Zach Condon of Beirut will issue his first album of new material in four years, Hadsel, on November 10 via his Pompeii Records. Condon also shared the lead single, “So Many Plans.”
Written, performed and produced By Zach Condon, Hadsel grew out of a time of uncertainty for Beirut including Condon having to cancel the end of 2019’s Gallipoli tour around the album of the same name due to throat issues. The artist decided to bring a dream to life and escape to remote northern climes where the sun never rose above the horizon.
In early 2020, Condon arrived on the island of Hadsel in Norway where he met a fellow organ enthusiast named Oddvar who granted him access to the local church, Hadselkirke. The building housed the first church organ Zach had ever played, which inspired him to begin working on the aptly named Hadsel. Condon augmented organ with drum machines and modular synth along with horns, captured on an Austrian tape machine.
Zach recalled his time in the remote Norwegian locale:
“During my time in Hadsel, I worked hard on the music, lost in a trance and stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
Upon returning to his home in Berlin, the world was in its own solitude due to the pandemic. Condon used the time to complete the album, rediscovering instruments like his baritone ukulele which he used on lead single “So Many Plans.”
“I liked that this song struck a balance between the feelings of acceptance, hope and giving up,” Condon said of his latest single. “The lyric came from a covid-times lament that rolled effortlessly into a kind of short lullaby. The instruments were somewhat unusual for me at the time, having dusted off a baritone uke I never used before to join the album’s primary instruments of either pump or church organ and the modular synthesizer as percussion and bass.”
Preview Hadsel with “So Many Plans” below:
Hadsel Tracklist:
- Hadsel
- Arctic Forest
- Baion
- So Many Plans
- Melbu
- Stokmarknes
- Island Life
- Spillhaugen
- January 18th
- Süddeutsches Ton-Bild-Studio
- The Tern
- Regulatory
