Kali Malone announces first new album of solo compositions in two years, Burning Song

Burning Song is Malone's first solo collection of songs since 2024's All Life Long. The album was recorded at the historic Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) in Leipzig, where composer J.S. Bach served as cantor for the last twenty-seven years of his life. Today, Malone previews the album with her new song "Heavy with Fruit", on which she is joined by Lucy Railton on cello and Stephen O'Malley on bowed acoustic guitar. Recording took place over two nights last August, with engineer Francesco Donadello placing over twenty microphones throughout the room and near the instruments, with the intention of allowing listeners to "locate themselves within the music". Malone is the first musician to perform contemporary works on the church's Bach Organ, an instrument completed nearly three decades ago with bespoke tuning and temperament systems based on the musical style of the baroque period. Across the album, the metaphor of burning is said to have two meanings, writes Jonathan Williger in the liner notes for Burning Song. "Fire moves in ways that appear intuitive, changing shape moment by moment, and relentlessly insistent. Here, Malone moves from harnessing the fractaline beauty of mathema...