Al Lover releases new single & video 'Cosmic Joke'. New album 'Cosmic Joke' out May 27 via Fuzz Club. Currently touring U.S. with The KVB.
Los Angeles-based electronic producer Al Lover is today sharing ‘Cosmic Joke’, the title track of his incoming album set for release May 27 on 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. Currently out on an East Coast US tour with The KVB, the third and final preview of the incoming ‘Cosmic Joke’ LP is available to stream alongside an accompanying video below. Pre-order the LP here.
Talking about ‘Cosmic Joke’, Lover says: “'Cosmic Joke' is a meditation on the multi-layered structure of reality and how absurdly insane it’s becoming as the distinction between these layers is dissolving due to the growth of technology. Examples of these layers are base or objective reality / natural law, time & space, social constructs, politics / geo-politics, religion, economics, power, technology, and billions of individual subjective experiences happening simultaneously within these. While there is harmony and structure within these interacting, complex systems, there is also fission and decay. This interplay, like all things, acts in a cyclical nature and it seems like the exponential growth of technology is expediting the decay process leading to reality distortion and breakdown.”
These themes are explored further in the ‘Cosmic Joke’ video, created by underground Sci-Fi writer and director, Chris Levoy Bower: “A long time friend and collaborator, Chris has been a mentor to me for all things interesting. The video features a remix of footage from a short film of his titled ‘Solarium’, filmed in and around our mutual hometown of Asheville, NC, layered with analogue feedback recorded at an ex-Cold War spy facility turned into the "Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute” by NASA in the mountains of Rosman, North Carolina. Its location was initially chosen in the 1950s by the NSA because of the shape of the mountain and the mica content in the area, which would defuse the Soviet’s ability to listen in. Wild shit! We both explore the philosophical, psychedelic and paradoxical aspects of the human experience and try to convey the “layered" nature of reality in our art.”
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.
"'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.”
UPCOMING SHOWS
May 6 - Sonia - Cambridge, MA (w/ The KVB)
May 8 - Garrison - Toronto, ON (w/ The KVB)
May 7 - L’esscogriffe Bar - Montreal, QC
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)
