Yesterday, Willis Earl Beal started tweeting at me about his new album. The life of a music editor, right? Beal remembered me from an interview I did with him in New York back in 2013 when he was just beginning to style himself as “Nobody” instead of using his personal triptych. Back then, he told me he was planning to move to Portland, something I encouraged since I grew up there and felt he’d find a good community. After living there for a few years, Beal has now relocated to Tucson, and he says his new album is inspired by the Southwest.
Via Twitter and Facebook messages, Beal has requested he be identified under that label, “Nobody,” moving forward, and shared details of his upcoming album Turn which will be out soon. He said he can no longer access his old, more official Twitter and will be occasionally using this account moving forward. Recently, another site posted an interview with Beal and review of the record, which looks to be recorded on a CD-R and labeled with Sharpie.
After a couple early records with Hot Charity/XL Recordings — 2012’s Acousmatic Sorcery and 2013’s Nobody Knows. — Beal has taken to self-releasing his music, as many artists concerned with preserving the integrity of their work have taken to doing. 2014’s pair of records Experiments In Time and Experiments In Time: The Golden Hour were also self-released, followed by another label stint with Electric Soul Records/Tender Loving Empire for 2015’s excellent Nocturnes. That’s the last full-length Beal has released, up until Turn, but he did put out two EPs last year, Through The Dark and A Chaos Paradigm, both via Tender Loving Empire.
As of that last EP, Beal is recording as Nobody and wants to make that shift clear; this is a new musical persona for him. Over Facebook, he included this brief message to share along with the single:
“There is a brief space
between dark & light,
day & night; between
micro-turns of the planet;
when it is possible
for a sensitive animal
to be changed
into something else
entirely.”- nobody
Listen to “Feel” below, which is in keeping with his existential, somber electronic folk music, and look for more non-traditional info on the new Nobody album Turn.
https://soundcloud.com/user-384439615/feel
Also check out his new website here, which leads to a year-old video for a folksy song called “Traveling Eyes.”
