The song features on the 'Living It Up / Black + Blue' AA-side release, out via Zen FC, the label run by Yard Act members James Smith and Ryan Needham. Get it here.
Acting as a bridge between direction both old and new, the two new tracks came to life prior to Baba’s debut album, Memory Device in 2020. The challenging yet fruitful period resulted in ‘Living It Up’ and ‘Black + Blue’ being cast aside in order to focus on the record with Al Doyle, only to be revisited upon a new found relevance to how the pair’s live performances had evolved.
“We ended up reacting to the beginning of lockdown by writing a tonne of new songs in my basement in New Jersey,” tells Baba. “some of the tracks ended up forming a mixtape that we put out on Bandcamp. Black & Blue was a song from that collection of songs, and one we were really happy with at the time, so this was an interesting opportunity to open the track up again and see how our experiences since that period had changed our approach to recording.
“It is a song I am always trying to convince Nik (guitarist/synths) to add to our live set, but I don't even think he can even remember the tuning he used for it. Hopefully giving the song an official release will kind of force his hands on that one.”
Yard Act’s James and Ryan say of the release: “We loved Baba Ali's music from the moment we heard it. They're joining us for our debut album tour in February. When Baba sent through some new tunes he and his bandmate Nik were working on we saw an opportunity to reboot Zen F.C., and to preserve on wax and share some great music with the world. It was a no-brainer for us. We are honoured, we are buzzed to have Baba Ali as the first ever non-YA release on Zen F.C. - follow the label, there will be much more to come in the future.”
Stream it below.
