dirty projectors are playing Song of the Earth in austin texas this thursday april 16th at the long center with the austin symphony orchestra
what?? are U kidding me? no, i’m serious. the whole reason i just redownloaded this app on my phone and took this dmv photo is to tell you !
maybe we’ll share the same space for a minute or two
love
at 7:30pm on april 16th, 2026, at the long center for the arts, dirty projectors and the austin symphony will perform our 2025 album Song of the Earth
general sale begins this friday, 2/6, at 10am central, but a special batch of pre-sale tickets are going live tomorrow (wednesday) @ 10am CST —— details on well-tempered zealot substack
there are currently no concrete plans to sing the Song anywhere else on Earth — not new york, not london, not sydney, not berlin. but we’re doing it in austin, where the stars at night are big and bright, a mile or so from the old hideout theater on congress where i laptop-karaoked the getty address at sxsw 2005
now ya might suppose that whole darn algorithmic apparatus for cultural discovery is engineered to render something like Song of the Earth as hard to see as a black steer’s tuchus on a moonless night
but when we premiered it for 2,300 people at Disney Hall in LA two years ago, a lot of us saw a different world. there were feelings and sensations in that room that i didn’t have names for — round and big and slightly ungainly ones. it was a rush! it thrilled me. it made me feel so connected to other people
excited to see if it happens again
maia, olga, felicia and i will do the album in full with the symphony, and then play an acoustic band set of dirty projectors ‘classics.’ (thinking like, fucked for life / police story / that’s a lifestyle / irresponsible tune / cannibal resource -type-beat? message me requests … )
april 16th, 2026. long center for the arts. southern bank of the colorado river. 7:30pm. maybe i’ll see you there
los angeles: i’m excited to announce a residency at the @bluenotelosangeles , january 3rd and 4th 2026. two sets per night!
been playing a bunch with the dudes @crbear & @_k_pasta_ , and they’ll join me in what some are calling ‘dirty projectors (trio)’ (we might even have recorded a thing)
these shows are john-the-baptist’ing the piano era which , hark , is nigh upon us
so join us in ringing it in and ringing in, belatedly, another dizzy spin of our dirt clump around the local fireball!
links in bio and stories ! 📖
📷 @maiafffff
today we are (surprise!) releasing Song of the Earth Instrumentals.
they say a song is a landscape, but if you add even a single voice it becomes a portrait. so we’re rewilding the meadows. for an album inspired by natural places, this is an organic development. Song of the Earth Without Us.
i love listening this way because it feels closer to the experience of dreaming. melody floats, harmony shimmers, rhythms swirl. words, those tethers into the hard world of discrete materials, are nowhere.
this is also a moment to recognize the incredible musicians and great folks in stargaze. scroll if you will this carousel and witness their warm concentration and deep bonhomie throughout the recording sessions in wisseloord, netherlands in the spring of 2022. this is their album too :)
here in the deepest embrace of summertime, i hope you’re somewhere with a light breeze and light dappling through leaves. i hope you’re managing to maintain a good grip on the things you love. and i hope you can smash the volume-up button on your barrel-shaped bluetooth speaker til it makes the loud annoying beep. please enjoy Song of the Earth Instrumentals !
all photos from the song of the earth recording sessions at wisseloord, netherlands, spring 2022, by marco borggreve, except (2-3) album cover image by @kingtuffy
DAVID LONGSTRETH - THE ION POD EP. 173
It’s a big day here at Ion HQ - we got to sit down with our longtime favorite, thee god, Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors! We talk about the early days the early shows, the Philly DIY scene, First Unitarian Church, playing with TV on the Radio & Man Man, laptop music live, the art of Pro Tools chaos, scoring The Legend of Ochi, working with A24 & making Song of the Earth, the romance + despair of New York over 15 years, Gen X “no” vs. Millennial “yes”, what indie rock was actually rebelling against, selling the Brooklyn aesthetic back to itself, rhythm and rejecting “the grid”, the revival of live music, dorm-room air guitar to Bitte Orca, music as mystical tool vs. marketing product, making art with your best friends, paying bouncers, Uke Ellington, Haverford College, and MUCH MORE!
the legend of ochi is out today! you can stream my original soundtrack album everywhere — preorder the vinyl at the biolink — and see the actual film in one of 1200 theaters nationwide now
i’m honored to release the OST on the brand new a24 music label
and it’s wild that by some yardsticks (length, budget, number of performers) this is the largest thing i’ve ever made. it took a village. gratitude, love and praises to my team — jodie landau engraving and score copyisting, danny reisch mixing the hell out of it, dash le francis music editing, jodie and oliver hill on additional orchestration. to the orchestras — FAMES skopje of macedonia; synchronstage of vienna — the incredible chamber groups and choir members here in los angeles; the soloists radu nechifor, alex sopp, cory beers, and others — we made this thing together! one of the beautiful things about the movies is the irreducibly collaborative nature of the work. i learned so much. armfuls of flowers for director #isaiahsaxon, who, in his openness and curiosity and tenacity, led me by the hand — and sometimes the ear — through this first scoring experience
there’s also a new dirty projectors original song in the score! ‘through the long and lonely night’ is a song that appears diegetically in the film, sung by a cigarettes-and-vodka-soaked russian bel cantor we found at an open mic in north hollywood. but on the OST, it’s me & maia & felicia & mike … more on that one later
for now — a final thought: this OST is every bit an album for me. film music can sometimes stand in a supportive/dependent relationship with story & image, but … am i tooting my own horn to suggest that this music is symbiotic with picture AND stands on its own two legs? credit to isaiah to demand a score with that kind of detail and musical interest. he let me cook, as they say — and this thing is a meal. dig in!
i’ll say it: these are the droids you’re looking for!
i am about to be in some mountains by an ocean, with my phone buried beneath a bunch of decomposing leaves and about 8 inches of dark loamy topsoil. but before i bury it let my thumbs just feverishly tap a happy release day to the legend of ochi !
and! 🐛 if you are in NY or LA please go see this thing this weekend — early ticket sales help determine how many theaters it will go into next week for the wide release. how simply exciting, to be a part of the possibility of such a film’s success! love to all
in the midst of the release of one world-sized album (song of the earth), it feels wild to announce another. and yet: my soundtrack for the a24 film the legend of ochi will be out in eleven days — april 25, 2025!
lincoln is in the bardo. but the links are in the bio
peace, d
