Beirut - A Study of Losses - VINYL LP

Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson capped off his run of five sublime 1960s Blue Note leader dates with his 1966 classic Mode for Joe, an album bursting with vigor and vitality that found Henderson expanding his palette with a septet of colorful figures including Lee Morgan on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Cedar Walton on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums. The band delivers six powerful performances, playing with white-hot intensity on Henderson's originals InchA Shade of Jade,Inch Caribbean Fire Dance,Inch and InchGranted,Inch as well as Morgan's swinger InchFree Wheelin'.Inch But it's the remarkable title track by Walton that emerges as the standout of the set, a modal masterpiece where the leader summons one of his most transcendent and visceral solo statements.

A Study Of Losses is the seventh studio album from Beirut, the musical project of Zach Condon. The project originated in spring 2023, when Viktoria Dalborg, director at the Swedish circus Kompani Giraff, reached out to Condon, asking if he would be interested to provide the music for their next project, a show based on an adaptation of a novel by German author Judith Schalansky. The main themes in Schalansky's book and in the adaptation for the circus show deal with the concept of loss and the impermanence of everything known to us from extinct animal species, lost architectural and literary treasures to more abstract concepts of loss through the process of aging. In close collaboration, A Study Of Losses, turned into a rather unexpected piece of music-at 18 songs and nearly an hour long, it is by far the largest album Beirut has ever done, and amongst some of their most beautiful work to date.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Artifacts began humbly as a means of compiling a few early Beirut EPs for a proper physical . However, as Zach Condon explains in album's excellent liner notes, reconnecting with old recordings through fresh ears turned a simple re-issue project into something much more expansive. InchWhen the decision came to re- this collection, I found myself digging through hard drives looking for something extra to add to the compilation. What started as a few extra unreleased tracks from my formative recording years quickly grew into an entire extra records-worth of music from my past, and a larger project of remixing and remastering everything I found for good measure.Inch Artifacts is a phylogenetic tree. A double-LP's worth music that traces the evolution of Beirut from a 14-year old Condon's first attempts at bringing the music he heard in his mind to life, to the fully formed Beirut we know today.