Sacred Bones Welcomes Maria BC
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Sacred Bones is thrilled to welcome Oakland-based artist Maria BC to their roster! The label fell in love with Maria’s last album, the 2022 ambient folk masterpiece ‘Hyaline’, and is deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate on the upcoming album, ‘Spike Field’. Slated for release on October 20th, just in time for ‘sad boi season’, the album is available for pre-order in various formats, including a Sacred Bones mail-order exclusive red and yellow galaxy vinyl, available while supplies last.
To celebrate this significant addition to the Sacred Bones family, the label is releasing two songs from ‘Spike Field’ for listening pleasure. ‘Amber’ features haunting key notes, ethereal vocals, and an acoustic guitar accompaniment, along with a breathtaking music video. ‘Watcher’, on the other hand, has a more pastoral tone, carried by lush vocal arrangements and nostalgic piano chords. Both tracks showcase Maria BC’s evolution as an artist, refining their signature gauzy sound and establishing a unique voice.
In the early ’90s, a group of linguists, engineers, anthropologists, and archaeologists were assigned the task of creating a form of communication that could withstand the test of time. The question was: how could we communicate with future civilizations if language evolves or disappears entirely? The result was the creation of spike fields, bizarre granite thorn structures emerging from the ground to warn of the deadly uninhabitable nuclear waste disposal sites. For Maria BC (they/them), this concept of temporal focus shapes the narrative of their second full-length album, ‘Spike Field’. How can we reconcile the worn shadow of our past experiences while imagining our future selves?
‘Spike Field’ suggests that despite our attempts to suppress certain aspects of our identity, they will always resurface. Instead of denying the budding seeds of self-discovery, we can acknowledge these areas with a sense of wonder, creating a language that goes beyond words to connect with our past selves. Maria BC combines contrasting sonic landscapes and fluctuating vocals to symbolize the recurring theme of miscommunication and language failure throughout the album, transforming it into a unique and continuously evolving sonic language. By listening carefully, we may discover something new within ourselves.
‘Spike Field’ will join John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies’s ‘Anthology II’, Sextile’s ‘Push’, and Lathe of Heaven’s ‘Bound by Naked Skies’ in the 18th installment of the Sacred Bones Record Society. Enroll now to receive the album on society-exclusive green and red ‘color in color’ vinyl, enclosed in a deluxe wrap-around, hand-numbered sleeve with a wax seal. The record will also include a special mixtape curated by the artist. The next eligible release will also feature the most limited color vinyl variant, special sleeve, and artist-curated mixtape.
