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Bell Orchestre House Music press photo 01 by Nick Bostick WEB

Bell Orchestre announce first album in over a decade with lead segment "V: Movement"

07 January 2021, 11:13 | Written by Cerys Kenneally

Montreal's Bell Orchestre are back with news of their first album in over a decade, House Music, and have unveiled "V: Movement" as the lead outing from the album.

"V: Movement" arrives after last year's "IX: Nature That’s It That’s All" segment from House Music, and is accompanied by a video directed by band member Kaveh Nabatian.

The band, which includes Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry, House Music in separate rooms at Neufeld's Vermont house with help from engineer Hans Bernhard. The result is a 45-minute album structured around one hour-and-a-half long improvisation.

Neufeld says, "If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section - with so many different things going on - down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sound would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious."

Reed Parry adds, "Most of my favourite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas. I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea - not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out. In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas, deeply listening to each others’ wide-open minds and also totally immersed in our own strange and beautiful little internal musical worlds."

Tracklist:

  1. I: Opening
  2. II: House
  3. III: Dark Steel
  4. IV: What You’re Thinking
  5. V: Movement
  6. VI: All the Time
  7. VII: Colour Fields
  8. VIII: Making Time
  9. IX: Nature That’s It That’s All
  10. X: Closing
"V: Movement" is out now. Bell Orchestre's House Music album will be released via Erased Tapes on 19 March, and is available to pre-order now.
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