40 Watt Sun have today announced a new album titled Little Weight. The first track from the album, Closer to Life, is streaming everywhere now. Little Weightis the follow up to 2022’s Perfect Light and sees Patrick Walker take a different approach to writing and recording. The album will be released on Patrick’s own label, Fisher’s Folly on September 6, 2024. Pre-orders are available now.
Whilst Perfect Light was written and recorded over a long time period, with a wide cast of musicians, for Little Weight Patrick was determined to simplify the record-making process and recapture more of the rawness and spontaneity of the band’s earliest recordings. Setting aside a designated amount of time, under specific – often isolated – conditions, the crafting of the songs that make up Little Weight took place.
A pre-planned series of retreats provided the space and opportunities to focus, within which Walker and his collaborators – drummer Andrew Prestidge and bassist Roland Scriver – were able to do their best work. Designated time to work without distraction allowed them absolute freedom to create, whilst deadlines added to the urgency of the final recordings captured at Holy Mountain Studios in London in December 2023. Engineering and mixing was undertaken by Chris Fullard (Sunn O))); IDLES; Ulver), who was assisted by Stanley Gravett, before Adam Gonsalves mastered the tracks in Portland, Oregon. The album’s cover art is by Tekla Vály.
Commenting on the writing process Walker says: “The conditions I created to make this record – without too much extraneous, unnecessary back and forth – means that what we recorded here have an added nearness to the first emotions that I first wanted to express and which inspired me to sit down to write; things often lost over time and usually difficult to recapture.”
Whilst he remains unwilling to be drawn to discussing the specifics of his songs, 40 Watt Sun has once again produced a collection of vignettes that are steeped in poetic beauty, longing, love, and melancholy nostalgia.
Little Weight is available to pre-order now and will be available digitally as well as on CD and vinyl. There are three different vinyl variants available – gatefold black vinyl, limited red vinyl and an ultra-limited clear vinyl edition of just 400 copies, the latter of which is only available from the 40 Watt Sun webstore. Each vinyl copy of Little Weight (regardless of colour) ordered direct from the official band webstore will come with a bespoke leather, foil-blocked 40 Watt Sun bookmark.