Russell Haswell Returns To Diagonal With New LP, 'Reality Therapy' | The Quietus

Russell Haswell Returns To Diagonal With New LP, ‘Reality Therapy’

The record was created in response to YouTube feeds from news-gathering agencies during the COVID-19 period

Russell Haswell has a new album on the way via Diagonal.

His first release for the label since 2019’s 37 Minute Workout Vol. 2, the 10-track Reality Therapy was created as a response to real-time live feeds on YouTube that Haswell watched amid the COVID-19 pandemic, on which various stories were broken by news-gathering agencies. The record, a press release says, makes connections to "a political climate punctuated by strikes, class-war and protests." Listen to lead cut ‘Availability Heuristic’ above.

In a statement about Reality Therapy, Haswell said: "The themes and styles that I selected reflect what I saw going on in the world around me during this weird time that we all went through… The imprisonment of [Russian dissident Alexei] Navalny, COVID lockdowns and the shambolic government – I couldn’t help feeling the similarities to the ’80s and early ’90s, and so the music includes stylistic themes and sound references to that period transposed into a more positive and humorous light."

Diagonal will release Reality Therapy on September 22, 2023.

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