Ceci Est Ma Main

January 23rd, 2015 , by

“Ceci Est Ma Main” is a French spin on “This Is My Hand,” the title track from My Brightest Diamond’s latest album. Though song simplifies the instrumentation down to a drum and guitar, this version feels more pressing and immediate. “Ceci Est Ma Main” arrives just as MBD makes a run through the Netherlands and France in February. See those tour dates here.

Lyrics below.

 

Ceci est ma main, ceci est mon poignet.
Ceci est mon bras, ceci est mon poing.
Comme une vigne entortillée, s’enveloppe et s’entrelace

Ceci est mon visage, ceci est ma bouche.
Ceci est mon œil, ceci est mon sourcil.
Comme le vin de lilas, se déversant de toi, pour toi.

Ceci est ma forme, ceci est mon moule.
Ceci est mon âge, ceci est ma charpente.
Ceci est mon esprit, ceci est ma voix.
Ceci est mon coeur, ceci est mon choix.

Ceci est ma cuisse, ceci est mon sexe.
Ceci est ma hanche, ceci est mon sein.
Ceci est mon ombre, ceci est ma haine.
Ceci est ma ligne, ceci est mon doute.

Ma mélancolie, ma flamme, ma joie, mon but d’aimer, aimer, aimer…

Ceci est ma forme, ceci est mon moule.
Ceci est mon âge, ceci est ma charpente.
Ceci est mon esprit, ceci est ma voix.
Ceci est mon coeur, ceci est mon choix.

Ceci est mon temps, ceci est mon souffle.
Ceci est ma droite, ceci est ma gauche.
Ceci est mon ombre, ceci est ma haine.
Ceci est ma ligne, ceci est mon doute.

Ma mélancolie, ma flamme, ma joie, mon but d’aimer, aimer, aimer…

 

Lover Killer: Haunting New Music Video From My Brightest Diamond

November 19th, 2014 , by

FLOOD Magazine has debuted a striking new music video of My Brightest Diamond’s “Lover/Killer.” Director Jean-Paul Frenay told FLOOD Magazine ““In a sense, I’m considering Lover Killer as an allegory of rebirth. Each one of us is facing different difficult choices throughout life. Sometimes the decisions we make are not even consciously taken. Sometimes this means to kill something you’ve loved: an idea, a thought or perhaps a friend. It’s the ineluctable rawness of life. I’m picturing those choices as little deaths, which lead to rebirth.”

My Brightest Diamond is on tour in the US now. Limited edition translucent red vinyl is available at AKR and your local record store.

This Is My Hand Can Now Be Yours

September 16th, 2014 , by

“Before the words, there was the sound.”

Primal, cerebral, at times ecstatic or uncannily serene, the new My Brightest Diamond album is out today, a personal statement by singer/composer Shara Worden and a paean to the universal power of music. This Is My Hand is an album about reconnecting—with a community, with oneself, and with one’s own body.

The press is already raving. The Guardian dubs Worden an “operatic cult star”; NME says the new LP ought to mark Worden’s entry into the “US experimental pop pantheon.” Shara Worden has said that This Is My Hand is in part about reaching out to bring together a community of listeners. And Pitchfork.com insists that she has succeeded: “This Is My Hand works on a visceral level, conjuring Worden’s intended image of tribal, fireside collaboration through a rich diversity of texture, detail, and tone.”

Naturally, This Is My Hand—an album that explores communal listening and music-making—will also be bringing together crowds around the world all autumn long by fueling a forty-stop tour across the United States, as well as in Canada and Europe.

The tours kicks off with a hometown show in Detroit, MI on Sept 19, followed by an leg running south from Toronto, Canada to Atlanta, GA from Sept. 20-Oct. 1.  After a trio of Austin, TX shows (one on Oct. 3 and two on Oct. 10) during the Austin City Limits Festival, My Brightest Diamond plays The Kessler in Dallas, TX on Oct. 12, then heads to Europe for a string of performances on the Continent from Oct. 17-Oct. 26, plus four shows in the UK and Ireland Oct. 28-31. Finally, the tour returns home to the Midwest to conclude with a second run of US dates all the way from St. Paul, MN on Nov. 8 to San Diego, CA on Dec. 13.

This Is My Hand is available as a digital download, on CD, on black or limited edition red vinyl, and in a VIP edition literally, personally stamped with Worden’s own handprint (ed: sorry, hand-stamped edition is sold out!).

Don’t Wait: Listen to MBD’s This Is My Hand

September 8th, 2014 , by

Finally, it can be heard in full: NPR is offering an exclusive First Listen of This Is My Hand, the latest stage in the ongoing metamorphosis of My Brightest Diamond.

We’ve gotten sneak peeks at My Brightest Diamond’s new LP before, in the form of a pair of streaming singles and a visually stunning new video for its lead track, the defiant pop anthem “Pressure,” but This Is My Hand takes on another layer of meaning when listened to from beginning to end.

Shara Worden, the singer-songwriter of the My Brightest Diamond project, composed the album out of a deeply personal, almost confessional emotional impetus, but constructed it note by note and song by song according to a rigorous formal intelligence.

NPR’s Katie Presley gets it: “Worden’s music feels simultaneously micro-orchestrated and entirely, ecstatically spontaneous,” she says, adding, “Every song here works as both a mission statement and a directive that’s propulsive and demanding of full attention—while Worden’s voice, particularly in the title track, provides a firm yet loving affirmation.”

This preview of This Is My Hand is only available for a limited time, but the album will be available as a physical LP, CD or digital download on Tuesday, September 16.

Listen to the preview here.

Feel the “Pressure:” New Video From My Brightest Diamond

September 3rd, 2014 , by

Rookie Magazine interviewed Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and premiered a brand new video for “Pressure.”

Did you find the answer to what the value of music is?

The answer came in not needing to answer the question anymore. In American culture, we have so much that communicates to us that art is superfluous. If something doesn’t have an immediate financial gain, then we say, “Well, that’s not valuable to us, and we’re not going to prioritize it.” In asking this question, I fell in love with making records again, and I fell in love with what music has meant to me. You can’t separate human beings from music. It’s always been with us.

Read the interview at Rookie here.

Derrick Belcham and Emily Terndrup directed the new video, which you can watch at Rookie or above.

My Brightest Diamond is making another video for the song “This Is My Hand” and you can be in it. See details here.

Be In My Brightest Diamond’s Next Music Video

August 29th, 2014 , by

You can now hear the title track from This Is My Hand by My Brightest Diamond. The song debuted today on Hitfix. Go here to listen, and to read an interview with Shara Worden of MBD. Says Shara:

This song is really about self acceptance and re-integrating the WHOLE self and there is so much happening right now across the globe, with body image, our sexuality, slavery, racism, that I just feel like this song belongs to “the larger tribe” and I want to open up this video format so that more people can have a “ritual” of sorts, accepting themselves and the tribe shows itself to be beautiful and varied as possible.

You can be in the music video for “This Is My Hand”  by taking a photo that matches the lyrics and posting it on Instagram. See here for details. We hope you do.

Limited edition translucent red vinyl is still available, and we have a few hand-numbered, handstamped VIP editions left (only 150 worldwide). Get either of those here.

 

Lover / Killer: The New Single From My Brightest Diamond

August 14th, 2014 , by

New song out today from My Brightest Diamond’s forthcoming This Is My Hand.

Says Shara Worden of MBD: “‘Lover/Killer’ is based on the idea that we all have two sides: the lover, the warrior. We’re all capable of both. The lyrics started out with me singing ‘I am a lover and a killer’ over and over again. I was trying to channel ‘bad-ass,’ be the Karen O type, show off bravado. But as I sang it, I questioned why violence equals power. ‘At the wall in the mirror’ is the resolution of that. It’s facing your own demons and embracing the shadow of your character. It’s about embracing your own power and your own frailty.”

You can listen to the song over at Refinery 29 or above.

Preorder the album on iTunes, your local record, or from Asthmatic Kitty (or Paper Bag Records in Canada) here.

 

New Video, EP Out Now From My Brightest Diamond

July 16th, 2014 , by

It starts today: the latest phase in the musical evolution of My Brightest Diamond has officially begun with the release of None More than You, an EP of new material from composer/performer Shara Worden.

The five tracks collected here hint at a new direction for My Brightest Diamond, as Worden begins combining lullabies and laments of an almost tremulous intimacy with pop songs that take as much inspiration from classic poetry as they do from the latest dancefloor anthems.

Two of those tracks are a pair of vastly different takes on “Dreaming Awake”: the raw Son Lux Mix that opens the EP, and a mix by Mason Jar Music, who got caught trying to record the song at a secret session inside of an abandoned power station. Footage of that recording session—including the bust by the police, and the subsequent al fresco performance—has been uploaded to YouTube and premiered by Consequence of Sound, along with an embedded Soundcloud stream of the complete EP.

None More than You has been released exclusively on translucent purple vinyl or as a digital download here. In addition, iTunes has bundled together a Prismatic Edition of the forthcoming My Brightest Diamond LP, This Is My Hand, that includes a download of this EP, a pre-order of the LP (due in September), and a special advance download of “Pressure,” the lead track from This Is My Hand. It’s all available now.

New EP, LP Coming Soon From My Brightest Diamond

June 3rd, 2014 , by

As the singer-songwriter and multi-intrumentalist behind My Brightest Diamond, Shara Worden has earned her reputation as a composer of popular songs with a chamber-music intimacy. The emotional intimacy of This Is My Hand, the new My Brightest Diamond LP, and None More than You, a companion EP coming out this summer, are unmistakable, but this latest iteration of the My Brightest Diamond project has opened the project up to vast new sonic possibilities.

My Brightest Diamond’s musical metamorphosis comes straight out of recent, radical transformations in Worden’s life as an artist. The songwriting on these records draw as much on top-40 pop as by Worden’s experiences in the cast of an experimental Matthew Barney film, in surprisingly direct and literal ways: the Walt Whitman poem that provides the words to None More than You’s “Whoever You Are” and the marching band–style arrangement of This Is My Hand’s “Pressure” were both inspired by elements in Barney’s The River of Fundament, but their dance-floor friendly tempo and singalong structure are borne out of Worden’s analytical thinking as a composer, mathematically breaking down her favorite radio hits.

But My Brightest Diamond still sounds like nothing else so much as My Brightest Diamond, refracting all of these influences through Worden’s inimitable, shamanic sense of artistry, and her equally inimitable singing voice.

Hear “Pressure” right now on NPR’s All Songs Considered here, or below.

None More than You, out July 15th, can be preordered from a strictly limited edition of 1000 records on lavender vinyl here, and preorders of the limited, translucent red vinyl edition of This Is My Hand come with “Pressure” as an instant download. Buy it here.

iTunes offers a preorder of the Prismatic Edition, including the LP, the EP, and an immediate download of “Pressure,” all for $11.99. Get that one here.

Get My Brightest Diamond’s “Until Now” On Noisetrade

April 10th, 2014 , by

For the price of an email address (and an optional tip), you can download Until Now, a concise compilation of the music of My Brightest Diamond since her debut album in 2006.

My Brightest Diamond will be playing in South Bend, Indiana, in Grand Rapids, and Indianapolis over the next few days. In May she’ll be touring a few select cities in Europe. See those tourdates on her website.

Expect more from MBD later this year. But for now, you can download Until Now on Noisetrade here.

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