James Krivchenia’s A New Found Relaxation
Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia is set to release his altest album, Getintothis’ Jason SImon lets us know what to expect.
James Krivchenia, drummer of Big Thief is announcing his new album, A New Found Relaxation, out on the June 26.
Three tracks – Temptation Reduced, The Eternal Spectator and Touched By An Angel have just been released ahead of the album.
Outside of Big Thief fame, Krivchenia’s solo work is multi-faceted and abstract. His previous ambient releases focus on deconstructing and rebuilding the auditory world around him.
A New Found Relaxation is a continuation of this. His method of transforming found material into abstract crystals that still shine with their original glow can still be heard on his latest tracks.
This album follows his previous solo work, 2018’s No Comment, which dealt with staggeringly heavy concepts.
The experimental project used audio footage of gun skirmishes from wars around the world which made for an anxiety-inducing listen.
Realized in spring of 2019 in the tiny town in New Mexico where he was living at the time, A New Found Relaxation is made from hundreds of tiny fragments of internet spa radio, ASMR YouTube holes, field recordings and forgotten muzak, processed through Krivchenia’s magic box of extreme manipulations.
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These sounds were then transformed into songs with an abstract balance between the surface-level calm of spa radio and the frantic effects of the hyperreal production.
The mix highlights the mania of a globalised, overwhelming world in the internet age, but also the tenuousness of our life in unprecedented isolation.
Krivchenia says: “It’s my attempt at fast slow-paced music. I was trying to take mundane or banal ‘beauty’ and process it – in the literal musical realm but also within myself.”
“To me, the smooth chilled out background music is often the most terrifying. Part of immersion for me also contains a sense of confusion and that’s the kind of immersion I’m going for.”
Stream three tracks from the album below.
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