With their album launch party & first live show for 5 years to take place at DRILL:Brighton festival next weekend, Githead – Colin Newman (Wire), Malka Spigel and Max Franken (Minimal Compact) and Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) reveal the second single to be taken from their new album ‘Waiting for a Sign’, out December 8th on swim~.

Fans will recognize many of the classic Githead tropes in ‘Waiting for a Sign’: present and correct are the hypnotic, motorik repetition, the weighty bass lines, and the dreamy melodicism that have come to define the band’s aesthetic.

Githead formed in 2004, for what was initially intended as a one-off performance at the Swim record label’s ICA-hosted 10th anniversary event. Over the course of preparations for the gig, though, it quickly became obvious to all involved that there was a natural chemistry between them.

For the new album, however, Githead upped the ante, arriving at the studio without any written material and trusting that their response to each other’s extemporization, as well as to the mood and the surroundings, would get the creative juices flowing.

“There were no songs. Nothing,” says Spigel. “We didn’t talk about it at all, we just stood in a room and played.”

Newman adds:
 “How the material turned out is at least in part because there was no plan as regards the actual music. The time in the studio was simply the frame; there was no discussion at all as to what kind of thing we’d be playing.”

Ultimately, this is another way of framing ‘Waiting for a Sign’: Newman, Spigel, Rimbaud, and Franken approached the project as something of a blank slate, their minds free of predefined ideas and open to the creativity fostered by their encounter at Rockfield.

Githead will perform tracks from ‘Waiting for A Sign’ for the first time at Wire’s DRILL (already in it’s third incarnation), which this year is expanding and taking on a new lease of life. Fittingly, this year’s DRILL will take place by the sea at venues across Brighton on December 4th – 7th. For more information visit http://drillfestival.com/

‘Waiting for a Sign’ track list:

1. Not Coming Down
2. Bringing the Sea to the City
3. To Somewhere
4. For The Place We’re In
5. Air Dancing
6. Slow Creatures
7. Today
8. What If?
9. Waiting for a Sign