Hospital Gown
photo by Katherine Tejada

Hospital Gown (Sound of Animals Fighting) tap Kreayshawn, Teen Suicide, pg.99 vocalist & more for debut LP

Rich Loren Balling of The Sound of Animals Fighting, Pyramids, ex-Rx Bandits, and more has yet another project, Hospital Gown, and this one finds him exploring his love of hyperpop and electronic indie pop. His upcoming debut album Diamond Life 2 is due November 18 via Born Losers Records (cassette pre-order), and it’s loaded with an amazing, eclectic cast of guest vocalists from all different musical walks of life, including Kreayshawn, Teen Suicide’s Sam Ray, Kitty, Funeral Diner’s Seth Babb, Rx Bandits’ Steve Choi, GFOTY, Ink & Dagger’s Don Devore, pagenintynine’s Chris Taylor, Hail the Sun’s Donovan Melero, Darcy Baylis, Record Setter’s Judy Mitchell, Modern Color’s Fleming Valenzuela, and more. (Seriously: wow!!)

We’re premiering lead single “Everyone Has A Plan Until They Get Punched In The Mouth,” which features both Donovan Melero and GFOTY, and it’s a great example of Hospital Gown’s post-everything approach, pulling together bits of hyperpop, R&B, funk, chillwave, emo, and more and coming out with a very catchy mix. Here’s what Rich says:

Diamond Life 2 emerged from a long period of debilitating anxiety and addresses themes of nostalgia, regret, depression, fatherhood, human idiosyncrasy, and gender normality. “Everyone Has a Plan…” brings the idiosyncratic to the foreground to establish this simple premise: if we ever wonder why absurd counterproductive and downright irrational choices are made in any big forum of life from relationships to politics, one need look no further than at something as trivial as traffic to see we are just flawed and so often ill equipped to make good choices. For the video, I partnered with longtime friend Cesar Velasco to craft a narrative that juxtaposes an aging hipster with a pink plush doll named Samantha. The lyrical content and the visual narrative are only abstractly adjacent, but Velasco’s vision to animate the doll for the GFOTY feature worked out nicely. Features include GFOTY and Donovan Melero (Hail the Sun). The track was produced by Knife Girl, along with Petal Supply, Hoodwtch, wstdyth, Matthew Embree, and myself. Mastered by Stuart Hawkes.

Check out the song/video, full tracklist, and album art below…

Hospital Gown

Tracklist
1. I May Be Lost, But I’m Not a Lost Cause
(feat. 8485 & Sam Ray)
2. Sincerely, The Imposter (Part One)
(feat. Meredith Ramond)
3. Sincerely, The Imposter (Part Two)
(feat. Lord Byron, Don Devore & Tanukichan)
4. Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth
(feat. GFOTY & Donovan Melero)
5. When the Panic Sets in (Part One)
(feat. Fleming Valenzuela)
6. When the Panic Sets in (Part Two)
(feat. Lucy Lohan & Kid Trash)
7. Another Casualty of Algorithms
(feat. Cindytalk, Chris Taylor & Meredith Ramond)
8. I Can Count My True Friends on One Hand
(feat. Kreayshawn & Judy Mitchell)
9. Ones and Zeros
(feat. Knife Girl & Kitty)
10. Diamond Life 2 (Ca$h Ironic)
[feat. Lord Byron]
11. I Got Secrets
(feat. Jaye Naima)
12. The Burden of My Sins
(feat. Seth Babb & Jeancantskate)