Description
The Cinematic Orchestra are back with a definitive new album. Founding member Jason Swinscoe and longtime partner Dominic Smith have enlisted album contributions from collaborators old and new: Moses Sumney, Roots Manuva, Heidi Vogel, Grey Reverend (vocalist on Bonobo’s ‘First Fires’), Dorian Concept and Tawiah (Mark Ronson, Kindness). The record was mixed by multiple Grammy winner Tom Elmhirst (David Bowie, Frank Ocean, Adele) in Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Electric Lady studios.
The album explores a timeless question of vital importance in 2019 – what to believe? It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since The Cinematic Orchestra released their last studio album, Ma Fleur in 2007. Did you achieve what you hoped to in the time since? 12 years from now will be 2031. What will you do before then? We are powerless to answer of course, mere passengers in our own existence, improvising as events deliver themselves into our lives, struggling with the question – what to believe? Births, deaths, success, failure. Trump, Brexit, fear, hope. Art, relevance, pressure, belief. It’s this that accounts for the past 12 years for The Cinematic Orchestra, it’s this that characterises the process of recording the new album, and it’s this that has been distilled into a work that is not only their best to date but one which best reflects the great beauty in life.
To Believe is heartbreakingly brilliant: a collection of exquisitely assembled songs that appear delicate from a distance before revealing a close-quarters core strength. Band leaders Jason Swinscoe and Dominic Smith have loosely arranged seven lightly jazzy tracks around the themes of belief and what it means to believe. Every song here could easily be five or 10 minutes longer. A triumph.
*Also available in store on 12″ vinyl LP
