February 2024:
I released a new New Dog EP at Bandcamp today: https://newdog.bandcamp.com/album/under-black-wings-ep. I made it so you can’t pay for it even if you want to, so go ahead and download it guilt-free if you have any interest. I told myself i wouldn’t do the singer-songwriter thing again, but here we are. It felt good to sing and play guitar again honestly. The last time was on the Townes Van Zandt 10″ a few years ago. For this one, I crawled up a few childhood memories (there aren’t many) and wrote a song around each of them in a sitting or two. The songs were recorded in a single session, too, and i kept the hiss and buzz of the guitar and other creaks and thumps. The memories are imperfect, as all memories are. But fragments of them emerged, and i tried to hold onto them, or reinhabit them, for long enough to finish writing. Whether it’s any good is another question, but i needed to put it out there so i could move on to the next. Hope you find something to like.
January 2024:
A couple of songs from my forthcoming tape with ARANANAR are up to stream at Bandcamp or on the recordings page. This one started off as a bit of an experiment after the fall tour, exchanging fragments of melodies and words, and then it took off out of nowhere. I love how it turned out.
November 2023:
Very happy to announce the fourth Hourloupe project, “Opera of the War,” coming out in January. It’s our most beautiful, somber, and pared down project. 26 minutes in all. The concept: An opera house is bombed and so the composer must make his work to be performed in the streets. This one we’re doing digitally, or you can buy one of Frank’s prints or a shirt and get the download with that. Stream a couple of songs, read more about the record, and take a look at the print/shirt here: https://hourloupe.bandcamp.com/album/opera-of-the-war
July 2023:
I’ve spent every free minute these past few months rehearsing and working out live arrangements for 26 (!) songs — all for about a dozen shows in September. Haven’t been on tour since 2016, before Irra was born and before the plague. Can’t wait to get out there again, and with two of the nicest and most talented guys I know. Hope to see some of your faces soon!
June 2023:
So pleased to announce “Domov, co nebyl” (The Home That Wasn’t), the second album by my duo ARANANAR. Czech ballads and dirges. Comes out via Silver Rocket Records in September. Have a listen to the opening song and pre-order a copy on vinyl if you dig it: https://arananar.bandcamp.com/album/domov-co-nebyl
We’ll be playing a dozen shows with my other duo Hourloupe around Poland, Czech Republic, and Germany in September to support it — details to come.
May 2023: Three Nights in the Wawayanda is out now on vinyl: https://hourloupe.bandcamp.com/album/three-nights-in-the-wawayanda. As of this writing, there are still 4 copies of the signed and numbered print available too.
The tape is also out via the excellent Tymbal Tapes: https://tymbaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/three-nights-in-the-wawayanda
We’ll have copies of both at shows later this month: 5/26 at 2640 Space in Baltimore and 5/27 at Radiant Hall (Mckees Rocks location) in Pittsburgh.
Some kind words about the record:
“Feels like music from another time, both harking back to the origins of ambient electronica in the 1990s and reaching forward to imagine fresh new musical forms. … Stunningly evocative.” –Dusted magazine
“Connects oral traditions from the past with supermodern performance and production techniques in a hauntological surge of variegated expression.” –No Transmission
“Mesmerizing, complex electroacoustic ecosystem with only the occasionally unsettling hint of its impending breakdown.” –The Slow Music Movement
January 2023: I’m thrilled to announce the final release in the Hourloupe triptych, Three Nights in the Wawayanda, is now up for pre-order. We only pressed 100 copies (actual pressing, not lathe cut this time), and the first 20 orders come with a gorgeous print of Frank’s painting for the cover, on museum-quality paper, signed and numbered and without the Hourloupe text of course. That alone is worth the 20 bucks if you ask me. If cassettes are more your jam, you’ll be pleased to know that Tymbal Tapes will be releasing it on tape in March April.
TNW is an unexpectedly moving concept album that follows two partygoers wandering a 19th-century wilderness on the verge of the industrial age. Frank has described it as our “weird, dance-foolish, sad pilgrimage across the bent back of the earth,” which is pretty accurate. If you have a few minutes, check out the liner notes and listen to the two songs up for stream here: https://hourloupe.bandcamp.com/album/three-nights-in-the-wawayanda
Hourloupe will be touring Eastern Europe in September with my other duo ARANANAR and possibly playing a few shows in the Baltimore/Pittsburgh/NYC area in May; hope to see some of you then!
November 2022: Added a new solo record, AVALANCHE, to the recordings page. It’s a bit of an anomaly, closer in spirit to The Last Birds to Sing than any of the older New Dog records or my other collaborations. I recorded it over a few restless weeks in 2021 and then shelved it, but hearing it again with fresh ears, and with winter approaching, it feels like the right moment to let it go. Each song on AVALANCHE began with a single word, a memory or thought, expressed in a 15-second melody and stretched to precisely two and a half minutes. The instruments play roughly the same melody at different times (most of the time) and finish each other’s lines (sometimes). A friend described the opener as “a large, slow-turning ball of wool or dust, touching the ground, darkening with dirt, then rising again.” I like that. RIYL: William Basinski, The Caretaker, etc.
May 2022: I’m thrilled to announce the next Hourloupe project, the second in a triptych of records dealing with time, the natural world, and spirituality. Sleepwalker is warmer, weirder, and a bit more ruminative than Future Deserts, which releases this month. It comes out August 5th and is up to order now. Fifteen copies on lathe cut vinyl, 25 tapes, all hand-numbered. Learn more and pre-order it at Bandcamp if you’re interested.
Here’s a lyric video I made for the first single, “Lost Room,” about a room that disappears from the Alhambra palace:
February 2022: So pleased to announce “Future Deserts,” a collaboration with my friend Frank Menchaca, releasing this May under the name Hourloupe — a name we adopted from a series of paintings by Jean Dubuffet. The songs on the album all revolve around the central theme of exploded or collapsed time: ancient sounds combined with our burning world. Greek harps, woozy synths, intimate pianos and jolts of noise form the sonic landscape. The arrangements of voice and sound guide the listener on a journey in which time is cut up and remixed. There is texting to stone tablets. An ancient mummy revives in a COVID-19 ward. Jesus appears poolside at a resort. Books eat the fire into which they are tossed. A toddler physicist wanders a Bronze Age settlement trying to define where we are, where we were and what the future looks like. There’s limited edition lathe-cut vinyl, 50 copies of a cassette tape with lyric cards tucked inside, and a postcard featuring a painting by Frank. Weird little surprises throughout. Check it out and order a copy here.
January 2022: The latest album (“Kosti”), a collaboration with Aran Epochal, is out now via Poli5 records in Prague. It’s an ode to the mythology and culture of the Czech Republic that pairs meditative poetry with menacing sounds. It’s been described as dusky, spartan, icy, and mysterious, a “work of art” and a “rare, unusual, and intriguing release.” Listen to it on Bandcamp, Spotify, or on the recordings page.
Anar Badalov 
