Toron­to trio Absolute­ly Free share their first release in sev­en years. Called How to Paint Clouds, the sin­gle is from the band’s impend­ing sec­ond stu­dio album After­touch which lands on Sep­tem­ber 14th. 

Since the band’s Polaris Music Prize-nom­i­nat­ed debut album in 2014, Absolute­ly Free have been involved with mul­ti­me­dia projects such as Gene­va Freeport EP in 2019 (fea­tur­ing U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy).

Com­prised of the core trio of Matt King (vocal­s/­mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist), Michael Clax­ton (bass/synth), and Moshe Fish­er-Rozen­berg (drums/synth), Absolute­ly Free is an off­shoot of the now-defunct exper­i­men­tal rock out­fit DD/MM/YYYY.

How to Paint Clouds guides the lis­ten­er from the open­ing sitar-like notes and on into a shim­mer­ing land­scape of shift­ing lay­ers. Matt King’s vocals float above the dense synths and propul­sive trib­al drums, and the track main­tains a per­fect bal­ance between depth and fragili­ty. There are shades of fel­low Cana­di­an psych out­fit Ele­phant Stone in the del­i­cate inter­play of vocals and instru­men­ta­tion. Absolute­ly Free’s cap­ti­vat­ing and jubi­lant track sets the scene for their upcom­ing album.

The track con­tem­plates the imper­ma­nence of art, and the nature of inter­pre­ta­tion, ask­ing the ques­tion, what con­trol does the artist retain once their art is out there in the world? How to Paint Clouds is accom­pa­nied by an AI video in which an algo­rithm built from 2000 inter­net-sourced paint­ings of clouds teach­es a com­put­er to cre­ate its own orig­i­nal paint­ings of clouds. 

“Although there are unimag­in­able forces at play in devel­op­ing a cloud, or in cre­at­ing art, all we are able to look for is anoth­er face in the sky, a mir­ror look­ing back at us,” the band reflects. “A cloud always looks like some­thing oth­er than a cloud.” 

HOW TO PAINT CLOUDS RELEASED JUNE 25. AFTERTOUCH ARRIVES ON SEPTEMBER 24 VIA BOILED RECORDS 

Absolute­ly Free After­touch 

1. Epi­logue (After Touch)
2. How To Paint Clouds
3. Inter­face
4. Remain­ing Light
5. Still Life
6. Are They Signs?
7. Clear Blue Sky
8. Morn­ing Sun 

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