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Faris badwan john coxon 2021

Faris Badwan and John Coxon announce collaborative 12" with lead song "Boiling Point"

06 January 2021, 12:03 | Written by Cerys Kenneally

Faris Badwan and John Coxon have joined forces for a collaborative 12” release featuring two tracks, and they've shared "Boiling Point" today (6 January).

"Boiling Point" will feature on the collaborative 12" release alongside a track titled "Promise Land".

The forthcoming 12" will mark the first release of an ongoing collaborative series with Badwan and other artists.

Badwan says of the collaboration, "The new songs we ended up working on were largely spontaneous and cut together from early takes with minimal overdubbing. The lyrics were improvised and the focus was placed more on creating atmosphere and keeping things fairly raw and expressive. I guess I found it rewarding particularly with the guitar playing because it was so intuitive and completely free from any expectations of how a song should be constructed. There are hooks and repetitive sections but fewer traditional structures."

"We tried to avoid doing any planning beforehand and focussed more on responding to what was happening in the moment," Badwan continues. "I guess the sessions were kind of a constant dialogue where we would each respond to the other's improvisation."

Discussing the two tracks, Badwan adds, "With "Promise Land" I began by improvising lyrics over a drone track John and I created. Some time later I came across To Our Land by Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet, and was struck by the similarities - there are a few lines that match really closely. Despite being half-palestinian myself this was a total accident and I know for sure I hadn’t seen Darwish’s piece before."

On "Boiling Point", he says, "With "Boiling Point" the lyrics are almost the ghost of a narrative rather than an explicit story. I’m interested in the subconscious and how the hidden parts of your brain express themselves when given the opportunity. Looking back it was almost more about creating the right conditions for the subconscious to come out."

The forthcoming 12" will mark Badwan's first new material since producing The Ninth Wave's Happy Days! EP last year.

Faris Badwan and John Coxon's "Boiling Point / Promise Land" 12" will be released via Tough Love Records on 5 February, and is available to pre-order now.
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