Oxford’s very own four piece Glass Animals has been stunning the world with their incredible live performance on what seems like an endless touring schedule since their inception. This summer, they appeared at music festivals far and wide to dazzle their fans with incredible lighting, perfect vocals, and a style all their own. Today, they released their newest album, How to Be a Human Being, and it is – hands down – their greatest release yet.
But that’s not all the fun news we have for you. Vinyl Me, Please has announced that their album of the month for September is a gorgeous, limited edition blue vinyl version of How to Be a Human Being. It will be packaged with an original 12” x 12” art print by and a custom cocktail pairing. That’s right. Glass Animals has upped their game, and you could be one of the few that get your hands on a copy.
So why did Vinyl Me, Please want to partner with this band, specifically? (As if they need a reason.) “While Glass Animals hail from Oxford, there’s something uniquely global about their sound — a liquid amalgamation that blends Bollywood, American R&B and cerebral British rock,”says Cameron Schaefer, Head of Music, Vinyl Me, Please. “We were all impressed by the maturity we heard in their debut album, but the leap forward with How To Be A Human Being caught us all by surprise in the best possible way. With their sophomore effort, the band has pulled in a diverse group of characters and narratives from their past two years of travel and given fans an album that helps cement their identity as one of the most interesting and progressive bands today.”
And you thought we were done, didn’t you? Glass Animals will perform a one-of-a-kind Tumblr IRL, sponsored by Ice Breakers mints, at The Auditorium at the Village Studios in LA. The event will take place just days after the band releases their upcoming and much anticipated sophomore album. Through an immersive collaboration between Glass Animals and artists Ashten “Whoopi” Winger and Mykola “Myk” Dosenko, the event will bring to life the diverse group of fictional characters featured on the album, inspired by real people the band encountered while touring over the past 2 years.
“Music is mainly consumed digitally now,” says Dave Bayley, lead singer of Glass Animals. “This is wonderful as music is more available than ever. But what I think we’re missing is that context around the music that hard copies provided. Vinyl Me Please are finding ways to make vinyl fresh and exciting for the modern world, while Tumblr IRL lets you take it even further and create the ultimate context for a select group of fans. I love trying to combine the digital and the analog in music. Putting together traditional instruments with computers and synths. Most of the artwork we’ve done for this record is mainly analog with a bit of digital thrown in. But I thought it would be great to really explore the digital side of the artwork…the vague 8-bit squares and nintendo-style graphics that surround the photographs. And who better to do that than Whoopi! Each song on this album is a different story about a different made-up person. Whoopi wanted to take those imagined characters and create virtual versions of them. Little digital pixelated statues.”
All attendees of the Tumblr IRL event will receive a copy of How to Be a Human Being. RSVP here.
