Includes digital pre-order of Rectangles and Circumstance.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around June 14, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$22USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
THIS PRODUCT ONLY SHIPS IN THE US
Includes digital pre-order of Rectangles and Circumstance.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around June 14, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$12USDor more
Streaming + Download
Pre-order of Rectangles and Circumstance. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Rectangles and Circumstance is an album of ten songs co-written and performed by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion. The album follows their Grammy-winning Nonesuch debut, Narrow Sea, and their first record as a band, 2021’s Let the Soil Play Its Part, with Shaw on vocals backed by Sō—Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting. Grammy Award–winning engineer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift) co-produced with them on both Let the Soil… and Rectangles and Circumstances.
Sliwinski says in the new album’s liner notes, “After a few years of touring Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part together, with a pandemic in between, we came to record our second album, Rectangles and Circumstance, as a road-tested band who knew each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies intimately.” He continues, “Most of the songs started with instrumental pieces or fragments of pieces from Jason or Eric.
“As both a songwriter and a classical composer, Caroline is accustomed to writing lyrics as well as setting them. Going over texts with her is like working on music: I collect a handful of poems and send them over to her, waiting to see if anything catches her interest, then I modify my search based on her feedback,” Sliwinski says. “For this album, Caroline, Eric, and I sourced a group of nineteenth-century poems that shaped its expressive mode [and] ended up using verses by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake … The lyrics on this album by members of the band contain wordplay that explores the same profound feelings explored by Blake and Dickinson.”
credits
releases June 14, 2024
Producer(s): Caroline Shaw, Eric Cha-Beach, Jonathan Low, and Sō Percussion
Engineer(s): Jonathan Low
Assistant Engineer(s): Matt Hall and Dave Snyder
Additional Engineering: Matt Poirier
Recording dates: August 29th to September 1st, 2023 (Guilford Sound), October 16th to 18th, 2023 (Figure 8), November 6th and 9th, December 9th, 2023 (Big Mercy)
Recording studio & location: Guilford Sound, Guilford, VT; Additional Recording at Figure 8 Recording, Brooklyn, NY; Additional Recording at Big Mercy Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Editor(s): Jonathan Low
Additional Editing: Matt Poirier
Mixing Engineer(s): Jonathan Low
Additional Mixing: Matt Poirier
Mix studio, location: Long Pond, Hudson, NY and Brooklyn, NY - January 1st to 19th, 2024
Mastering engineer(s): Josh Bonati
Mastering studio & location: Bonati Mastering, Brooklyn, NY
Cover Design by Ben Tousley
Photography by Daniel Kukla
Group photo by Anja Schütz
Through its sensational interpretations of modern classics, innovative multi-genre original productions, and “exhilarating
blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” (The New Yorker), for almost two decades Sō Percussion has redefined the scope and role of the modern percussion ensemble, placing it at the leading edge of 21st-century music....more
supported by 21 fans who also own “Rectangles and Circumstance”
I saw them perform for free in Bryant Park in NYC; I had no idea who they were; boy was I pleased. By the way, Attacca is a musical term that means to literally attack a note. dlummox
Percussionist and composer van Reyk explores the intersection between contemporary classical and post-rock with members of Dirty Three.
Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 8, 2022
