There’s nothing to make you feel old like thinking about all of the audio formats to have reached obsolescence in your lifetime. Remember the noble CD? Remember that pastel blue, slim pocket Walkman that was the toast of the town in your elementary school days? Remember when MP3 player storage increased to 40GB? To 16GB?
All this reminiscing to say: it’s 2018, and nobody just releases an album anymore.
From the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind release (sold to the highest bidder for a cool $2 million – and currently in the hands of the US Feds), to Beyoncé’s surprise visual albums, to Apple’s nonconsensual foisting of U2’s 2014 offering onto hundreds of millions of account holders — it seems, these days, that lining up at the record store is positively passé.
Vancouver act Dil Brito has received this memo loud and clear. Their last album, 2016’s Astro, was released with very little fanfare but still caught the attentions of many a music blogger, receiving positive reviews, including in Discorder. For sophomore album Mote, they’re doing things a little differently — creating a gorgeous audiovisual teaser collage to precede the record, and hosting a city-wide listening party to mark its release this week.
At 4pm on Thursday, June 28, six local venues will play Mote over their in-house sound systems, in what the band describe as “sort of a widespread listening party, but for background music.” Like all good twists on the traditional album release format, the listening party is geared toward those in the know: “It’ll only be an event for those going into it wanting to listen — for people who happen to be there at the time, it will be everyday life.”
When Mote drops, you can can knowingly enjoy its first public airing over a beer at Off The Rail, a croissant at Liberty Bakery, or whilst browsing the shelves at The Paper Hound – the full list of venues is on the listening party event page.
But in the meantime, take a moment to soak in the band’s arresting new video for “Cut With The New Kitchen Knife.”
The song itself isn’t actually featured on the upcoming album, but “is made up of various audio tracks scattered throughout the rest of the album — rearranged, stretched, and collaged into a sort of atmospheric preview for Mote. Same goes for the lyrics; they’re fragments and snippets of the album’s songs, displaced from their original contexts, and pressed into a new mould.
“With “Cut With The New Kitchen Knife” we wanted to evoke the rapid-fire stream of thoughts that dash through one’s mind at all times, some catching hold, but most slipping away as fast as they appeared. No grand thematic gestures or sweeping statements, only minding the minute whims that make up the majority of one’s mental life, paying heed to every forgotten thought.”
Mote will be available on bandcamp as of the release time: 4pm PT, June 28. And if you want to enjoy it on that treasured old Walkman, too —watch out for the details of an upcoming limited run of CD copies.
