Big Brave announce new record, Vital, out on April 23rd via Southern Lord

Minimalism and instinct, structure/freedom and meticulous timing form the cornerstones of Big Brave‘s rhythmically precise sound and more so than ever with their incoming new record, Vital. Our first glimpse of the album arrives today in the form of the track “Half Breed” – which you can listen to below -, and an accompanying video that consists of the single shot of a single performative action that can be read as the representation of the damage an external force can have on someone or something without ever having to bear any responsibility and consequence. Big Brave comments, “the action of shovelling dirt onto the person, also acts a way to discredit, shame and discriminate the individual. With the victim (on screen), being painfully covered with dirt by the perpetrator (off screen), all we have to witness is the damage done and left behind. We are aware of what is happening, what has happened, but the source is kept anonymous and can easily be missed and overlooked”. Lyrically speaking, this new record explores the weight of race and gender, endurance and navigating other people’s behaviours, as well as observation and protest. The band adds, “this album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality”.

Vital features the core trio of Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson, for their most collaborative record they’ve made so far. The band says “having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears”. For this record, Big Brave once again made the trek down to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. They remark “we fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey in sonic exploration”.

Vital will be released digitally and CD on April 23rd via Southern Lord, with an LP release set for July 9th.

Photo credit: Mathieu Ball