''The Undivided Five'' is the third studio album by the ambient music duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen. It was released on 1 November 2019 on Ninja Tune.

Recording

''The Undivided Five'' was produced in eight different recording studios across Europe. A Winged Victory for the Sullens two members,

Dustin O'Halloran Dustin O'Halloran (born September 8, 1971) is an American composer and pianist. Aside from releasing music as a recording artist, O'Halloran is a film and TV composer, as well as one half of ambient act A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Early ...

and

Adam Wiltzie Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie (born September 17, 1969, New York City, NY) is a composer and sound engineer based in Brussels, Belgium. Early life Wiltzie was born in New York City, NY. Originally a champion youth tennis player, a knee injury sustaine ...

, recorded in their own respective studios in Berlin, Germany and Brussels, Belgium. Orchestral

sample Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...

s were recorded at Studio 22 at

Magyar Rádió Magyar Rádió (MR, ''The Hungarian Radio Corporation'', also known internationally as ''Radio Budapest'') is Hungary's publicly funded radio broadcasting organisation. It is also the country's official international broadcasting station. Dome ...

, Hungary's official

international broadcasting International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was ...

station, in Budapest and several parts of the album were rerecorded in Église du Béguinage in Brussels. O'Halloran and Wiltzie recorded additional

grand piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

at a woodland studio in northern Italy and "experimented with

overdubs Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

" at Australian composer

Ben Frost Ben Frost (born 1980) is an Australian-Icelandic musician, composer, record producer, sound designer, and director. Life Born in Melbourne, Australia, and based in Reykjavík, Iceland, since 2005, Frost composes minimalist, instrumental, a ...

s studio in Reykjavík, Iceland. The final mix was conducted at Vox Ton in Berlin, where all previous A Winged Victory for the Sullen releases had been mixed.

Composition

''The Undivided Five'' features 9 tracks, consisting of a mixture of

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

, piano and modular synthesizers. In particular, O'Halloran and Wiltzie were influenced by French impressionist composer Claude Debussy, "whose big chords and complicated arrangements inform a lot of their approach" and who the opening track ("Our Lord Debussy") alludes to. Icelandic composer

Jóhann Jóhannsson Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson (; 19 September 1969 – 9 February 2018) was an Icelandic composer who wrote music for a wide array of media including theatre, dance, television, and film. His work is stylised by its blending of traditional orchest ...

, for whom the duo had completed a remix prior to his death in 2018, was also noted as an influence. One of O'Halloran and Wiltzie's closest friends died at the beginning of ''The Undivided Five''s recording sessions, at which point O'Halloran also learned he was to become a father for the first time. The album's theme was described as "a profound realisation of life, death, the afterlife, and the spaces in between". Swedish abstract artist

Hilma af Klint Hilma af Klint (; 26 October 1862 – 21 October 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstra ...

s spiritist group "The Five" subsequently informed the album's themes and inspired the title. The title is also a reference to the album's songs being "centered around the harmonic perfect fifth", "the five senses" and "the divine interval".

Release

''The Undivided Five'' was released on 1 November 2019 on Ninja Tune. It is A Winged Victory for the Sullen's debut release on the label; the duo were previously signed to

Erased Tapes Records Erased Tapes Records is a London-based independent record label focusing on releasing avant-garde and experimental electronic music. History The record company was established by Robert Raths in early 2007 in London, with the release of Ryan L ...

in Europe and Kranky in North America. The album will be issued on CD, standard and deluxe-edition 180-gram LP and made available for digital download and streaming. A double A-side digital-only single, "The Rhythm of a Dividing Pair"/"The Haunted Victorian Pencil" was released as ''The Undivided Five''s lead

single Single may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Single (music), a song release Songs * "Single" (Natasha Bedingfield song), 2004 * "Single" (New Kids on the Block and Ne-Yo song), 2008 * "Single" (William Wei song), 2016 * "Single", by ...

on 24 September, the day of the album's announcement.

Track listing

Charts

Release history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Undivided Five, The 2019 albums A Winged Victory for the Sullen albums Ninja Tune albums