Damon and Naomi, who you might also know as 2/3rds of Galaxie 500, have announced a new album, A Sky Record, which will be out August 6, 2021. For it, they’ve once again collaborated with guitarist Michio Kurihara. “It’s like this golden net,” Naomi says of Kurihara’s style.

The album was partly inspired by BBC Radio’s nightly “The Shipping Forecast” which they listened to throughout the pandemic. Says Damon, “The Shipping Forecast is simply the weather forecast for the sea around the UK. But it’s also a mesmerizing list of place names (‘Viking’ and ‘Tiree’ are examples) and slightly coded information about wind direction, etc – it has its own language. But for some reason, Naomi and I found ourselves listening to it almost every night during lockdown… It comes on just as we’re usually cooking dinner, which is how we stumbled on it… and then this marker became important to us, even though (or because?) it’s a report about conditions for places we couldn’t possibly visit.”

The first single from the album is “Sailing By,” a bit of tranquil beauty highlighted by Kurihara’s golden net. Damon notes, “‘Sailing By’ is also the title of a light classical waltz that’s played every night shortly before the 1am end of the broadcast day on BBC Radio Four, followed by the ‘Shipping Forecast’ (and then ‘God Save the Queen’!). You can listen to that below.

In other news, Damon & Naomi will be playing a livestream show on June 23rd at 6 PM ET for Peabody Essex Museum. They’ll play as a duo and will feature entirely new material. Watch that here.

Tracklist:
1. Oceans in Between
2. Between the Wars
3. The Gift
4. Sailing By
5. Split Screen
6. Season Without Time
7. Midnight
8. Invincible
9. How I Came to Photograph Clouds
10. The Aftertime