Phil Elverum, the musician behind the acclaimed early ’00s project The Microphones, has announced he is revamping the project. It’s been seventeen years since The Microphones’ last release, the 2003 record Mount Eerie. Following the record’s release, Elverum assumed the moniker Mount Eerie and began releasing music under that name. But now, Elverum plans to bring The Microphones out of hibernation with an unconventional album.
Titled Microphones In 2020, the upcoming album will consist entirely of one 44-minute song. Alongside the effort, Elverum will share an album-length short film that will be released a day prior to the album’s debut.
In a statement parallel with his album’s announcement, Elverum said he was inspired to reignite his old project after seeing a positive response from fans:
“In the summer of 2019 I played a little local concert under the old name for no big reason. The little flurry of weird attention around this announcement got me thinking about what it even means to step back into an old mode. Self commemoration would be embarrassing. I don’t want to go backwards ever. There is nothing to reunite. So I nudged into the future with these ideas and came up with this large song. It took almost a year to write and record, working constantly at home, digging through the archives, playing the same two chords forever on the same $5 first guitar. In it I have tried to get at the heart of what defined that time in my life, my late teens and early twenties, but even more importantly, I tried to break the spell of nostalgia and make something perennial and enduring. All past selves existing at once in this inferno present moment. The song doesn’t seem to end. That’s the point.
We all crash through life prodded and diverted by our memories. There is a way through to disentanglement. Burn your old notebooks and jump through the smoke. Use the ashes to make a new thing.”
Watch The Microphones’ album teaser above.
Microphones In 2020 is out 8/7 via P. W. Elverum & Sun. Pre-order it here.