New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Mura Masa has today dropped the striking visual for "No Hope Generation". Directed by Yoni Lappin in Serbia, the track introduces Mura Masa's second album 'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage), which will be released on January 17th.
Fresh from headlining Manchester's Warehouse Project, Reading & Leeds festival, and appearing at Pitchfork Paris this weekend, Mura Masa has also confirmed details of a huge global headline tour for 2020 - including three Canadian dates in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Tickets go on sale today.
The full tracklist for 'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage) is detailed below, with additional guests including slowthai, Tirzah, Georgia, Ellie Rowsell from
Wolf Alice (and Alex himself stepping out as lead-vocalist on tracks like "No Hope Generation"). It's an ambitious and exciting left-turn from an artist and producer whose ability to always surprise is matched only by his remarkably consistent, singular vision. Breathing new life into - amongst other things - New Wave, Emo, Folk and 90s Rave - tracks like "No Hope Generation" reinvent Mura Masa's sound whilst also paying tribute to the alternative roots which shaped him when he first became a genuine musical outsider, growing up in the remote island of Guernsey. And it's this fondness for the music of adolescence - reworked in thoroughly modern, bedroom-pop fashion - that became an analogue for the theme of the album as a whole...
Spiritually, 'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage) addresses a generational addiction to nostalgia, and its uses (and limits) as means of coping with the difficulties of the present. Influenced by ideas around Hauntology, it explores the irony that in times of increased urbanisation and digitisation, somehow it's never been easier to feel lonely. For Mura Masa, it's only once we accept nostalgia as a permanent fixture - a fact seemingly embodied by the cyclical phases in which different subcultures, political movements, fashion trends, even musical genres wax and wane - that we can start to learn from it. Why do we keep going back? How reliable is memory? And if your youth - and its assorted musical scenes - will always appear rose-tinted in the rear-view, then perhaps your present is there for the taking, after all.
Despite the odds, Mura Masa's endless desire to learn and push himself further has led to where he finds himself on 'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage): an artist able to channel those highs and lows of youth culture, and use it to expand what pop music should sound like today. It's an album that strikes on the zeitgeist of his generation precisely by understanding the road that took us to this point. Even when interrogating the past, Mura Masa sounds like the future.
'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage) is available to pre-order digitally, physically (LP, CD) with additional formats including recycled cassette and the deluxe bundle (includes Pressure Sensitive Vinyl Sleeve & 'R.Y.C (Raw Youth Collage)' book at: https://www.muramasa.me/
'R.Y.C' (Raw Youth Collage) - Tracklist
'Raw Youth Collage'
'No Hope Generation'
'I Don't Think I Can Do This Again' (with Clairo)
'a meeting at an oak tree' (with Ned Green)
'Deal Wiv It' (with slowthai)
'vicarious living anthem'
'In My Mind'
'Today'(with Tirzah)
'Live Like We're Dancing' (with Georgia)
'Teenage Headache Dreams' (with Ellie Rowsell)
'(nocturne for strings and a conversation)'
World Tour (General Sale November 1st) - Canadian Dates:
Fri 24 Apr|| Vancouver, BC|| The Vogue
Fri 01 May || Toronto, ON || Rebel
Sat 02 May|| Montreal, QC || MTelus
