Blues Funeral Recordings unveil all details for the widely anticipated split album between London psychedelic doom pillars ELEPHANT TREE and Swedish stoner rock giants LOWRIDER, to be released worldwide on October 25th. Discover the first single with Elephant Tree’s new video for “Long Forever”!
Like two timelines converging, Elephant Tree and Lowrider come together to present the collaborative album “The Long Forever”, easily one of the most eagerly awaited split releases in the history of heavy rock.
Arriving in the wake of two landmark 2020 releases (“Habits” from Elephant Tree and “Refractions” from Lowrider), “The Long Forever” finds both bands at critical junctures: each has a broad and expanding influence, each is revered onstage and off, and each is delivering its first proper new release in four years to tremendous anticipation. Despite that pressure, Elephant Tree and Lowrider have seized the opportunity to redefine who they are and declare where their musical voyages will go next. Bringing these bands onto a shared collaborative platter would be an event regardless of the surrounding circumstances. As it is, though, the significance of this album is even greater.
“The Long Forever” takes its title from the nickname Elephant Tree singer/guitarist Jack Townley gave to the multi-week coma he was kept in for medical reasons following a near-fatal biking accident in early 2023. Dreaming without waking and losing all sense of time as his mind attempted to process and cope with the ordeal, that lyrical description can only hint at the enormity of Jack’s experience.
And yet, the year or so that followed manifested a musical freedom in the bands’ respective approaches. Lowrider has grown more complex and expressive, while Elephant Tree has chosen a rawer, set-up-the-mics-and-go approach. “The Long Forever” is the vehicle through which the bands meet, subverting and superseding the expectations on them, with a traumatic nexus as the gravitational singularity around which the entire LP orbits, bending and shaping every note that escapes forth.
“This record is a huge moment for us as it marks our return to creating new music after my accident. This process was all about getting back into the room together, and the recording was just a small part of this track’s journey out of the ether,” says Jack Townley.
Stress, trauma, time, gravity, sound, joy, catharsis and texture all find a place across the record’s 43 minutes, but what resonates is the stridence with which Elephant Tree and Lowrider meet at the convergence of timelines and complement each other in evolving listeners’ ideas of who they are. In the end, perseverance, healing and stubbornness of passion are what made “The Long Forever” a reality. We invite fans to listen with open minds and love in their hearts.
“The Long Forever” will be issued on limited vinyl, classic vinyl, CD digipack and digital formats on October 25th following a highly limited release as part of the revered Blues Funeral Recordings PostWaxseries, with preorders available now.
| About ELEPHANT TREEFormed in London in 2023, Elephant Tree has spent the past decade delivering their heavy, melodic sound to audiences across the international scene with their 2016 self-titled album winning praise from critics and fans alike. Early 2019 saw the band enter The Church Studios to deliver their third album ‘Habits’ (2020) with engineer and producer Riley MacIntyre (The Horrors, Thurston Moore, Adele) at the helm — an ambitious, emotion-driven journey made of spacious yet heavy-as-ever soundscapes, a scintillating blur of prog, psych, and melodic heavy rock. 2020 was, as foreseen by the clear-sighted, the year they bloomed out of best kept underground secret into a household name, making it to the top of year-end lists and making an appearance on BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show as well as reaching number 14 on the Official Charts Rock & Metal and number 25 on the Official Charts Indie lists. After a series of acclaimed festival performances across the UK and Europe, all band activities were unexpectedly put to a halt in the winter of 2022 after frontman and guitarist Jack Townley was severely injured in a bike accident. Elephant Tree is now set to release their anticipated split record with Lowrider on October 25th via Blues Funeral Recordings. About LOWRIDERAs the preeminent band out of the gate in the late 90s post-Kyuss wake, Lowrider‘s debut EP and seminal album ‘Ode to Io’ were foundational slabs at the dawn of stoner rock. The swinging metal offshoot grew quickly into a worldwide phenomenon, with Lowrider established as one of its undeniable trailblazers. Following those early releases with a handful of compilation and soundtrack appearances and a period of relative inactivity, the band re-emerged at DesertFest Berlin in 2013. They’ve since blown minds at Hellfest, Keep it Low, DesertFest London and Belgium, Stoned from the Underground and Up in Smoke, and issued expanded remastered versions of their original records. All that was left was to give the world something new. Released in early 2020 through Blues Funeral Recordings, their long-awaited sophomore album ‘Refractions’ explodes with all the churning fuzz and expansive riff-heaviness for which the band are beloved, shot through with re-energized purpose and maturity. All throughout the year, “Refractions” has garnered high praise from international press, being awarded”Best Album of 2020″ on Magnet Magazine, Metal Hammer’s staff lists, The Obelisk, Doom Charts, as well as being featured on top of numerous end-of-year lists such as on Metal Injection, Rock & Folk Magazine, New Noise, Invisible Oranges or Guitar Part Magazine ELEPHANT TREE links Facebook⎮Bandcamp⎮Instagram⎮Spotify⎮Youtube LOWRIDER links Facebook⎮Bandcamp⎮Instagram⎮Spotify | Youtube BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS links Website⎮Facebook⎮Bandcamp⎮Instagram |