Out this week, the twice Grammy-nominated Hiatus Kaiyote share a new song and video from their forthcoming album ‘Mood Valiant’, out June 25th via Brainfeeder Records / Ninja Tune.
Written in an act of spontaneous composition, ‘Red Room’ was born out of a bass and drum groove by band members Naomi “Nai Palm” Saalfield (guitar, vocals), Paul Bender (bass), Simon Mavin (keys), and Perrin Moss (drums) when the group went to Rio de Janeiro in 2019 to work with legendary Brazilian arranger Arthur Verocai, who features on their previously-released single ‘Get Sun’.
The new album is the follow up to their 2015 album Choose Your Weapon, which Rolling Stone described as “a stunning step up.”
The new project comes after being sampled on songs by The Carters (Beyonce & Jay-Z), Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Chance The Rapper, and Drake—with whom Nai Palm collaborated on his ‘Scorpion’ album. The result is an album that relaxes into a groove: sunlit, sublime, masterful. Behind everything is Hiatus’ familiar sense of musical adventure, their knack for making the complex sound simple.
Speaking about how the new song ‘Red Room’ came together, Nai shares,
“My vocal booth had a red light in it, and I was thinking about my old house that had all this red-colored glass in it. When the sun set in my room at a certain hour, my whole room was red.” According to Bender, it was “the quickest thing the band had ever recorded from conception to finish.”
Perrin adds:
“Essentially it was just having fun, man. We were warm, we were in another country. Of course, not knowing there was a big pandemic coming, the context of the ‘red room’ now and what that means to everyone sitting in isolation is kind of relevant.”
The video for “Red Room” is directed by Trent James Koch, and features a Valiant station wagon, which symbolises a source of inspiration for the album. The car evokes the spirit of Nai’s mother Suzie Ashman:
“My mother had two Valiant station wagons, iconic, vintage Aussie cars,” Nai says. “One was white and one was black. And depending on what mood she was in, she would drive one or the other. She was a single mother with six kids: if she drove the black one, you knew not to fuck with her.”
Of the upcoming album ‘Mood Valiant’, Bender shares,
“The title of the album really encapsulates the whole spectrum of the journey. Everyone’s been through some big challenges. I feel like we charged through the mud to get this thing done. And there’s just this valiant, victorious feeling, coming out of storm into calm waters. The sun is shining, we see the shore. We did that! I feel proud of the way this sounds, the emotional depth of it. And I hope that it brings people some sort of comfort in this hard time.”
Cover photo: Tré Koch
