New album About The Light released 19th January 2019

New album About The Light released 19th January 2019

Steve Mason has announced details of the release of his new album, About The Light, which is out on Double Six on Friday 18th January 2019. 

About The Light is his fourth solo album following Boys Outside (2010), Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time (2013) and Meet The Humans (2016)

The track listing of the 10-track album is as follows:

1.   America Is Your Boyfriend

2.   Rocket

3.   No Clue

4.   About The Light

5.   Fox On The Rooftop

6.   Stars Around My Heart

7.   Spanish Brigade

8.   Don’t Know Where

9.   Walking Away From Love

10. The End

Stars Around My Heart, the first track to be shared from the album, is accompanied by a suitably out-there video directed by Brother Willis (www.brotherwillis.com) who has previously worked with Parquet Courts and King Krule amongst others. Talking about the Spielberg meets Ashes to Ashes video, Brother Willis said:

“I’m a long-time fan of Steve’s work so it was an honour to make a video for him.  The concept and inspiration were very much a collaborative effort with Steve.  We share a mutual love for the textures and warm personality that outdated formats have in contrast to the crisp HD 8K of today.  It was an incredible collaborative experiment to shoot on Tube Camera and modern camera and put it all out to tape and back to try and achieve the feeling of watching a beloved sci-fi movie from your youth.  And a good excuse to have amazingly talented people build an alien vessel and hone their early 80’s visual effects skills.

We were aiming for an uplifting, Psychedelic Spielberg effect that hopefully we achieved.”

Having written most of his previous albums alone, About The Light marks a change in approach for Steve.

“I decided with this album that I wanted to get my live band involved at every stage because I wanted to capture the energy that we produce when we play live shows, so this time the band and myself worked on a collection of songs over the course of last year,” he explains.

Picking Stephen Street to produce the album, and with a very clear plan in mind, from the off the goal was to capture the songs live and draw out their soulful elements.

Talking about the process, Stephen Street says, “Steve explained that he wanted to make this album with his band playing more ‘live’ than on some of his previous offerings and also to augment the songs with brass and female backing vocalists. I felt this approach of first stripping back the songs to a more ‘live’ feel to create more space for the more ‘soulful’ elements to breathe in was an interesting one and we got down to work!”

Recorded at studios in London and Brighton, About The Light, sees a subtle yet noticeable evolution in Steve’s sound.

“When I listen to this album it feels and sounds like the first ‘legitimate’ record that I have ever made. It’s hard to explain but it sounds like a ‘real’ album. I think that is partly the production, the playing and the work that I did with the band for all those months in our rehearsal room on the South Coast,” says Steve

“It’s a beautiful, confident, positive, angry, loving and gentle album which once again moves what I do forward,” he adds.  “David Bowie said that you should always be slightly out of your comfort zone if you want to achieve greatness, and for the first time perhaps ever, I deliberately pushed myself into that place. Who doesn’t want greatness?”

UK pre-orders of About The Light come with an exclusive UK ticket pre-sale code for Mason's upcoming UK tour dates. Pre-sale tickets are available from 10am BST Wednesday 19th September, with general sale starting at 10am BST Friday 21st September. You can pre-order exclusive formats of the album HERE and via Dom Mart HERE. About The Light is also available on CD (DS121CD), vinyl (DS121LP), digitally (DS121D).

Steve has also announced a run of U.K. shows around the release of the record. The list of current dates is as follows:

30.01.19 – Riverside – NEWCASTLE

31.01.19 – SWG3 – GLASGOW

01.02.19 – Belgrave Music Hall – LEEDS

02.02.19 – Academy 2 – MANCHESTER

07.02.19 – Hackney Arts Centre – LONDON

08.02.19 – The Fleece – BRISTOL

09.02.19 – St. Bartholomew’s Church – BRIGHTON

Tickets for all dates are available to purchase HERE