Today, Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith has announced the release of Correspondences Vol II, which is a new 2-track EP that will be out on March 21, through Bella Union and it is available to preorder here. For the upcoming EP, Smith improvised and wrote her own spoken-word poetry over the top, often at a distance, by allowing the sonic impressions to draw out thoughts and phrases that crystallize into moments of clarity and revelation.

“It’s a process of discovery through improvisation and channelling,” the artist explains. “We are sort of two halves, and we merge together the mental and physical traveller to get the atmosphere and the visual content, the music  and the words that will articulate what we want to do.”

“It sounds abstract but it creates an atmosphere and almost an earth that I can walk around in my mind,” adds Smith. “I can walk to these places or feel the spirits of these places, because at this point in my life I can’t make difficult journeys. I become the mental traveller. I don’t have to buy a ticket, I don’t have to go to the airport; I just listen and let myself be carried away.”

To accompany the album announcement, Soundwalk Collective and Smith have shared the first track from the EP titled “Children Of Chernobyl.” As a whole, the ditty slowly clouds over like a gathering storm as the lush textures of a languid morning transform into a vision of the glowing and walking dead. Smith’s wavering melodies can be heard wavering  against a backdrop of Geiger counter noises and eerie, which are mutated notes played on the decaying pianos of abandoned Pripyat, once home to the most prestigious music schools in the former Soviet Union.

Correspondences Vol II Track List

1. Children Of Chernobyl
2. The Acolyte, The Artist and Nature

Photo Credit: Brett Padelford