Zach Condon's Beirut has announced a new album titled Study of Losses, arriving April 18 via Pompeii Records.
The follow-up to 2023's Hadsel, Study of Losses was commissioned by Swedish circus Kompani Giraff for an acrobatic stage show and inspired by Judith Schalansky's German novel Verzeichnis einiger Verluste.
Today, Condon shares new single "Guericke's Unicorn" alongside a music video with choreography, puppeteering and stage design by Kompani Giraff.
"Guericke's unicorn is a supposed reconstruction of a fossil unicorn which was actually created from the bones of a bunch of different animals like the wooly mammoth and a narwhal. It's worth looking up the image," Condon shared in a release.
He continued, "I've always been fascinated by these kinds of bizarre chapters and odd side notes of history, and I wanted to reflect the unorthodox / eccentric madness of that 'unicorn' in a more playful song that is somewhat disjointed from the rest of the album. I think my music can have that disjointed / chaotic tendency in general, but with the whole album otherwise being somewhat uniformly baroque inspired, 'Guericke's Unicorn' really makes for an outlier on this record, having its origin in an old modular synth experiment of mine."
Hear "Guericke's Unicorn" below, where you can also find the album's tracklist.
A Study of Losses:
1. Disappearances and Losses
2. Forest Encyclopedia
3. Oceanus Procellarum
4. Villa Sacchetti
5. Mare Crisium
6. Garbo's Face
7. Mare Imbrium
8. Tuanaki Atoll
9. Mare Serenitatis
10. Guericke's Unicorn
11. Mare Humorum
12. Sappho's Poems
13. Ghost Train
14. Caspian Tiger
15. Mani's 7 Books
16. Moon Voyager
17. Mare Nectaris
18. Mare Tranquillitatis