Karen O & Interpol's Paul Banks on new TRZTN album (listen)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and Tristan Bechet go way back. Tristan used to front the Brooklyn noise rock band Flux Information Sciences (that Nick Zinner was sometimes a member of), and he was also part of Karen O And The Kids, who released the Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack. As TRZTN, Tristan remixed Karen O’s song “Rapt in 2015, and now he has a new album called Royal Dagger Ballet coming out this Friday (1/22) featuring Karen O on the new song “Hieroglyphs.” (And Interpol frontman Paul Banks on the song “Black Exit,” which was released as a single in 2017.)

“Hieroglyphs” features an array of mesmerizing yet hard-hitting synths that create an ethereal, haunting quality against Karen’s soft, dreamy vocals. Here’s what TRZTN said about it to The FADER:

“Hieroglyphs” cements the album’s theme of trans-dimensional, surreal journeys. A place both beautiful and violent. I sent her a sketch which she then recorded quirky, celestial lyrics setting the tone for what’s to come. Her siren-like wails and whimsical fairy-tale like approach added the emotional dimension. Without holding back I embarked on a phantasmagorical way of production – sculpting sound more than composing conventionally. I recorded clangs and digital whitenoise. I re-shaped her voice, deformed the structure, and resampled her own vocals creating the main staccato vocal theme. The track disintegrates and falls back together like the push and pull of a rubber band stretching. ‘Hieroglyphs’ resembles an odd Lynchian dreamstate; bizarre and beautiful. A sonic portrait that warbles away into space dust.

Watch the Barnaby Roper-directed video for “Hieroglyphs” (which features dancer Victoria Dauberville) and listen to the song with Paul Banks below.