Beirut Confirms New Album ‘A Study Of Losses’ Composed For Swedish Circus & Inspired By German Novel

Beirut, the project of musician Zach Condon, announced a new album, A Study of Losses, due out on April 18 via Condon’s Pompeii Records. The LP, which also serves as the musical accompaniment for Swedish circus Kompani Giraff, is previewed with the single “Guericke’s Unicorn.”

Along with being commissioned by Kompani Giraff, the 18-track A Study of Losses was also inspired by the German novel Verzeichnis einiger Verluste by Judith Schalansky. Press materials explained:

A Study of Losses journeys through eleven songs and seven extended instrumental themes, named after the lunar seas and inspired by the chilling tale of a man obsessed with archiving all of humanity’s lost thoughts and creations. Like Verzeichnis einiger Verluste, A Study of Losses finds Condon writing about disappearance, preservation and the impermanence of everything known to us – extinct animal species, lost architectural and literary treasures, the process of aging and other abstract concepts.

Musically, A Study of Losses sees Condon returning to familiar mediums, “choir, renaissance and other early styles that have inspired his work,” as per the press release, “as well as variations of sounds and ideas that draw upon one of his all-time favorite records, Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs.”

The record’s second preview, “Guericke’s Unicorn,” arrived with a music video which features Kompani Giraff’s choreography, shadow puppetry and stage design. It’s an appropriate match for Condon’s music, perhaps a little too appropriate, as Condon explained.

“When I was first approached about writing a soundtrack for a circus, a certain amount of ‘Elephant Gun’ era trauma initially came rushing up,” Condon said when offering the first look at A Study of Losses with “Caspian Tiger” late last year. “I had been pigeon-holed for years as a whimsical circus waif, full of sepia-toned images of penny farthings and perhaps lion tamers with handlebar moustaches. It couldn’t have been further from how I pictured the music I was making. Ironic then, that I found Kompani Giraf’s project so enticing.”

Condon went on to detail “Guericke’s Unicorn”:

“Guericke’s unicorn is a supposed reconstruction of a fossil unicorn which was actually created from the bones of a bunch of different animals like the wooly mammoth and a narwhal. It’s worth looking up the image.

“I’ve always been fascinated by these kinds of bizarre chapters and odd side notes of history, and I wanted to reflect the unorthodox/eccentric madness of that ‘unicorn’ in a more playful song that is somewhat disjointed from the rest of the album. I think my music can have that disjointed/chaotic tendency in general, but with the whole album otherwise being somewhat uniformly baroque inspired, ‘Guericke’s Unicorn’ really makes for an outlier on this record, having its origin in an old modular synth experiment of mine.”

Watch the music video for “Guericke’s Unicorn” below:

Zach Condon’s Beirut will tour around A Study of Losses in Europe and the UK this spring. Scroll down for his itinerary and ticket info.

A Study of Losses Tracklist:

1. Disappearances and Losses
2. Forest Encyclopedia
3. Oceanus Procellarum
4. Villa Sacchetti
5. Mare Crisium
6. Garbo’s Face
7. Mare Imbrium
8. Tuanaki Atoll
9. Mare Serenitatis
10. Guericke’s Unicorn
11. Mare Humorum
12. Sappho’s Poems
13. Ghost Train
14. Caspian Tiger
15. Mani’s 7 Books
16. Moon Voyager
17. Mare Nectaris
18. Mare Tranquillitatis