Acclaimed electronic musician, producer, and composer Philippe Cohen Solal and Mike Lindsay, the Mercury Prize-winning co-founder, composer, and producer of UK acid folk band Tunng, have united for a remarkable new album inspired by the life and work of visionary American writer/artist Henry Darger. OUTSIDER will be available in North America via Solal’s ¡Ya Basta! Records on April 12/13, honoring the dates of Darger’s birth (April 12, 1892) and death (April 13, 1973).
An ambitious musical and visual project setting Darger’s hallucinatory lyrics, poems, and writing to music for the first time ever, OUTSIDER features vocals by gifted new London-based singer-songwriter Adam Glover as well as featured instrumentation and backing vocals by artist/musician/composer/broadcaster Hannah Peel (The Magnetic North, Paul Weller). Mixed by 3x GRAMMY® Award-winner Andrew Scheps (Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ziggy Marley), all 10 songs on OUTSIDER will be paired with an original visual inspired by Darger’s work, directed by acclaimed French animator Gabriel Jacquel with art direction by Cohen Solal and Pascal Gary (aka Phormazero). Recent premieres include “Bring Them In (Feat. Adam Glover & Hannah Peel)” and the anthemic “Scattering The Fierce Foeman (Feat. Adam Glover & Hannah Peel),” as well as an exclusive OUTSIDER trailer presented by Solal, all streaming now at the official ¡Ya Basta! YouTube channel.
WATCH “BRING THEM IN (FEAT. ADAM GLOVER & HANNAH PEEL)” WATCH “SCATTERING THE FIERCE FOEMAN (FEAT. ADAM GLOVER & HANNAH PEEL” WATCH PHILIPPE COHEN SOLAL TALKS ABOUT HENRY DARGER AND THE OUTSIDER PROJECT
Henry Darger lived a reclusive life in Chicago where he worked as a hospital janitor. His extraordinary life’s work consists of an epic single-spaced fantasy manuscript titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred mixed-media illustrations and watercolor paintings that animate his stories. Darger’s work depicts a fantasy world where child slaves must be saved from their tormentors, filled with idyllic scenes set in Edwardian interiors and tranquil flowered landscapes populated by imaginary creatures, as well as astonishing manifestations of horrific terror and dark carnage. Now, nearly a half-century after Darger’s death, his art is exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and has influenced artists spanning Grayson Perry and the Chapman Brothers to David Byrne, Devendra Banhart, Natalie Merchant, and The Vivian Girls, the latter of whom took their name from his imaginary child heroines.
Perhaps best known as co-founder of the award-winning, multi-million-selling Parisian electronic tango group Gotan Project, Philippe Cohen Solal has spent more than two decades making his mark as an electronic music architect, self-taught composer, producer, DJ, and head of his own ¡Ya Basta! Label. Mercury Music Prize-winning producer, Mike Lindsay is most known for being the co-founder, composer, and producer of groundbreaking UK acid-folk band Tunng. In addition, Lindsay has co-written and produced work for a wide range of artists Including Speech Debelle, Jon Hopkins, Beth Jeans Houghton, Serafina Steer, and Laura Marling, with whom he creates exploratory drones and experimental songcraft as LUMP.
Inspired by Darger’s poetic world, Solal and Lindsay have now crafted ten resonant, rapturous pop songs and visuals that transmit the reclusive hospital janitor’s work into the current day. Songs like ‘Hark Hark, My Friend, Cannon Thunders Are Swelling’ and ‘Can A Boy Forget His Mother’ shimmer around the edges of altered states, employing vintage guitars, synths, children’s instruments, rolling strings, anthemic horns, and Darger’s much-loved weather reports to bring listeners on a journey through his fabled land of Abbieannia. Adam Glover sings the inner voice of Darger while Hannah Peel provides a backing vocal chorus to portray Darger’s child heroines, the Vivian Girls.
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