Electronic music duo Sylvan Esso has surprise released a new EP Soundtrack For Mass MoCA, which is currently available on Bandcamp. Proceeds from the project will help support Imagine Waterworks, a New Orleans organization with a focus on climate justice, water management and disaster readiness and response.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn for last year’s  MASS MoCA’s Auditory After Hours series, Soundtrack For MassMoCA is a five-track project featuring modular and ambient music. A bulk of the project is focused on four long-form ambient pieces, including the track “Free” which was written within the museum’s backstage.

“Stuck inside and searching for a way to connect to our own work without the (what I had finally come to realize as) essential finalizing process of playing in front of other people, I was feeling both frozen in conventions of my own making and the need to redefine the way I experienced the act of making something in the first place,” Sanborn explained in a press release. “So with MASS MoCA’s (very generous) deadline on the horizon, over the course of about six weeks I would regularly put together a small system of instruments and sounds that felt right in the moment, and just start recording without too much forethought.”

Sylvan Esso have been busy throughout the last year, debuting a new music video for “Numb,” which coincided with the band’s Shaking Out The Numb tour. Their latest record Free Love was released last year, and dealt with themes regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.

Soundtrack for MASS MoCA tracklist
1. part 1
2. part 2 [free]
3. part 3
4. part 4
5. part 5 [mass]

Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna