Black Marble - Life in Small Spaces (Transparent Orange Vinyl)

Limited Edition Transparent Orange Vinyl

Sacred Bones issued Life in Small Spaces as catalog number SBR383 in four configurations: a label-exclusive "Life Without Color Collision" pressing, this limited transparent orange LP, a standard black LP, and a CD.

Black Marble is Chris Stewart, who writes, records and delivers the project's albums himself. The records have appeared on Sacred Bones since 2019, after earlier releases for Hardly Art and Ghostly International. This is the first Black Marble album since Fast Idol in 2021.

Where earlier Black Marble albums were built on layered synthesizers, this one moves guitar to the front. Stewart draws on the staccato college-radio lines of Pylon, The Necessaries and R. Stevie Moore, and sets them against live drum samples in the manner of Wire's metronomic style. He describes the aim as wanting to "create this chime-y hypnotic quality. Like a radio dial that is between two stations."

The writing turns on Stewart's own place in the music business and on how underground music has changed around him. Sacred Bones' notes describe the album as "an earnest analysis of the pressures that shape artists." The cover photograph shows Stewart alone in a sparse room under an eruption of confetti.

"It Always Comes to Me" opens the album and was released ahead of it with a video. "Jim Carol New Year" and "Anything" also arrived as singles.

Tracklist

1. It Always Comes to Me
2. Jim Carol New Year
3. Anything
4. Get Back Up
5. Other Man's Dream
6. Guess
7. Life Without
8. Missing History
9. Panopticon Calls
10. Picture When
11. Sonny Boy