DEBUT ALBUM PRODUCED BY TONY BERG DUE 2022 ON NETTWERK
photo credit: Madeline Holland
August 6, 2021—Today, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter
Ben Zaidi unveils new song
“
Ben Zaidi’s Blues;” Listen/share
HERE and watch/share the official music video
HERE.
Zaidi’s much anticipated debut album—set for a 2022 release on Nettwerk—was produced by Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Peter Gabriel, Beck) and recorded at Los Angeles’ Sound City Studios along with backing band members Ethan Gruska, Sebastian Steinberg (Fiona Apple,) saxophonist Sam Gendel and Kane Ritchotte (Portugal. The Man.)
Of the song, Zaidi explains, “After two weeks spent sitting around a hospice room, nothing about the world seems redeemable… In such a place, you have two choices––give in to the corrosive emptiness of our depraved world or fizzle out like a roman candle flailing in vain against it.”
Watch Zaidi perform live at
KEXP HERE.
Born and raised in Seattle, Zaidi is a Harvard-educated poet whose debut album explores a variety of themes: death, racial identity, quarter-life changes and the loss of innocence that comes with a rapidly decaying planet. Growing up with a lot of Northwest music influences, ultimately lyric-heavy albums such as Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ and The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, as well as Joni Mitchell’s Blue, were in heavy rotation while writing his new album.
Much of the record was influenced by a long drive down I-95 from Brooklyn to Florida to visit a friend who had been diagnosed with Stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and going through chemo. “And that obviously was the first smack in the face of, ‘Oh, we’re not invincible anymore’ It’s not like, ‘Oh our whole life is ahead of us stretching out in front of us,’ but instead there is a certain frailty that this is all precariously balanced on. And I think the album’s grappling with that.” More details to come soon.
