Ed Schrader’s Music Beat have dropped new single “Roman Candle”. The track is the second single off the Baltimore duo’s forthcoming album Orchestra Hits, available September 20th via Upset The Rhythm. The duo just finished off a run of dates with fellow Baltimore band Future Islands.

“We are not into the garden,” Schrader wails on the relentless “Roman Candle”, a song about the sad debacle of Woodstock ’99, and a direct response to Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”, a utopian ode to hippie idealism. A 19-year-old Schrader, having snuck into Woodstock ’99 through a hole in the fence, was there the night members of the crowd used candles intended for a vigil for victims of the Columbine High School massacre to set fires all over the grounds. Even before the fires, Schrader remembered feeling disconnected from the music, the nostalgic cash grab, and the meatheads in the crowd. After watching a press tower collapse, they boarded a random shuttle bus and were dropped off near a Denny’s.

“It was a far cry from the Garden of Eden,” Schrader said. “That experience defined what I didn’t want to be a part of. It was the raw ugliness that had crept in to fill the void of a better future which never came. It is us until we don’t want it to be us.”

For Orchestra Hits, the band’s latest, that alteration was welcoming longtime musical comrade Dylan Going into the fold as a co-writer and co-producer. A songwriter in his own right, a guitar sideman for ESMB on their last two tours, and a collaborator with Rice in the noise riffage band Mandate, Going had both a unique vision and an intimate familiarity with the ESMB vibe.

“Dylan came to every show we’ve ever played in New York—no matter how weird it was,” Schrader said. “He’d be standing there ready to move an amp or feed us barbecued cactus after the gig and toss on some Golden Girls so we could decompress. It felt like family as soon as we began working, but I honestly had no idea how damn good he was at tossing out these hooks.”

According to Schrader, the songs “just poured out of us” over the course of a highly caffeinated three-day weekend in a tiny room in Devlin’s house while his cat, Sandy Goose, screamed continually. “It was like three kids hiding from the world to get into some lovely mischief,” they said. The lack of external pressure in the process gives Orchestra Hits an almost paradoxical vibe. For all of the album’s layers, that mix live and sequenced instruments, it never loses the raw energy of a small handful of friends in the same room plugging in, cranking up, and playing until they pass out.

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat
Orchestra Hits
Tracklist

1. Roman Candle
2. Into Knotted Trees
3. IDKS
4. Blue Garden
5. I Turn The Ocean Blue
6. Water Front
7. Daylight Commander
8. Silver
9. Noonday Sun

Pre-order Orchestra Hits HERE