11/16/2023

The Body & Dis Fig Announce Debut Collaborative Album ‘Orchards of a Futile Heaven’

The Body & Dis Fig Announce Debut Collaborative Album Orchards of a Futile Heaven

Out February 23, 2024 on Thrill Jockey. // Stream the first single “Holy Lance.”

Photo courtesy of the artists.

Praise for The Body: "It’s no exaggeration to say this US duo are one of the greatest bands working anywhere today, making metal at its most corroded. With its screams and silences." - Guardian

"These recordings have such texture and depth they resemble topographic maps, perfectly preserving every peak, valley, and crevice... This music is so bluntly fatalistic—in idea and execution—that it feels life-affirming to experience, as cleansing as scalding water." - Pitchfork

Praise for Dis Fig: "Her voice just melds... very fluid and powerful but subtle" - NPR

“like anguished Portishead meeting the bass swamped tendencies of The Bug.” - Pitchfork

The Body & Dis Fig announce their debut collaborative album Orchards of a Futile Heaven, out 23rd February, 2024. Along with the album announcement, The Body & Dis Fig have shared the first single "Holy Lance," a triumphant anthem which finds The Body guitarist Chip King's guitar meet the uncanny drone of Dis Fig's (aka Felicia Chen) accordion in an all-consuming blast, Chen’s voice transforming the moment from anguish to defiance and empowerment.

The Body & Dis Fig are a natural pair. Each has pioneered instantly recognizable worlds of sound all their own that defy any traditional categorizations or boundaries. The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, continually challenge any conventional conception of metal, collaborating with myriad artists and from the folk-leanings of their work with BIG|BRAVE to their groundbreaking work with the Assembly of Light Choir to the intensity of their collaborations with OAA or Thou.

Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, pushes electronic music into dark extremes, from warped DJ sets to avant production, from being a member of Tianzhuo Chen’s performance-art series TRANCE to being the vocalist with The Bug. The Body and Dis Fig find kinship in reimagining what it means to make “heavy music”. Their debut Orchards of a Futile Heaven is the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution.

While sampling has long been essential to each, The Body & Dis Fig deftly meld their differing approaches to sampling and creating extreme sounds until the boundaries are entirely blurred. The two found kinship in their desire to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two. “I always wanted the heavier stuff but I also didn’t really like heavier guitar music,” says Buford. “None of it really felt quite heavy enough to me. A human can’t be as heavy as a machine.”  Chen counters, “I love the balance. You could never connect to just a machine as well as you could a human. Which is why the combination is so potent for me. I don’t want to hide. I think nothing connects you more empathetically than another human's voice.”

The Body & Dis Fig plan to tour throughout the US, UK, and Europe in 2024.  Pre-order Orchards of a Futile Heaven here and look for more news soon.

Orchards of a Futile Heaven digital album cover art:

Orchards of a Futile Heaven tracklist:

  1. Eternal Hour
  2. To Walk a Higher Path
  3. Dissent, Shame
  4. Orchards of a Futile Heaven
  5. Holy Lance
  6. Coils of Kaa
  7. Back to the Water
 

For more on The Body: WEB | BANDCAMP | INSTAGRAM

For more on Dis Fig: WEB | BANDCAMP | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

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All photos taken by Martin Worster