Son Lux's third album, titled "Lanterns" is slated for release in October. As a precursor, we are releasing "TEAR", a conceptual 7" featuring one new song in two distinct parts. The music featured on TEAR is exclusive to this 7" and will not be included on the upcoming full-length. However, this'll give you a taste of the next-level shit you can expect to hear on "Lanterns".
TEAR is limited to just 300 copies on glass-green w/ black haze vinyl. Featuring custom letterpress artwork, each copy is personally hand-numbered and signed by Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux). Purchase includes an instant MP3 Download.

Sisyphus is the new name for the collaboration between Serengeti, Son Lux, and Sufjan Stevens (formally s/s/s), whose new project under this moniker is a self-titled album partly inspired by the art of Jim Hodges, and commissioned by the Walker Art Center and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.
Asthmatic Kitty Records and Joyful Noise Recordings will release the record more widely on CD/LP/Digital on March 18th, 2014.

Stranger things have happened, but rarely do they make such beautiful music. The three esses that comprise the enigmatically titled s / s / s are as follows: Sufjan Stevens, he of the Fifty States Project and various baroque folk-pop opuses; Serengeti, the wry-witted rapper known for in-depth on-record character studies; and Son Lux, silken-voiced singer, studio wizard and singular beatsmith. The project's roots reach back to 2009's Dark Was the Night compilation, where Stevens and Geti met over a Buck 65 remix of a song written by psych-folkie Castanets. Continuing in the spirit of (unlikely) collaboration, the pair passed beats and raps back and forth, eventually enlisting Son Lux to dream Beak & Claw into fruition. While this momentous EP comprises a mere four songs, each covers an immense stretch of sonic territory and emotional range. At six minutes, "Museum Day" may be the most adventurous and also the most satisfying, opening with a swath of AutoTuned heartache courtesy of Stevens, cresting with the darkly detailed raps of Geti, and closing in a hail of crashing cymbals, orchestral glitch and haunted coos from Son Lux. "Beyond Any Doubt" exchanges that taut splendor for deeper grooves whose farthest-out moments bring to mind Shabazz Palaces' cracked futurisms, albeit spiked with a falsetto'd pop hook. Fuzzy bass and industrial clang crash into lines about unrealized escapism and unpaid bills. Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond lends "If This Is Real" its Andrews Sister-like chorus, an immaculate contrast to the aural chaos that eventually overtakes the song. Meanwhile, Doseone (Subtle, Themselves) lends a similar buoyancy to "Octomom," an electro-spackled, mostly spoken piece that plays like a Laurie Anderson track for the reality television generation (also featuring jaw harp and harmonica by Ohio folk vet Hal Walker). Because of its subject matter, this final song goes a long way to illustrating Beak & Claw's strange magic and, ultimately, why s / s / s works at all. Geti's humor and humanity are matched by playfulness and poignancy every step of the way. In the end, sublime confluence prevails.

Ryan Lott's most recent album as Son Lux, last year's Lanterns, communicated an ambivalence with the modern world, with Lott yearning for an escape to undefined "alternate worlds". His new EP reconfigures songs from Lanterns and includes a contribution from Lorde; his previously sanguine outlook has been scrubbed away, darkened, and clouded over until it resembles something closer to weary skepticism, if not outright cynicism.

Son Lux's new LP Lanterns isn't piecemeal beats or hastily assembled instrumental clutter, rather it begs to be heard as the lingua franca of the past and the future, something that connects the analog and digital realms. And sometimes it totally gets close.