Gordi previews debut album with cinematic new single "Heaven I Know"

Reservoir has been written by Gordi and co-produced with Tim Anderson (Solange, Banks), Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey), and Alex Somers (Sigur Rós). It was recorded across five locations in three continents - Wisconsin, Los Angeles, New York City, Reykjavík, and Sydney - and follows last year's Clever Disguise EP.

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First cut "Heaven I Know" - produced only by Gordi, aka Sophie Payten - is buoyed by sparkling keys and shimmering samples, with brass bursts and gravity-sodden chords forming a firm base for Payten's own voice to soar towards oblivion. Rhythms are born from chants that serve as a sole constant for much of the five minutes, with the track warping into grander shapes. Bon Iver-y vocoder saunters into earshot, distortion explodes, and drums rattle as the track builds towards a heart-stopping climax.

"The name Reservoir, it's that thing that you can't describe, that space that anxious people would probably live their life in," explains Payten. "It's actually an expression my friend and I use. If I'm really down one day, I’ll say, 'oh I'm a bit in the reservoir today'. You're mulling everything over, and you're sitting in all these thoughts and feelings. In order to be able to write a song I need to go to that place, but I couldn't live a functional life if I spent all my time in there."

"Writing music has always been and will remain my therapy, my process and my way of communicating," she continues. “I don't write songs by someone else's prescription, I write to fill my own need. I get this tightness in my chest, and nothing will make it go away other than trying to write lyrics or sitting down at a piano and playing it, and it’s like a medicine. If I have a good session of that, then that tightness and that weight just totally lifts. It just centres me, and gets the things that are riddled through my mind out on paper. And then I can leave them there."

Gordi will play a sold-out show at London's St. Pancras Old Church tonight (12 June) before heading out to play shows in Norway, North America, and Australia. She'll be back in London on 6 November to play the Omeara - get all the details.

Tracklist:

1. Long Way
2. All The Light We Cannot See
3. On My Side
4. Bitter End
5. Heaven I Know
6. I’m Done (ft. S Carey)
7. Myriad
8. Aeon
9. Can We Work It Out
10. Better Than Then, Closer To Now
11. Something Like This