Black Country, New Road unveil stirring new single ‘Snow Globes’ – listen
'Ants from Up There' is out via Ninja Tune on February 4
By Joe Goggins
Black Country, New Road have released a fourth single from their forthcoming second album.
Ahead of the February 4 release of ‘Ants from Up There’ on Ninja Tune, the experimental London septet have dropped the quiet, atmospheric ‘Snow Globes’ – you can hear it below.
The sprawling track, which stretches past nine minutes, follows on from ‘Concorde’, ‘Bread Song’ and ‘Chaos Space Marine’ in giving fans a taste of the new album in advance.
Discussing ‘Snow Globes’, drummer Charlie Wayne said: “Snow Globes was one of the songs which had existed before we wrote the majority of the songs on ‘AFUT’. Though it’s a pretty good representation of the musical world we wanted to explore on the album at large.”
“Rather than writing a song with a number of distinct sections,” the sticksman continued, “we wanted to see what we could do with one continuous riff. It was a real exploration in trying to create something maximalist whilst limiting ourselves with minimal musical choices.”
“Because the melodic instruments are all playing the riff in unison,” Wayne went on. “‘Snow Globes’ left the drums with an interesting opportunity. The drums don’t sit separately from the rest of the band on ‘Snow Globes’, but we wanted to use them in a way that we hadn’t in the past.”
He concluded: “As the song progressed the drums still occupy a slightly different sound world, but because the rest of the band is playing in such a syncopated style, the drums were given a space to disregard rhythm and be completely expressive.”
‘Ants from Up There’ is the follow-up to the group’s 2020 debut, ‘For the First Time’, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize. The follow-up was recorded on the Isle of Wight at Chale Abbey Studios, with returning engineer Sergio Maschetzko.
After a one-off show at Camden’s Roundhouse to mark the release on February 8, the band head out on an eight-date UK tour in April. The full dates are below.
Black Country, New Road, February 2022:
8 – London, Roundhouse
April 2022:
6 – Sheffield, Foundry
7 – Oxford, O2 Academy
9 – Edinburgh, Liquid Room
10 – Belfast, The Empire
13 – Manchester, Albert Hall
14 – Nottingham, Rock City
16 – Brighton, Concorde 2
17 – Bristol, O2 Academy