Laurie Anderson’s 'Amelia' is due August 30. Her first new album since 2018’s 'Landfall,' it comprises twenty-two tracks about renowned female aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic last flight. An autographed print is available with Nonesuch Store pre-orders.
40 Years!
Big Science. Hallelujah
Every man, every man for himself
Big Science. Hallelujah. Yodellayheehoo
'Cause when love is gone
There's always justice
And when justice is gone
There's always force
And when force is gone,
There's always Mom.
Hi Mom!
Ha ha ha ha.
I don’t listen back to my records often but I did for this reissue and I was surprised how fresh it still sounds, 40 years later. Thanks for listening!
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Good evening. This is your Captain.
We’re about to attempt a Listening Party.
#BigScience
.
This is the time,
And this is the record of the time.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Laurie's Tiny Desk Concert for
@nprmusic
is now up for viewing. Joined by Roma Baran and Rubin Kodheli, they perform Let X=X and O Superman from Big Science.
The Art of the Straight Line, a book of essential wisdom covering Tai Chi, mindfulness, creativity, and the art of living and dying goes on sale March 14 and is available for preorder. It will be published by Faber in the UK & Ireland on March 16th.
We pressed 1,000 copies, and I’d individually mail each one. Then suddenly John Peel started playing it on his radio show and it went to
#2
in the UK.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Sisters with Transistors, the untold story of women who pioneered electronic music - narrated by me - opened this past Friday on
Trailer:
@SisWTransistors
@MetrographNYC
"There was something about Massenet's aria 'O Souverain'—which inspired 'O Superman'—that almost stopped my heart. The pauses, the melody ... A prayer about empire, ambition, and loss." —Laurie
You can watch the video and pre-order
#BigScience
vinyl at
"I'm an extremely optimistic person, and so I choose not to ignore these problems. But also not to be overwhelmed by them. I still want to do every single thing I can to make the world a wonderful, beautiful, exciting place." —Laurie in
@NoiseyMusic
Laurie's first-ever collaboration w/
@KronosQuartet
,
#Landfall
, inspired by her experience of Hurricane Sandy, is due February 16 on
@NonesuchRecords
. Pre-order to download a track now & get a limited-edition print signed by Laurie:
Last week Laurie, Peter Gordon (
@pglolo
), and
@DavidVanTieghem
performed some Big Science material at the Javits Center vaccination site thanks to
@NYPopsUp
"Sharkey's Day"—from the 1984 album 'Mister Heartbreak'—is now on YouTube:
"A goofy song with lots of images from my dreams. I believe in dream language and like to picture the sun that looks like a big bald head rising up over the grocery store." —Laurie
Laurie's 1982 debut album,
#BigScience
, returns to
#vinyl
for the first time in 30 years with a new red vinyl edition on April 9.
@NonesuchRecords
Store pre-orders include an exclusive, limited-edition autographed print.
You can reserve yours at
"I really want to make things that break your heart," Laurie tells
@Dazed
of her new VR piece with Hsin-Chien Huang, To the Moon. "I don’t want to make it clever or interesting—if it’s like that, good. But I want to create an emotional situation."
"Mesmerizing from the first line to the last,"
@VMagazine
says of the new album 'Amelia.' "Telegraphed by Anderson's hypnotic vocals and the sweeping power of the orchestra, the fearless flier's journey becomes ours—and what an incredible journey it is."
The song is based around a looped “ha ha ha ha” done on a harmoniser, but I wanted it to be like a Greek chorus so I used a vocoder, which was originally developed as spy technology to disguise voices.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
"Since I was a kid, I was in love with the sky, the beauty of it, the freedom of it, like I could just float up forever," Laurie tells
@BBCRadio4
@BBCFrontRow
's
@tds153
in a conversation about the upcoming album 'Amelia,' about Amelia Earhart.
🔊
Thank you to everyone who tuned in to watch the Norton Lecture series "Spending the War Without You." All 6 lectures are available to watch any time on youtube.
’Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
The video for "Language Is a Virus," from Laurie's 1986 film, 'Home of the Brave,' is now on YouTube:
"Dedicated to William S. Burroughs, who said, 'Language is a virus from outer space.'" —Laurie
In September 2001 I was on tour and played it at Town Hall in New York City. The show was one week after 9/11.
“Here come the planes / They’re American planes.”
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Electronic breathing. Loops were actual analog tape loops, strung around the room, looping over chairs and doorknobs. The music was a combination of homemade electronics and sophisticated processors.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Inspired by the beautiful 19th-century aria by Massenet that began: “O sovereign …” A prayer to authority, which I thought was interesting, so I started writing: “O Superman …”
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
#BigScience
was about technology, size, industrialization, shifting attitudes toward authority, and individuality. It was sometimes alarmist, picturing the country as a burning building, a plane crash.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
"When I hear these songs, I can hear the places where they were recorded." Laurie talks with
@NYtimes
'
@Tmagazine
about revisiting her work from the early '80s, including "O Superman."
#OTD
in 1937—Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe. Lyrics for "Radio," from the upcoming album 'Amelia,' are inspired by radio logs of her final communications with US Coast Guard cutter Itasca.
have a look at To The Moon, the latest VR work by Laurie and Hsin-Chien Huang now on display at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. courtesy of
@CNNStyle
Laurie was on
@BBC6Music
's 'Radcliffe and Maconie' to talk with
@StuartMaconie
about her upcoming
@NonesuchRecords
album, 'Amelia,' and share her selections for the show's First, Last, and Everything segment. You can hear it from 90 minutes in:
I used all the instruments that I was using on the road, including the vocoder, which gave the voice a choir effect, and the harmonizer, which I used as a pitch shifter as well as a loop generator.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
In the early and mid ’70s I traveled a lot. My plan was to make a portrait of the USA.
#BigScience
was the first part of the puzzle that eventually became part 2 of the United States I–IV (Transportation, Politics, Money, Love).
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Here's a bit of two new Laurie &
@KronosQuartet
tracks—"The Water Rises" & "Our Street Is a Black River"—from the album
#Landfall
, due Feb. 16. Watch the full video & get the tracks now when you pre-order the album:
Some of the musicians on
#BigScience
had performed with me. I didn’t have a band, we invented other small ensembles by bringing in musicians to play on certain tracks.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
In 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran. America went blazing in with helicopters to get the hostages out. But it backfired majorly. So I thought I’d write a song about all that and the failure of technology.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
Tomorrow, Jan 28, 10-11am EST, Free:
A sixty-minute conversation, Laurie Anderson shares personal insights and stories about her experience with meditation.
Zoom:
Youtube:
Laurie appears on today's episode of the
@skepticspath
podcast. They cover her personal path with Buddhism, approaching art with a beginner’s mind, staying present with suffering without letting it overwhelm you, and making our lives meaningful.
“India And On Down to Australia,” a new track featuring ANOHNI (
@rebismusic
) from the upcoming album 'Amelia,' due August 30 on
@NonesuchRecords
, is out now. You can hear it and pre-order the album at
But we recorded much of it almost like a folk record, trying to faithfully capture the actual sounds of voices and instruments.
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
"The way we’re using this technology allows you to be free and that’s the biggest thing about VR that I love," Laurie tells
@Forbes
of her new VR piece with Hsin-Chien Huang, To the Moon, ahead of upcoming screenings at
@Cannes
&
@MIFestival
.
Tomorrow on NTS Radio, a whole day curated by Laurie.
Starts at 12:00 BST / 7:00 ET
LISTEN -
DONATE:
All shows will be available for replay at 6pm UK (1PM ET) at this page:
Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Norton Lecture 4: The Road last week. Good news for anyone who missed it or was experiencing tech difficulties, a replay will be streaming again starting on Nov. 3rd for a period of 24 hours on Youtube.
If you missed this conversation between Laurie and Paul D. Miller, hosted by The Brooklyn Rail a few months back, it's available as a written transcript.
Excited to announce that I will be joining
@philipglass
,
@tenzinchoegyal
,
@rubinkodheli
and many more for this year’s annual Tibet House US Benefit Concert being held virtually on February 17, 2021! Info at
"Her works are as perfect as those of Rembrandt, but the blood of anarchy flows through her veins. She, more than anyone in my lifetime, has been giving me permission to misbehave in my pursuit of a life creating things." —
@Nick_Offerman
on Laurie
Laurie is premiering a new radio program on
@WESUmiddletown
next Friday. The first guest will be writer Jonathan Cott. It airs next Friday, June 5th at 4am + 4pm. Also streaming on WESU’s website (and in their archives).
@WesCFA
Legendary avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson (
@onlyanexpert
) brings ‘Big Science’ to the people of New York. Tune-in to her performance with composers and musicians Peter Gordon (
@pglolo
) and
@DavidVanTieghem
at 3PM ET on IG Live.
#NYPopsUp
"There are no single words to sum up [Laurie Anderson's] life in music,"
@BBCRadio3
's 'Saturday Morning' Tom Service says. "She's someone whose imagination takes her all over the world. Not least in her latest album, 'Amelia.'" Hear them at 2h32m in at
Metrograph (
@MetrographNYC
) is presenting a stream of Home of the Brave tomorrow night. Live stream at 8PM EDT and available on-demand for two days afterward. (only available in USA)
We've rounded up links to a handful of Laurie’s recent interview. They include the Adam Buxton Podcast,
@ClassicAlbumSun
,
@BBCRadio2
’s Will Young (filling in for Jo Whiley), and
@BBCNewsnight
Los Angeles—Laurie will celebrate the publication of her new book, "All the Things I Lost in the Flood," with the West Coast debut of a new show at
@TheWallisBH
on April 20: