Loma
LOMA ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM HOW WILL I LIVE WITHOUT A BODY?, OUT 28 JUNE VIA SUB POP
SHARE VIDEO FOR LEAD SINGLE ‘HOW IT STARTS’
“An essential listen”
8/10 The Line of Best Fit
“Loma’s music unspools in vivid panoramas”
4/5 Mojo
“Atmospheric melodies and Cross’ otherworldly vocals blend to absorbing effect”
8/10 Uncut
“Emily Cross’s voice always manages to nail an emotion and send shivers up your spine, but her performance on this parched beauty— piano, clarinet and oboe fluttering around her — is something else altogether”
Sunday Times
Watch the video for ‘How It Starts’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rfPW6Zvbq8
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On 28 June, Loma (Emily Cross, Dan Duszynski, Jonathan Meiburg) will release their third album How Will I Live Without A Body?: a gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we’re all in this alone. Along with the announcement they have shared the first single and accompanying official video, ‘How It Starts’, directed by and starring Emily Cross.
“This is how it starts
to move again”
January 2023, Dorset, UK. Snow is piled at the door, icy roads are closed, and Emily Cross is in a coffin—not a promising setting for a rebirth. But for Loma, this is where they bring their band back from the brink.
“It’s like a demon enters the room whenever we get together”, writer, singer, and instrumentalist Cross says of the struggle to bring new Loma music into the world. Following the release of their 2020 second album, Don’t Shy Away, Loma’s three members were cast around the globe, and the band—not for the first time—entered a deep sleep.
Multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Dan Duszynski remained in his studio in central Texas, but Cross, a UK citizen, moved to Dorset, and writer and instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg left the US for Germany to research a book. In the pandemic years, being in the same room was impossible, and attempts to start a new record faltered.
In an attempt to salvage the record and the band, Cross suggested they regroup in the UK, in the tiny stone house—once a coffin-maker’s workshop—where she works as an end-of-life doula. With minimal recording gear and few instruments, Loma turned two whitewashed rooms into a makeshift studio, using a coffin woven from willow branches as a vocal booth. “Sitting in our heavy coats around a little electric radiator, we realised how much we’d missed each other—and that just being together was precious”, recalls Meiburg.
They scrapped much of what they’d made, and let a new place set a new course. The first two Loma albums featured the sounds of Texan animals and landscapes; this time, the one-lane roads, hedgerows and dark skies of Dorset gave the new songs an ineffable but unmistakable Englishness. The band used the ruin of a 12th-century chapel as a reverb chamber—surprising hillwalkers who peeked in to find them singing to no one—and the sounds of Cross’s chilly workshop wormed their way into the recording: a leaky pipe, a drummer’s brushes on a metal lampshade, voices left on an ancient answering machine.
Loma’s previous album, Don’t Shy Away, was galvanised by the encouragement of Brian Eno. This time, they were inspired by another hero, Laurie Anderson, who offered a chance to work with an AI trained on her work. Meiburg sent two photos; Anderson’s AI responded with two haunting poems. “We used fragments of these poems in ‘How It Starts’ and ‘Affinity’”, he says. “And then Dan noticed that one of AI-Laurie’s lines, ‘How will I live without a body?’ would be a perfect name for the album, since we’d nearly lost sight of each other in the recording process”.
For How Will I Live Without A Body?’s cover art, returning collaborator Lisa Cline took inspiration from the histories of “bog people” human cadavers found naturally mummified in peat bogs.
How Will I Live Without A Body? is available to preorder on CD/LP/digitally worldwide from Sub Pop. In the UK and Europe, LP preorders through Sub Pop’s new Mega Mart 2, and UK/EU Independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on Neon Orange Vinyl.
Photo credit: Emily Cross
High-res images can be found here
How Will I Live Without A Body? tracklist:
1. Please, Come In
2. Arrhythmia
3. Unbraiding
4. I Swallowed a Stone
5. How It Starts
6. Dark Trio
7. A Steady Mind
8. Pink Sky
9. Broken Doorbell
10. Affinity
11. Turnaround
Praise for Don’t Shy Away:
“An essential listen”
8/10 The Line of Best Fit
“Loma’s music unspools in vivid panoramas”
4/5 Mojo
“Atmospheric melodies and Cross’ otherworldly vocals blend to absorbing effect”
8/10 Uncut
“Emily Cross’s voice always manages to nail an emotion and send shivers up your spine, but her performance on this parched beauty— piano, clarinet and oboe fluttering around her — is something else altogether”
Sunday Times
“Their most mesmerizing and rewarding effort yet”
4/5 Our Culture
‘4/5’ Record Collector
“Both heartbreaking and uplifting at exactly the same time”
The Vinyl Factory
“As second records go, they don’t come much more mesmerically splendorous than this”
Secret Meeting
“Cherish their return, it’s a triumph”
For The Rabbits
“Cross’ vocals are heaven-sent”
Beats Per Minute
“A dreamy start to their new adventures”
Clash
“Earthy, delicate and impressively focused compositions that together have the power to work as a perfect, comforting antidote to a hellish year”
4/5 Stereoboard
“Truly a grand and beautiful work of art”
Backseat Mafia