Having recently announced their first new album in a decade Oxbow have now shared a new video for single ‘Cold & Well-Lit Place’, which feature on the album. You can watch the video above.
The video, directed by Chris Purdie, reveals the first full piece of music from the band’s new album, Thin Black Duke, which is due out via Hydra Head on May 5. The clip captures the band together, playing the new track, against monochromatic visuals, while the track itself sees the band on brilliant, urgent form.
The album marks the first new release on the Hydra Head label since 2013 and Oxbow’s first in 10 years, having previously released six records across a three-decade career. "For this record I wanted to go even further in the way we always make recordings, as music that hangs together over an entire album, ‘large scale coherence’ if you will," said guitarist Niko Wenner. "I was inspired by pieces like Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the formal technique in classical music where a small idea, a kernel, is reiterated, morphed, expanded and truncated, to make a piece of music permeated with the potent perfume of that small element."
Speaking separately last year, the band’s Eugene Robinson suggested the new album had been 10 years in the making, saying that they had to wait for Joe Chiccarelli, who co-produced the last record, The Narcotic Story, to become available. "He bumped us down the schedule. It’s taken close to ten years now because he was doing stuff with Jack White – so he bumped us. He did the Morrissey record – so he bumped us. He did Alanis Morissette – so he bumped us. And that was a bitter pill to swallow. I don’t mind being bumped for Jack White or Morrissey but Alanis Morissette? So he finished recording and mixing the record and then we did something that Oxbow has never done before, we auditioned five different mastering people and sent them all thirty second segments of all of the songs and then we had an incredible listening party where we listened to all of them blind and ranked them all."
He further revealed that they ultimately settled on two different mastering engineers for the album: one for the digital release and another for the vinyl release. "It’s the end of a song cycle for us and after Thin Black Duke we’re going to do something completely different," he said. "The record after Thin Black Duke is going to be completely different. If we weren’t so lazy we’d change the band title but we’re not going to do that."
The band will play a number of UK shows later in the year in support of the new album, with dates lined up at London’s The Dome (April 25), Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club (April 26), Patterns in Brighton (April 27) and Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival (June 18). The band will tour extensively across Europe too.
