RY X will release his eagerly anticipated third studio album ‘Blood Moon’ on June 17th on digital and streaming, while physical formats will follow on August 26th. The album announcement is amplified as he today shares his brand new single ‘Your Love’, together with an accompanying video. His previous albums, ‘Dawn’ and ‘Unfurl’, cast a hypnotic allure on fans with their mix of nuanced, introspective emotions, idiosyncratic production flourishes, and dramatic intensity. Those traits have led to RY X amassing over 700 million streams, selling out shows the world over, and earning constant critical adoration.
‘Your Love’ heightens anticipation for the album and follows the recent ‘Let You Go’, which prompted Wonderland to state, “The track flows through the body and brings you instantly into a state of zen.” That meditative quality also floats elegiacally through ‘Your Love’, its sparse rhythm feeling like the steady pulse of a heartbeat. The production is further adorned with graceful instrumentation, which is intricately detailed yet reserved enough to provide the space to allow RY X’s voice to evolve from a whisper to a maximal falsetto.
‘Your Love’ was produced and written by RY X, alongside co-writer Frank Wiedemann, his partner in their Howling project.
RY X says, “‘Your Love’ was written about a connection carrying a breadth of intimacy and challenge as it swirled itself in repetition. A love with gravity that bled into the beauty and struggle of both, and one that wasn’t aligned to be. A cry of the heart in essence.
It’s rare for me that a song almost writes itself, comes about into form all at once. This one did all in one afternoon. The production formed in the process of experimentation with drum machines and organic instruments and how they can blend together.”
The ‘Your Love’ visual depicts that emotion within the moving metaphor of a couple’s creative choreography, which is set to a beautifully shot backdrop of the austere natural beauty of Iceland. The video was directed and conceptualised by RY X, performed and choreographed by Imre van Opstal and Marne van Opstal, with Benjamin Hardman credited as Director of Photography.
Watch the video for ‘Your Love’ BELOW:
‘Blood Moon’ is an album that sees RY X very organically breaking new ground while maintaining the authenticity of his artistry. It ventures boldly into uncharted territory, with new palettes of sounds and fresh production flourishes, but retains the raw honesty that has established a powerful connection with an international fanbase. It was recorded in Topanga, deep in the Santa Monica mountains. Embracing the beauty of the location, he’d work by day and by night, breaking only to explore the mountains at sunset. It was also a time of creative solitude as RY X wrote, produced and played almost everything that features on the album.
Thematically, ‘Blood Moon’ is united by RY X’s reflections on intimate relationships which he translates into wider conversations on spirit, the divine feminine, and the exploration of self. Growth and learning are recurring motifs within an incredibly personal collection of songs.
He adds, “I think there’s a whole universe within the dynamic of your relationship with a lover. There are many of those very honest, raw conversations on this record. It’s not all about the same person, but it is about the same feelings, the same concepts.”
The Icelandic sonic auteur Ólafur Arnalds collaborated on ‘Colorblind’, a swirling blend of haunting melancholia, beautifully ethereal vocal harmonies and skittish beats which they wrote together while RY X was filming in Iceland. Other contributors include Eric Price (from RY X’s live band), Rampa (artist and co-founder of Keinemusik), the acclaimed post-classicist artist Niklas Paschburg, and Gene Evaro Jnr., who released his debut album last year. It was then mixed by Nathan Boddy (James Blake, London Grammar).
RY X will tour extensively throughout the summer, with European headline dates commencing in July. Details of a rescheduled London show will be announced soon.
‘Blood Moon’ tracklist:
1. ‘Let You Go’
2. ‘A Thousand Knives’
3. ‘Colorblind’ featuring Ólafur Arnalds
4. ‘Borderline’
5. ‘Your Love’
6. ‘Crawl’
7. ‘Spiral’
8. ‘Dark Room Dancing’
9. ‘Hurt’
10. ‘Come Back’
11. ‘Visions’
12. ‘All In Words’
13. ‘Trouble’
Be the first to comment