Death Jokes: Loser Edition Coke Bottle Green Double Vinyl LP

Label: Sub Pop
Release Date: 10th May

Where have you been, Amen? We missed you. Goodness knows we played 'Freedom' from the year 2018(!) enough, with it's glacial sophisti-indie-pop. Turns out he's been honing his craft as an electronic producer making music for raves with hip hop influences - bit of a change of direction sonically yet thematically as deep, studied and likely as addictive as ever.

With Death Jokes, for the first time since the project's incarnation in 2006, the spiritual reflections and meditations of Amen Dunes are turned away from himself, and out sharply towards the world. The album is also a drastic turn musically and thematically, rooted in the electronic music of raves and of rap music he grew up with but never imagined himself able to make, playing like a scathing electronic essay on America’s culture of violence, dominance, and destructive individualism.

The work on Death Jokes began just weeks before the first word of the pandemic came in the winter of 2019; it was completed three years later as we began to emerge from the worst. The album's meaning morphed as the pandemic went on, first a reflection on our attachment to form, and to ourselves, and then shifting into a solemn indictment of our culture’s blind spots as we misjudge and attack, veiled self-centeredness and self-importance masquerading as morality.

1. Death Jokes

2. Ian
3. Joyrider
4. What I Want
5. Rugby Child
6. Boys
7. Exodus
8. Predator
9. Solo Tape
10. Purple Land
11. I Don’t Mind
12. Mary Anne
13. Round the World
14. Poor Cops