The Icarus Line “Enter The Void” For New Album
“All Things Under Heaven is closer to the truth than anything I have ever been involved with,“ Joe Cardamone tells MOJO. Listen to El Sereno, an exclusive track from the record.
THE ICARUS LINE’S frontman Joe Cardamone has never been one to conform, an attitude he says he’s taken to its logical conclusion on their forthcoming album by creating “outsider art” in the void. The Los Angeles band return with All Things Under Heaven on October 2 and MOJO has a preview in the form of exclusive album track El Sereno you can listen to below.
“The Icarus Line has been a group that I have led for almost two decades now and through it all there has been really one compass point to follow: truth,” Cardamone tells MOJO. “True reflections of unspeakable emotion and experience. All Things Under Heaven is closer to that truth than anything I have ever been involved with. No one out there is doing what we do. That would be a red stop sign to most but to me it is the green light. I have written into a void instead of clinging to a genre, which to me is the only exhilarating position to be in. When you are all alone but you are right, then you are an outsider. Outsider art has always fascinated me and people who I respect. This record is a red hot knife up the ass and it’s also the most tender moment of longing. There is no pose here, no shape that is being constructed.”
“I have written into a void instead of clinging to a genre.”
Joe Cardamone
To underline this point, the record features a collaboration with outsider artist Joe Coleman on the title track, while The Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis appears on Bedlam Blues. The Icarus Line’s leader favoured a seat-of-the-pants approach to the guest spots.
“The record was made in an old-fashioned yet futuristic way. All tunes were performed live in my studio and also arranged on the fly,” he says. “What does that mean? That means I explained as little as possible before playing but enough to get the results I was looking for. A short conversation and a few musical cues was more than enough to have the great musicians completing the thoughts by hanging on my physical movements. The arrangements were divine in the sense that they were given to me in the moment by the spirit in the room. To me there is no purer way to do this kind of music.”
Pure? Truthful? A knife up the ass? You decide! Listen now to El Sereno...
For more visit www.theicarusline.com.