Dystopian rhapsodies for the summer of 2021.

Sneak preview to come. But in the meantime, a little more information.

Track listing:

The Dissolving

Fall With You

Waving

Thaw

Devoid of Stars (Light Years Away)

Produced and engineered by Laurence Currie with additional recording and engineering by James Parker and Barry Francis Walsh.

Performed by Barry Francis Walsh, Laurence Currie and James Parker

COMMUNIQUE

As 2019 came to a close, Laurence Currie (whom I’ve worked with for many, many years now — from my days with Cool Blue Halo in the ’90s and our “Kangaroo” album to the debut Mammoth Gardens EP, “New Moon Variety” in 2015) and I started talking about working on a new Mammoth Gardens project. I’d sent him demos for all sorts of songs, with the aim of assembling a group of players together to head to his studio in a peaceful rural part of Ontario to hash it all out.

But as we all know, 2020 had different plans.

Once it became apparent that we wouldn’t be convening in a studio with other humans for a good while yet, I decided to familiarize myself more with home recording. And I guess lockdowns and stay at home orders allowed a little more time for the creative process than usual circumstances. Therefore, I started writing more material — some stuff on keyboards, some stuff on guitar — and found that there was some sort of through line that made the new stuff stand together as a whole. Maybe it was a spirit of adventure and experimentation. Lyrically, some stuff that I’d started in 2019 — perhaps in response to other ills plaguing the world at that time — had a deeper resonance now. And some stuff was more or less “automatic writing.” But it was all something new for me, and exciting.

From there, I shared the demos with Laurence and he was excited to work on the songs as well. I also reached out to my longtime friend and occasional musical collaborator James Parker to see if he wanted to contribute too. The end result was forged with a spirit of collaboration, perhaps some improvisation, and a push to create something evocative and new, despite — or perhaps, aided by and reflective of — the circumstances.

I’m looking forward to sharing these songs in the weeks ahead.

Barry Walsh

06/09/21