Way back when Sufjan Stevens came down and played us a great show for the Sydney Festival he featured a track we’d never heard before: an epic orchestrated ode to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, The BQE. Apparently he recorded the piece in late 2007 but shelved it due to “feeling disenfranchised by the magnitude of the universe.” Well this October he’s going to release it! And he’s not just slapping it on a CD- he’s slapping it on a CD and giving us a DVD of some footage they put together for it and a 40 page book full of notes and photos AND a stereoscopic 3D view-master reel…? I’m not sure what i’m going to do with the last one but the rest looks great. If you want to go nuts you can also get it all on vinyl with a huge 40 page comic book featuring women with hoola hoops.
Check out this trailer to the DVD footage: imbed – http://vimeo.com/5682252
In other Sufjan news, his crazy electronic concept album based on the Chinese Lunar calendar, Enjoy Your Rabbit, is being remade. The string quartet Osso (who do a lot of the strings on his other records) has re-imagined the album as Run Rabbit Run. Apparently Bryce Dessner (of The National) has something to do with it and his wife/sister/mother/someone who just happens to have the same last name, Jessica Dessner is doing the artwork.
