NEW IDEA SOCIETY announce the signing with Relapse for release of their new album “Fire On The Hill”, set to be released on May 15th on LP/CD/Streaming. Furthermore the band has shared a music video for ‘Dancing Horse’, watch it below.
Pre-orders are available here: https://www.relapse.com/pages/new-idea-society-fire-on-the-hill
New Idea Society has taken on differing shapes and forms over the years, but at its heart is the duo of Mike Law (Wild Arrows) and Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man), a pair enraptured and united by the alchemical power of songwriting. With a connection that can be traced back to their high school years, between them exists an intuitive understanding that informs exactly what New Idea Society is at any given point. In 2026, New Idea Society will release their fourth full length studio album, Fire On The Hill, via Relapse.
Although the pair have come a long way since their earliest explorations in audio in the late 90s, the roots of their alliance were forged in those makeshift basement studios. For Fire On The Hill, Law and Brodsky took a more collaborative approach to songwriting than on previous releases. With Brodsky describing their process as “microscopic” and Law marveling at the particulars of the minutiae they pored over, the attention to detail and their meticulous approach to making adjustments in service of the work shines through in the cohesiveness of this collection of songs. With demos passed back and forth over months – Brodsky sending them in the early morning, and Law taking the evening shift – the songs evolved naturally; refining a chord progression, adapting a lyrical perspective, or in the case of the track Lantern, rewriting the words entirely.
Having spent a busy year in 2023 working within multiple full band settings, Brodsky found himself leaning into the simplicity of composing music again with just one other musician. He found himself inspired by the spacious, minimalistic approach of albums like Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and artists such as PJ Harvey (in a somewhat poetic twist, the artwork for Fire On The Hill was painted by James F Johnston, a member of PJ Harvey’s band). With these artists in mind, Brodsky turned to Law and the pair began to piece together fragments that harkened back to their formative, lo-fi experiments in sound. The origins of lead single, Dancing Horse, can be traced back to 2007, but under their synergetic stewardship during this fertile period of work, it was transformed.
By allowing themselves to be fully immersed in the storytelling of the album, they became more attached to the songs themselves – and more discerning about what would make the cut. Thematically the album is about love, in its many forms. With each track detailing some element of navigating emotional relationships – the beauty, the pain, the loss and the hope – the duo have captured the immediacy and urgency of such feelings, tempered by a sliver of yearning that stops short of tipping into nostalgia. A sense of place is woven throughout the album, one that transcends mere geography. However, personal circumstances did facilitate Law and Brodsky quite literally returning to the Massachusetts stamping grounds of their youth during the writing process, and their creativity flourished when they embraced the same experimentalism that originally drew them to each other. Even in the years when they were not working on projects together, their creative paths and friendship remained constant. Now with years of experience to their names, alongside a developed vocabulary and extended sonic palette to draw from, they have created something specifically and idiosyncratically New Idea Society. Fire On The Hill is them in full flight, at the height of their collective powers.
Watch the music video for ‘Dancing Horse’:
Click image to watch the video
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