New Final Fantasy - "The Butcher" & "Ultimatum" (Stereogum Premiere)

Unpredictable violinist and videogame fan Owen Pallett, aka sage advice giver , aka Final Fantasy, has cobbled together a pair of excellent post-He Poos Clouds EPs due for release this fall. The first to arrive's the five-song Spectrum, 14th Century , which finds Pallett collaborating with Beirut on "fake fields recordings." Like last year's "Hey Dad " 7", it was recorded during the Flying Club Cup sessions. Pallett tells us he and "the entire corpus" of Beirut went outdoors in Quebec where "Zach led the group in some percussion stuff and I got the four brass players (Zach, Jon Natchez and the Pratts) to be choral for a bit." We're also told, lyrically and sonically, it's meant to depict/map-out the fictional land of Spectrum . Think steel drums overlapping with bird songs, wood percussion, cricket chirps, horns, and Pallett's gorgeous string arrangements. Or just take a listen to lilting, chirping "The Butcher."