ELECTRIC TRIM • Lee Ranaldo
release date: September 15, 2017 / MUTE Records

Nine new songs recorded in collaboration with Barcelona producer Raul ‘Refree’ Fernandez in New York City and Barcelona between April 2015 and April 2016, with help from many of the players associated with my recent music, and some new friends as well: The Dust – Alan Licht, Steve Shelley, Tim Luntzel are all featured, as are Nels Cline, Kid Millions, and Sharon Van Etten, who sings on 6 songs including a duet with me on ‘Last Looks,’. Six of the nine lyrics on the record were written in collaboration with American author Jonathan Lethem. Cover and album art by Richard Prince.

This album extends the work of my previous two ‘song’ albums and moves into some rich new sonic territories and production techniques, experimenting with electronic beats and samples alongside the live players. I feel it’s the best thing I’ve done, and certainly one of the most inspirational album projects I’ve been involved with.

A feature documentary, HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANALDO : ELECTRIC TRIM, on the year-long making of the album by filmmaker Fred Riedel continues to screen at film festivals and is now available to screen HERE.

TRACK LISTING:
Moroccan Mountains
Uncle Skeleton
Let’s Start Again
Last Looks
Circular
Electric Trim
Purloined
Thrown Over The Wall
New Thing

PLAYERS:
Lee Ranaldo – acoustic & electric gtrs, vx, kybds, electronics, dr,
Raul Refree Fernandez – acoustic & electric gtrs, vx, kybds, bs, dr,
Sharon Van Etten – vx
Alan Licht – gtrs
Nels Cline – gtrs
Steve Shelley – dr
Kid Millions – dr
Tim Luntzel – bajo
Xavi de la Salud – horns
Cody Ranaldo – electronics
Mar Girona – backing vx

ELECTRIC TRIM album available here: https://po.st/LRET

‘Uncle Skeleton’, from Electric Trim. Directed by Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers). Lyrics co-authored by Jonathan Lethem:

‘Moroccan Mountains’, from Electric Trim. Directed by Fred Riedel.
‘Moroccan Mountains’ is the opening track on ‘Electric Trim’, out now on Mute! Moroccan Mountains (7:26) – The song was in part inspired by three trips to Morocco in the 1990s and a particular Moroccan carpet that Lee sat on while writing the tune. Directed by Fred Riedel, the video is an excerpt from the forthcoming documentary on the making of the album, “HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANALDO : ELECTRIC TRIM”. Shot on location in Morocco, France, New York City, Berlin, Hoboken and somewhere in the skies over the Tyrrhenian Sea in 2016.

‘Thrown Over The Wall’, a live solo version of a song from Electric Trim.
A song for the resistance: We use a telescope to measure great distances, a micrometer or microscope to explore minutia. The scale is vast, from infinite to infinitesimal; we humans but a momentary blip on the cosmic timeline. Last of your kind? RESIST/Eyes Ahead/Inclusion not Exclusion/RESIST. Radio Wave studios, Prague; King Kong/Rai Uno, Rome. Lyrics: Jonathan Lethem+LR. Edit: LR

‘New Thing’, from Electric Trim.
“A Song about the internet” – Directed by Naomi Yang – Out now on Mute.

‘Circular (Right as Rain)’, from Electric Trim:
A Circular Visualization by Fred Riedel and Lee Ranaldo. Out now on Mute.

‘Electric Trim’, from Le Blogotheque, A Take Away Show
A film by Derrick Belcham & Henri D’Armancourt
Produced by Henri D’Armancourt for La Blogothèque
Filmed in New York in March 2016. Special thanks to The Carlton Arms Hotel & Elodie Boutry.