There are times in many musician’s lives where one will wish to go back to material they made a long time ago to try to chart how they’ve changed and how they’ve grown. This is part of the intention of the American band Beirut’s upcoming album, Artifacts. On January 6, the indie-rock band shared their third single promoting Artifacts, entitled “Fyodor Dormant.”

The single is one of many unreleased tracks from the band’s early history. “Fodor Dormant,” while somewhat slow and simple-seeming in the beginning, starts to put many different melodies and harmonies together in a way that creates a gorgeous soundscape. This reflects the intention of the band in creating the piece at the time. NME quotes the group’s frontman, Zach Condon, as suggesting that the song shows a point where the group was “starting to craft sounds from simple wave shapes into something with character was an exciting endeavour that I still enjoy. It was on songs like this one that I started adding the acoustic instruments back into the mix, using a piano that was moved into the house that I fell in love with, and my dear companion the trumpet.”

The single demonstrates, according to Condon, how he was growing, how he had “shed the training wheels of the computer program” and started to create new and innovative sounds with instruments like the ukulele and organs. Prior to “Fyodor Dormant,” Beirut released two singles from Artifacts, titled “Fisher Island Sound” and “So Slowly.” Beirut’s Benjamin Lanz and Aaron Arntz have also released an album with the supergroup LNZNDRF titled II, which was released in early 2021. Artifacts is scheduled to be released January 28 through Pompeii Records. 

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat