Al Lover releases new single & video 'A Very Mechanized Dance'. New album 'Cosmic Joke' out May 27 via Fuzz Club. US tour dates with The KVB in May
Los Angeles-based electronic producer Al Lover is today sharing a new single and video titled ‘A Very Mechanized Dance’. The track is the latest to be lifted from Lover’s newly-announced ‘Cosmic Joke’ album due out May 27th via Fuzz Club Records. A staple of the global psychedelic scene, Lover has spent nearly a decade fine-tuning a broken, abstracted form of electronica that pools together a tapestry of trip-hop, synthesised krautrock, dub and dark ambient.
Following the recent ‘Integrated Paradox’ cut, you can stream ‘A Very Mechanized Dance’ here and its accompanying video below. Alongside the new single Lover is also now announcing a run of East Coast US dates with The KVB next month.
Talking about the upcoming record, Lover says: "'Cosmic Joke' came from observing the rising, compounded absurdity in recent years and seeing structures of normalcy dissolving. It’s my attempt to view these things as part of a higher-order process, through a metaphysical lens rather than an ideological one. It’s been an exercise in holding the paradoxical relationship of comedy and tragedy, joy and pain, growth and decay, scale and decline as part of an interlocked system that, at a deep level, is essential to how we interface with the world.”
“‘A Very Mechanized Dance’ is a meditation on the freedom to be found within constraint and discipline", Lover says, adding on the track’s video: “WikiLurk’s visuals expand on that and explore the use of deliberate repetition and focus on a practice – for example, dance, martial arts, music, mindfulness, prayer, yoga, training, ritual, etc. Anything that puts you on the edge of the known and unknown, developing your growth through struggle and difficulty. Together with the track it explores how to use these practices to harness our base energies and apply them to a higher purpose, in a time when our base natures are being hijacked and exploited by technology for profit.”
Utilising an arsenal of samples, drum machine, analogue synths and live instrumentation, Lover’s is a kaleidoscopic sound that’s J-Dilla, DJ Shadow and Lee Scratch Perry by way of Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Kluster. Central to his music is a desire to explore the fringes of psychedelic music and the common threads that run through its far-reaching styles, drawing elements from the past and connecting them to the future.
Through the years he has released a number of studio albums and beat-tapes, remixed the likes of Osees and Night Beats, been resident DJ for the Levitation and Desert Daze festivals and collaborated with the likes of Goat, Anton Newcombe, Cairo Liberation Front and White Fence. Now, Lover returns with his latest studio album, ‘Cosmic Joke’ – a series of synthesised philosophical meditations on modern life, in all its tragicomic absurdity.
UPCOMING SHOWS
April 15th - Gold Diggers - LA (DJ Set)
May 4 - Brooklyn Made - Brooklyn, NY (w/ The KVB)
May 6 - Sonia - Cambridge, MA (w/ The KVB)
May 8 - Garrison - Toronto, ON (w/ The KVB)
May 10 - Empty Bottle - Chicago, IL (w/ The KVB)
May 11 - Grog Shop - Cleveland, OH (w/ The KVB)
May 12 - The Sanctuary - Detroit, MI (w/ The KVB)
June 25th - Desert Daze Gold Diggers Night - LA (DJ SeT) (w/ L'eclair and Art d'Ecco)
