Introducing Los Angeles artist Alex Izenberg and his debut album, Harlequin, out November 18th 2016. Harlequin may be Izenberg’s debut album proper but it also marks the culmination of over five years of highly prolific writing and recording under a variety of pseudonyms. The first single to be taken from Harlequin is ‘To Move On’, along with its video directed by Nicky Giraffe & Juliana Giraffe.
Watch the video for ‘To Move On’, directed by Giraffe Studios, HERE.
Harlequin is almost a study in distraction – a restless, feverish dream-sequence which variously invokes Scott Walker’s obtuse, off-kilter worlds of sound, Simon and Garfunkel’s psychedelic yet practical string arrangements, the vaudevillian pomp and preening of Wild Beast’s early material and Grizzly Bear’s pastoral early steps. All this is cut through with moments of total silence, patches of noise, found sound and countless dynamic left-turns and moment of non-sequitur. It sees the reclusive young artist marry a frightfully natural gift for naive and romantic melody with a wild sonic adventurousness born of a genuinely eccentric nature.
The album is a colourful, imp-like fantasy of a record, full of concealed charm and mischief – the personalities of its strings, the horns and the echoes of the myriad rooms in which it was recorded all coming alive as supporting characters in its winding plot. Yet for all this complexity it is also still a deeply human and relatable record at its core. Very much a hometown record, it takes its cues from the way in which fiction and reality are at constant play in everyday life in a city unlike no other; setting simple, universal tales of love, loss, grief and confusion against the heat, haze, magic and madness of the Los Angeles of Izenberg’s vivid imagination.
Tracklist:
The Farm
Grace
Libra
Archer
Hot Is The Fire
Changes
To Move On
A Bird Came Down
The Moon
Waltz of the Roots
People
Harlequin will be available on deluxe cherry red LP, limited to 300 copies (WEIRD007LPX), standard LP (WEIRD007LP), CD (WEIRD007CD), and digitally (WEIRD007D) as of Friday November 18th.