US singer, songwriter and producer, Sufjan Stevens has shared a new preview of his upcoming album Convocations with an ambient piece entitled “Celebration VIII”.
Celebrations is the fourth volume of his five-part instrumental album titled Convocations and will be released this week. It will premiere on Stevens’ YouTube channel on April 29.
Celebrations was preceded by the full-lengths Meditations (released on April 8), Lamentations (released on April 15) and Revelations (released on April 22). The full album, Convocations, is set to be released digitally on May 6 via Asthmatic Kitty. On August 20, a 5-LP boxset of coloured vinyl will follow.
This five-volume album is a tribute to Sufjan Stevens’ late father. His biological father passed away two days after the release of Stevens’ eighth album entitled The Ascension last September.
This new album represents the “reflection in a year of anxiety, uncertainty, and loss” through its 49 tracks. Each one of the volumes represents “a different stage” of the mourning process.
A press release about Convocations explained that the record “moves like a two-and-a-half-hour electronic/ambient mass for our present age of anxiety and dread; its 49 tracks work through the stages of grief and gladness with emotional mood music that is dreamy, dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent and calm – that’s, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through isolation, uncertainty, and loss“.
It also adds that “its five sonic cycles (Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations, and Incantations) replicate different stages of mourning, healing, and catharsis, working both to soothe our unease while savoring a renewed sense of awe and wonder for being alive in these unprecedented time“.
The track, “Celebrations VIII”, is accompanied by an official video which was designed by Melissa Fuentes. Watch it here:
#Peace.Love.SufjanStevens
