News

Yellow Ostrich: New Album and First UK Tour

• 28th Mar 2014

NYC band Yellow Ostrich announce their new album ‘Cosmos’ will be released in the UK on May 5th on Barsuk Records.

Before starting on writing this album, singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf moved into the band’s Brooklyn practice space and immersed himself in the study of such astronomers as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. Around the same time, Yellow Ostrich drummer/percussionist Michael Tapper ventured into the infinite in a much more literal sense by departing on a sailing trip from Mexico to Hawaii that left him out at sea for nearly a month.

Borrowing its title from Sagan’s 1980 PBS series, Cosmos expands Yellow Ostrich’s intensely guitar-driven alt-rock with dreamy electronic arrangements to mirror the mood of Schaaf and Tapper’s retreats away from the everyday world.

The album will be preceded by single ‘Neon Fists’, which will be out on April 28th.

Engineered by Beau Sorenson (Death Cab for Cutie, Superchunk, Sparklehorse) and mixed by Paul Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr.), Cosmos captures that uneasy tension by merging raw guitar riffs, lush atmospherics, brain-bending electro effects, sweetly ethereal harmonies, and earnest but unsettling lyrics.

Having delved into the work of early-Krautrock and 70’s synth bands while on tour the previous year, Schaaf and Tapper set to broadening their sound with locked grooves and textures inspired by artists like Neu!, Kluster, and Kraftwerk. For more help in crafting the sonics of Cosmos, Schaaf and Tapper recruited bassist Zach Rose and keyboardist/guitarist Jared van Fleet.

Yellow Ostrich have announced their first European tour, which will start in the UK in early May:

04/05/14 – Sounds From The Other City Festival – Salford, Manchester
05/05/14 – The Lexington – London
06/05/14 – Hare and Houd – Birmingham
07/05/14 – Clwb Ifor Bach – Cardiff
08/05/14 – Start The Bus – Bristol