and presents a dramatic counterpoint to the propulsive soundscape of “Opera” previously glimpsed in a stunning performance video.
WATCH ICELAND VIDEO BELOW:
Flesh And Machine was initially conceived as an ambient album, and tracks such as ‘Forest City’ take the classic Brian Eno albums that he worked on Ambient 4: On Land (1982) and Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks (1983) as a wonderful bedrock to stand on to see the sonic future. The album bristles with new ideas. He spent countless hours processing an array of source sounds – steel and electric guitar, piano and human voice to create the sound palette that is Flesh and Machine.
Daniel Lanois is still raising that spirit of music and still opening up doors to the unknown.
Flesh and Machine Track Listing:
1. Rocco
2. The End
3. Sioux Lookout
4. Tamboura Jah
5. Two Bushas
6. Space Love
7. Iceland
8. My First Love
9. Opera
10. Aquatic
11. Forest City
In anticipation of this forthcoming release Lanois is proud to team-up with Robert Milazzo of The Modern School of Film to present a breakthrough union of moving-media, sonic design and social architecture. Lanois and The Modern School of Film have enlisted a select number of established international filmmakers to create visual works inspired by the new sonic frontier surveyed in Flesh and Machine.
Filmmakers Atom Egoyan ‘The Sweet Hereafter’, Mary Harron ‘American Psycho’, Kevin Drew of ‘Broken Social Scene’, Jim McKay ‘Breaking Bad’ and Ondi Timoner ‘Dig!’ have all contributed short-form works to this series along with more filmmakers to be announced soon.
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