Balmorhea Share New Album 'The Wind'

The Wind, the highly anticipated new album from lauded minimalist group Balmorhea, is out today via Deutsche Grammophon; listen/share below. The record comprises a dozen tracks inspired variously by meditations on the natural world and its fragility, an ancient tale about a saint who carried the wind to an airless French valley and thoughts of climate activist Greta Thunberg crossing the Atlantic.

"I brought this little piano piece into the studio feeling like it was only about halfway complete and didn't really intend to record it or include it on the album. In the end I think it has become one of my favorite moments on the album," says composer and multi-instrumentalist Robert Lowe, one-half of the duo that also includes Michael A. Muller, on the standout track "Nos." "Here we lay down again on a soft bed of piano. A quiet celeste and a reverberating parlor guitar sparkle and shimmer around the edges," adds Muller. Today's release follows singles "La Vagabonde," "The Myth" and debut single "Rose in Abstract."

The Wind was recorded in the iconic Saal 3 of Berlin's Funkhaus, musical home to Lowe and Muller's multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer friend Nils Frahm and co-produced by Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (Taylor Swift, Caroline Shaw, Sō Percussion), and mixed and mastered by Low at Long Pond in upstate New York, the studio that he operates for Aaron Dessner and The National.

Balmorhea, pronounced 'Bal-more-ray' and named for a small town in western Texas, began life in 2006 when Lowe and Muller met and made music at a summer camp in the remote Texas Hill Country. The group gradually evolved into a larger ensemble and toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Following an intense five-year period on the road, Balmorhea's two founders took advantage of a break from touring to improvise and experiment together once more. With the release of The Wind, they are the first-ever Texans to join ranks with a wide cast of new label mates from Brian Eno to Beethoven on the historical Deutsche Grammophon.

Listen here:

Photo Credit: Bryan Schutmaat