Maria Linden AKA: I Break Horses has shared a remix by The Field of her Warnings album track “Death Engine”. The remix will feature on a limited edition 12” vinyl (only available in the UK), due for release on February 5th, alongside a “Turn remix from Mythologen.

For I Break Horses’s Maria Lindén decided to take the time to make something different, with an emphasis on instrumental, cinematic music. As she watched a collection of favorite films on her computer (sound muted) and made her own soundtrack sketches, these sonic workouts gradually evolved into something more: “It wasn’t until I felt an urge to add vocals and lyrics,” says Lindén, “that I realized I was making a new I Break Horses album.”

I Break Horses on Warnings:

“It has been some time in the making. About six years, involving several studios, collaborations that didn’t work out, a crashed hard drive with about two years of work, writing new material again instead of trying to repair it. New studio recordings, erasing everything, then recording most of the album myself at home…”

Yet the pay-off for her long-haul immersion is clear from statement-of-intent album opener “Turn”, a waltzing kiss-off to an ex swathed in swirling synths over nine emotive minutes. On “Silence”, Lindén suggests deeper sorrows in the interplay of serene surface synths, hypnotic loops and elemental images: when she sings “I feel a shiver,” you feel it, too.

Elsewhere, on three instrumental interludes, Lindén’s intent to experiment with sound and structure is clear. Meanwhile, there are art-pop songs here more lush than any she has made. “I’ll Be the Death of You” occupies a middle ground between Screamedelica and early OMD, while “Neon Lights” brings to mind Kraftwerk on Tron’s light grid. “I Live At Night” slow-burns like a song made for night-time LA drives; “Baby You Have Travelled for Miles without Love in Your Eyes” is an electronic lullaby spiked with troubling needle imagery. “Death Engine”s dark-wave dream-pop provides an epic centerpiece of sorts, before the vocoder hymnal of closer “Depression Tourist” arrives like an epiphany, the clouds parting after a long, absorbing journey.

A new friend on Warnings is US producer/mixing engineer Chris Coady, whose graceful way with dense sound (credits include Beach House, TV on the Radio) was not the sole reason Lindén invited him to mix the album. “Before reaching out to Chris I read an interview where he said, ‘I like to slow things down. Almost every time I love the sound of something slowed down by half, but sometimes 500% you can get interesting shapes and textures.’ And I just knew he’d be the right person for this album.”

I Break Horses
Warnings
track listing

1. Turn
2. Silence
3. l a r m
4. I’ll Be The Death of You
5. d e n l i l l a p å s e a v l y c k a
6. The Prophet
7. Neon Lights
8. I Live at Night
9. Baby You Have Travelled For Miles Without Love in Your Eyes
10. Death Engine
11. a b s o l u t a m o l l p u n k t e n
12. Depression Tourist