Beck has officially announced his 14th studio album, ‘Hyperspace’, which will be released next month, and shared the tracks ‘Uneventful Days’ and ‘Hyperlife’ produced with Pharrell Williams. Seven of the album’s 11 tracks, including the previously released ‘Saw Lightning’ and the new single ‘Uneventful Days’, were co-written and co-produced by Pharrell. “I’d always wanted to make a record with him,” Beck told NME. “We had been friendly over the years and had got together and talked about making some music back in 2012, but around that time he ended up putting out a song with Daft Punk, then ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘Happy’.”
They started collaborating in earnest only when Pharrell asked Beck to work on the new N*E*R*D record. “From there we started sharing songs and writing and doing this project together,” Beck said. “I had a few things after the ‘Colors’ tour finished and I really wanted to seize the moment with this project,” Beck added. “There’d been a period of time where Pharrell had been really busy and an opportunity opened up so I went with it. Originally it was going to be a single or an EP, but I think we were both surprised when there was a body of work here.”
“I was not expecting the songs to come out how they did. I was going in thinking of songs like ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, y’know?” Beck said of working with Pharrell. “He felt very strongly that spending a little time with me, that ‘You need to be doing singer-songwriter type of songs’. So that was more of the direction we went in.” He continued, “I really tried to be less ambitious on the production on these songs, like to let them be simple and let them breathe. Pharrell is a master minimalist. On production I’m a bit of a maximalist – I’m known to have 140 tracks of things trying to coexist and fight to be heard at the same time. I’ve really tried to reform myself to let it be more simple.” Check out the new singles below.
Beck – Hyperspace (November 22) (2019)
01 – Hyperlife (Pharrell Williams)
02 – Uneventful Days (Pharrell Williams)
03 – Saw Lightning (Pharrell Williams)
04 – Die Waiting
05 – Chemical
06 – See Through
07 – Hyperspace
08 – Stratosphere
09 – Dark Places
10 – Star
11 – Everlasting Nothing’