Photograph courtesy of Steve Gullick

Ed Harcourt has announced that he'll be releasing a new mini-album at the beginning of next year. It's titled Time Of Dust and is slated to come out on January 6 2014 via CCCLX Music, the label run by Drowned In Sound founder Sean Adams, following up on his sixth album, Back Into The Woods, also put out by CCCLX.

Harcourt explains that it's the presage to a new, darker sound for him, one that will be even further realised on his next full-length: "Early next year, I’m heading into the studio with Flood (Nine Inch Nails, PJ Harvey, etc) to work on an album of evil songs, but before I set sail for the edge of the world, I wanted to break people in gently. Think of Time Of Dust as a piece of the map I’ll be using to navigate the fog and fire. Or maybe it’s the creak of the floorboard before the wolf pounces?"

He's given us a taster of the record with new track 'The Saddest Orchestra (It Only Plays For You)', a vaulting crescendo of a song, with Harcourt's familiar piano laid over a gossamer electronic loop, before the titular orchestra strike up for a strident, coruscating close - have a listen below, with Harcourt's upcoming live dates, including a one-off stop in London next month, following:

OCTOBER
Mon 21 - Palladium, Malmo, Sweden
Wed 23 - Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland
Thu 24 - Uppsala, Svandammshallarna, Sweden
Fri 25 - Nalen, Stockholm, Sweden
Sat 26 - Gothenburg, Nefertiti, Sweden
Sun 27 - Oslo, John Dee, Norway
Thu 31 - Geneva International Film Festival, Switzerland

NOVEMBER
Fri 15 - Islington Assembly Hall, London