The video for “ATA,” the second single from Olga Bell’s LP Tempo is due for a May 27th release One Little Indian). A collaboration with Tokyo-based artist and programmer Baku Hashimoto (featuring photography by Josh Wool). Bell has also confirmed new tour dates including shows with Empress Of and Yeasayer, plus her own European headline gigs. See below for details—with more to be announced.

Bell says of the track, “‘ATA’ was inspired by a 1958 Frank O’Hara poem called ‘A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island.’ It’s filled with wordless instrumental stretches—space for thoughts to congeal, to clarify. Some elements of the beat were inspired by the Art Of Noise classic ‘Moments In Love’ (the snaps especially), and the wormy synth bass of the verses transforms into a high, bright lead when the sun finally speaks, in the middle of the song (‘baby it’s tough! but don’t get low / our work is humble / daily I rise, daily you write’).”

Written, produced and performed by Bell, Tempo is her third LP—following 2014’s Krai and 2011’s Diamonite—and features contributions from vocalist Sara Lucas and longtime collaborators Jason Nazary and Gunnar Olsen. See below for track list. “This record is first for the body, then for the mind,” says Bell, who began writing the album immediately after seeing the film Paris Is Burning. “I started every song by thinking about tempo specifically, listening to the metronome alone, feeling its relation to my body, to the pace of the day, the weather, the light. On fast days I listened to club music, most of it at least twenty years old, and on slow days I turned to early West Coast hip-hop and Portishead because of how physically charged and compelling these records feel despite their low BPM.”

Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Bell is a composer, producer and performer based in Brooklyn. A prodigious classical pianist as a child and teenager, Bell graduated from Boston’s New England Conservatory before moving to New York City to pursue electronic composition and songwriting. In 2011 she received a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition, Krai, which was released as an album in 2014 after a sold-out premiere at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

OLGA BELL LIVE

June 5—Berghain Kantine—Berlin, Germany†
June 7—Botanique—Brussels, Belgium†
June 8—Pop up Du Label—Paris, France†
June 10—Oslo—London, UK‡
June 13—The Hug and Pint—Glasgow, Scotland
June 14—Waiting Room—London, UK
June 15—Eagle Inn—Manchester, UK
June 16—De School—Amsterdam, Netherlands†
June 22—River To River Festival @ 28 Liberty (performing Krai)—New York, NY

†with Empress Of
‡with Yeasayer

TEMPO TRACK LIST

01 Power User
02 Doppio
03 Randomness
04 ATA
05 Regular
06 Zone
07 Ritual (ft. Sara Lucas)
08 Your Life Is a Lie
09 Stomach It
10 America