THEY’VE been quietly releasing a track a day all week over on their Bandcamp page; and today Hoboken’s finest, Yo La Tengo, have gathered all five together for the first time as a downloadable EP, We Have Amnesia Sometimes. A physical release will follow later.
But not only that: this weekend Georgia, James and Ira will be playing sets of “formless” music to raise funds for charity.
And to make it a trio of news items from the trio, Matador is reissuing Electr-o-pura this autumn on a remastered double vinyl pressing – nice and loud!
But first things first: Ira said of the lockdown instrumentals EP, which has been appearing track by track this week: “If you’ve spent any time hanging out with us at our rehearsal space in Hoboken — that pretty much covers none of you — you’ve heard us playing formlessly (he said, trying to sidestep the word “improvising”).
“Most of the songs we’ve written in the last 25 years have begun that way, but often we do it for no other reason than to push away the outside world.
“In late April, with the outside world weighing on everybody, we determined that the three of us could assemble in Hoboken without disobeying the rules laid out by Governor Murphy, and resumed . . . “practicing” hardly describes it, because we’ve done no practicing per se, and anyway what would we be practicing for . . . playing.
“James set up one microphone in the middle of the room in case we stumbled on something useful for the future. Instead we decided to release some of the things we did right now.”
The band will be streaming 30- to 45-minutes “formless” performances at 2pm BST on Saturday and 6pm BST on Sunday via Noonchorus. Tickets are available from today here, priced at $10. All proceeds will go to the nonpartisan law and policy institute, the Brennan Centre for Justice.
Oh, and Electr-o-pura? That’s being shipped in its new double vinyl edition as of September 4th. Order yours here.
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