The xx are showing no signs of slowing down now that they’ve wrapped one of the most ambitious music projects to ever pass through New York’s Park Avenue Armory. Aside from producer Jamie xx dropping a new AA single this week (“Girl” b/w “Sleep Sound,” available to stream below) and continuing his BBC Radio 6 residency, the trio spent a week working on their third album in West Texas last month.
According to a Facebook post, XL’s in-house producer and longtime xx collaborator Rodaidh McDonald was down at the Marfa Recording Company studio with them, as they wrote and record some new material. Which makes sense; last year, singer/guitarist Romy Madley Croft told the NME, “We don’t find it easy as a band to write on tour, so we haven’t got much done yet with new songs because we’ve been touring Coexist so much. We’re looking forward to having time off to be creative again… We played a lot of big stages on tour in the past year, and that’s something I’m sure will come through in the next album.”
Sure enough, the xx’s label, Young Turks, also posted a short video of bassist/singer Oliver Sim recording some ambient noise at The Chianti Foundation, a sprawling modern art museum founded by minimalist artist Donald Judd. Sim is shown in The Arena, an airplane hangar from World War I that Judd converted into a room-size installation. Not a bad spot to record vocals, or handclaps…
