Last year, Beirut released the song “Caspian Tiger” and revealed his first tour in six years. Those shows are still coming up, but in the meantime Zach Condon is announcing A Study Of Losses, an album commissioned by the Swedish circus Kompani Giraff.
A Study Of Losses is an interpretation of German author Judith Schalansky's 2018 novel Verzeichnis Einiger Verluste (which translates to An Inventory Of Losses). The lead single "Guericke's Unicorn" is out now. About it, Condon said:
Guericke’s unicorn is a supposed reconstruction of a fossil unicorn which was actually created from the bones of a bunch of different animals like the wooly mammoth and a narwhal. It’s worth looking up the image.
I’ve always been fascinated by these kinds of bizarre chapters and odd side notes of history, and I wanted to reflect the unorthodox / eccentric madness of that ‘unicorn’ in a more playful song that is somewhat disjointed from the rest of the album. I think my music can have that disjointed / chaotic tendency in general, but with the whole album otherwise being somewhat uniformly baroque inspired, "Guericke’s Unicorn" really makes for an outlier on this record, having its origin in an old modular synth experiment of mine.
Condon wrote and recorded the record in Berlin, Germany and Stokmarknes, Norway. "When I was first approached about writing a soundtrack for a circus, a certain amount of ‘Elephant Gun’ era trauma initially came rushing up,” Condon continued. “I had been pigeonholed for years as a whimsical circus waif, full of sepia-toned images of penny farthings and perhaps lion tamers with handlebar moustaches. It couldn’t have been further from how I pictured the music I was making. Ironic then, that I found Kompani Giraff’s project so enticing."
A Study Of Losses includes "Caspian Tiger" and features string quartets and arrangements from cellist and No No No collaborator Clarice Jensen. Watch the "Guericke's Unicorn" music video below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Disappearances And Losses"
02 "Forest Encyclopedia"
03 "Oceanus Procellarum"
04 "Villa Sacchetti"
05 "Mare Crisium"
06 "Garbo’s Face"
07 "Mare Imbrium"
08 "Tuanaki Atoll"
09 "Mare Serenitatis"
10 "Guericke’s Unicorn"
11 "Mare Humorum"
12 "Sappho’s Poems"
13 "Ghost Train"
14 "Caspian Tiger"
15 "Mani’s 7 Books"
16 "Moon Voyager"
17 "Mare Nectaris"
18 "Mare Tranquillitatis"
A Study Of Losses is out 4/18 via his own Pompeii. Pre-order it here.
