Multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen has announced the release of his new album World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener and it will be out on March 19th through Sub Pop and in Canada from Flemish Eye. Today he has also shared the first single, “Samurai Sword“, along with an animated video.
VanGaalen says of “Samurai Sword”: “I had just ripped a bunch of old leaking copper pipe out of my basement in a reno job that I jumped into willy nilly. Realizing how magical the pipes sounded, I put them on some dirty styrofoam and banged out the janky beat that introduces the song! Garbage is life.” He continues: “It just spilled out in a couple minutes. I didn’t try to stop it because I was smiling like I was just cruising through my neighbourhood. Simple like a sandbox. An ode to the simplicity. It’s hard to let things be simple. But simple is easy on the mind, and being jovial in song is something I find really difficult. Why? What?”
The video for “Samurai Sword” gives viewers a peek into VanGaalen’s surrealistic world, expanding the 2:04 album version to a gloriously weird extended version with a 3:39 run time. He elaborates: “I was drawing black and white plant backgrounds for this song because of the great old samurai movies of the past. I like how nature sometimes takes the lead. I was getting all knotted in my mind about the sky. I looked at my dad’s watercolor paintings of a sky, and felt like I couldn’t get the feel right. So, I just borrowed his sky for a scene and then I realized that my dad’s paintings were perfect and already full of real life energy. I used them to finish the video and felt like we got to go on this quest together. In my mind. Fuck time.”
Listen to “Samurai Sword” & watch the video for it below:
The thirteen track effort was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by VanGaalen at his Yoko Eno Studio in Calgary, Alberta, and mastered by Ryan Morey in Montreal, Quebec.
World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener artwork & tracklist:
1. Spider Milk
2. Flute Peace
3. Starlight
4. Where Is It All Going?
5. Earth From a Distance
6. Nightwaves
7. Plant Music
8. Nothing Is Strange
9. Inner Fire
10. Golden Pear
11. Nightmare Scenario
12. Samurai Sword – Official video
13. Water Brother