Azure Ray are back with a new EP on Flower Moon Records.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Azure Ray, the ground-breaking duo of Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor, are back with a new EP.

Titled Waves, the album comes out Oct. 26 on Taylor’s Flower Moon label. The first new album by the duo in six years, it will be the first recording since 2002’s November EP not released on Saddle Creek Records. Earlier this year Flower Moon re-released Azure Ray’s self-titled debut and follow-up, Burn and Shiver.

“This EP was about revisiting what Azure Ray has meant to us – and felt like to the listener – over the last 18 years,” says the Waves press release. “So for the last few months we’ve been demoing songs back and forth over email and Facetime between Omaha and Los Angeles, until this August when we packed up a car and drove out to a house in Joshua Tree to record. These songs are both a yearning and nostalgia for the Azure Ray of the past, and new perspectives on how and why we make music – with 18 years of love, life, and loss in between.”

The first track, “Palindrome,” dropped today. Check it out below and preorder the double A-side limited edition flexi 7-inch here.

No word of a tour yet, but Azure Ray is slated to play an Oct. 26 fund-raiser at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts with Destroyer (solo).

The new Cursive album, Vitriola, is somewhat epic, maybe the best thing they’ve done since The Ugly Organ. If you don’t believe me, check out the third track dropped from the album, “It’s Gonna Hurt.” And pre-order the mutha from 15 Passenger. The album comes out Oct. 5.

Tonight one of Saddle Creek Records’ latest roster additions, Black Belt Eagle Scout, plays at Reverb Lounge. Creek just re-released the band’s debut album, Mother of My Children. They’re opening for headliner Guerilla Toss, a red-hot Boston band that’s been kicking around since 2010, releasing albums on DFA Records, including LP Twisted Crystal, which came out earlier this month. Expect a crowd. $10, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2018 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.