Elizabeth Weinberg
Vermont-based musician and producer James Hinton, aka The Range has announced his new album Mercury. To help push the announcement, Hinton has released a new single “Ricercar,” along with its video, directed by Stevie Gee & Essy May and produced by Blink Ink. Essy May also provided the illustrations for the album artwork.
The song features a vocal sample from Instagram of a singer covering Tamar Braxton’s “My Man.”
The Range also provides some context for the song and the title, which is a certain method of building music.
“A Ricercar in a musical context is a prelude fugue that kind of sets the tableau of a piece to follow. I first heard about the concept of a Ricercar in a biography of Bach, who famously encoded his own name in a piece (H having been interchangeable as the name for B-flat at the time),” explains Hinton.
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“At the time I wrote this song I was listening to a lot of rap from the 90s, specifically DJ Premier beats. As such I was rapidly collecting breaks and had just stumbled upon the Chief Kamanawanalea break by the Turtles and found that if I reordered the sections I could make this kind of palindromic composite break that seemed to propel the song along.”
Mercury will be The Range’s first album in almost six years, following 2016’s Potential. The LP includes his previously released single “Bicameral.”
Mercury is available on CD, LP, and limited edition colored vinyl LP. The limited edition colored vinyl LP is available to pre-order now exclusively from Domino before it is released on June 10. Pre-order here and see the tracklist below.
The Range will play Elsewhere in Brooklyn on June 11. Tickets go on sale Friday @ 10am ET.
Tracklist:
1. Bicameral
2. 1995
3. Urethane
4. Ricercar
5. Nor For Me
6. Relegate
7. A Tree Day
8. Balm
9. Cantor
10. Every Good Thing
11. Violet
Mercury Cover
Domino
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