ANDREW JIM GANNON shares new single/video "Golden Kayak". Album 'Hydrate Those Folds!' out June 12th.

ANDREW JIM GANNON - Shares new single/video "Golden Kayak" - New album 'Hydrate Those Folds!' out June 12th

Photo credit: Tom Trevatt   Following the announcement of new album 'Hydrate Those Folds!' out June 12th, today Andrew Jim Gannon shares new single/video "Golden Kayak". Previously releasing music as On Man (Houndstooth), the Hertfordshire-based producer now steps out from behind the moniker, singing under his own name for the first time and reshaping his electronic background into a more exposed strain of art-pop.  On the new single, Andrew Jim Gannon said "I wrote ‘Golden Kayak’ after getting a bit fixated on a Noah Davis painting. It has these figures carrying a luminous kayak through a soaked, muddy landscape. I kept coming back to it. It feels ceremonial and mythic. From there, the lyric drifted away from the painting and into an image I couldn’t quite place: I wasn’t sure if it was something I’d remembered or imagined. Musically it pulled me towards a tougher, more propulsive sound, while still trying to keep that flooded atmosphere.” Commenting on the video, Gannon added “The red-glove figure always seems to get obsessed with something, and in this one it’s a floating shape over a river. It’s filled with bits of footage that feel as though they should add up to something, but never quite do. I liked the feeling of him chasing something that seems meaningful in some way but stays out of reach. That sense of almost recognising something, then losing it again, became the whole logic of the film.” "Golden Kayak" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l-jGPXKKoE Illness can be transformative. For a year, Andrew Jim Gannon lived through a prolonged state of bodily disruption that quietly re-calibrated his relationship with music, creativity, and identity. Emerging from that period utterly changed, he developed a new method, a new sound, and an emboldened voice. New album Hydrate Those Folds! is both funny and moving, unsettling and charming: a gloriously left-field art-pop record that speaks to the porous, resilient nature of the human condition. A respected composer for film, television, and the games industry, Gannon previously released material under the moniker On Man. A self-titled studio album arrived in 2022 via tastemaker imprint Houndstooth, followed by remix record High Crystal the following year. Then momentum stalled as his body entered unfamiliar territory. A long period of physical limitation left him, as he puts it, “laid out and somewhat immobile.” “Everything slowed down and my body dictated the terms,” he reflects. Conventional music-making became impossible, so he adapted, writing “little scraps of language that seemed to come from within my own body.” With focus fractured, songs emerged as chants, fragments, and images: music born from friction and sensation. Rather than documenting decline, the material became a way of charting transformation - “losing myself, and then finding myself again.” As his strength returned, the Hertfordshire-based producer began shaping these ideas into songs. The work felt too personal for the On Man project, and for the first time Andrew used his own voice, singing on record. “It was revelatory,” he says. “It felt like a whole new creative world.” November release "As The Years Roll Back" marked a point of reconnection - a break from his past both sonically and in terms of identity. Self-produced and self-released, it balanced candid reflections with humour and lightness. It’s a sign of what’s to come on Hydrate Those Folds!. Lyrically, Gannon draws on the emotional clarity of PJ Harvey and the conceptual pop instincts of Fever Ray, while production-wise he’s inspired by the immersive world-building of Oneohtrix Point Never and  grounded by the acoustic restraint of Bill Callahan and Mark Hollis. Visual art is a constant influence too: during his recovery he found himself drawn to the strange tenderness of Paula Rego and Francis Bacon - “grotesque, funny, and tender all at the same time.” That sensibility extends into the project’s visual world. Six self-directed, handmade videos form a parallel universe to the album, unified by a recurring character: a pair of bright red gloves. Slightly absurd and half-hidden, they act as a tactile stand-in for Andrew - a way of exploring bodily themes without literal representation. Like the music, the videos are physical, comic, grotesque, and tender, operating on the same internal logic. Themes of dependency and connection run throughout the record. Opening track "Bon Boys Will Break Your Heart" explores how our decisions ripple outward, while "Say The Words" closes with an image of something being thrown into lava - “a moment of final transformation,” Andrew explains. Golden Kayak, inspired by a Noah Davis painting, blends distorted memory with an ad hoc choir of voices, lifting the personal into something communal. Yet this is far from a maudlin record. Hydrate Those Folds! is an ode to persistence and pursuit - and often laugh-out-loud funny. “There are lots of quiet humiliations when your body lets you down,” Andrew notes. “You either laugh at those moments, or they swallow you up.” With remixes incoming from Xiu Xiu and Douglas Dare, Hydrate Those Folds! continues to expand outward. Andrew Jim Gannon finds himself in a fertile creative zone - newly confident in his voice, immersed in process, and guided by intuition. “This feels like just the beginning,” he says. “I stopped overthinking and trusted intuition. That’s when the work opened up.”Mixed by Rich Aitken of Nimrod Sound, and mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering, ‘Hydrate Those Folds ’ is out June 12th.  Hydrate Those Folds! artwork: Hydrate Those Folds! tracklist: 1. Bon Boys Will Break Your Heart (YouTube) 2. Golden Kayak 3. Light In The Sea 4. Animals In The Wild 5. That Howl 6. As The Years Roll Back (YouTube) 7. Between Us Between Us 8. Am I A Horror 9. Psychic Nights 10. The Skin 11. Say The Words (YouTube) Links: Website YouTube Instagram