Mystery Jets have broken their four-year silence with 'Black Sage'
The band have linked up with producer Leo Abrahams on their first track in four years.
After a four-year wait, Mystery Jets are back. The London outfit have shared 'Black Sage' via Fiction Records, ushering in what they're describing as a new chapter for the group.
Premiered on Steve Lamacq's BBC 6 Music show, the track leans on reverb-heavy production, driving percussion and scuzzy guitar work. Its title nods to the Native American practice of saging, or 'smudging' - a ritual intended to clear a space of unwanted spirits.
Frontman Blaine Harrison explains the thinking behind the song: "For centuries, black sage has been used by indigenous communities in smudging ceremonies, where the smoke is believed to clear away negative energies or unwanted spirits. But what if we are vessels for those energies, and the ghosts from our pasts have been living inside us all along? The message of the song is that healing is inseparable from suffering, but there is beauty to be found in the broken. Some songs arrive all at once, but Black Sage came to life by stitching together a patchwork of extended jam sessions, where we'd loop ideas around and improvise until we reached a kind of hypnotic flow state, allowing the song to reveal to us what it wanted to become. We've not written that way since the very earliest days of the band, so we knew it had to be the first track to share from this new chapter."
Producer Leo Abrahams, known for his work with Brian Eno, Wild Beasts and Frightened Rabbit, was brought in to help shape the recording. Director James Slater - whose credits include Yard Act, Blossoms and Sam Fender - filmed the accompanying live performance video at the James Turrell Skyspace, located within Cornwall's Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.
Premiered on Steve Lamacq's BBC 6 Music show, the track leans on reverb-heavy production, driving percussion and scuzzy guitar work. Its title nods to the Native American practice of saging, or 'smudging' - a ritual intended to clear a space of unwanted spirits.
Frontman Blaine Harrison explains the thinking behind the song: "For centuries, black sage has been used by indigenous communities in smudging ceremonies, where the smoke is believed to clear away negative energies or unwanted spirits. But what if we are vessels for those energies, and the ghosts from our pasts have been living inside us all along? The message of the song is that healing is inseparable from suffering, but there is beauty to be found in the broken. Some songs arrive all at once, but Black Sage came to life by stitching together a patchwork of extended jam sessions, where we'd loop ideas around and improvise until we reached a kind of hypnotic flow state, allowing the song to reveal to us what it wanted to become. We've not written that way since the very earliest days of the band, so we knew it had to be the first track to share from this new chapter."
Producer Leo Abrahams, known for his work with Brian Eno, Wild Beasts and Frightened Rabbit, was brought in to help shape the recording. Director James Slater - whose credits include Yard Act, Blossoms and Sam Fender - filmed the accompanying live performance video at the James Turrell Skyspace, located within Cornwall's Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.
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