Arms and Sleepers will release their ninth studio album, Safe Area Earth, in January.

Safe Area Earth begins a six-part music series to be released throughout the year, comprised of three full-length albums and three EPs—“a highly conceptual project based in part on my childhood and teenage years of traveling the globe as a Bosnian refugee,” says band member Mirza Ramic. The project is also “an attempt to explore the growing personal anxiety about the meaning of one’s own existence and the impending, fast-approaching end-date to that existence.” Each release will be thematically focused on a facet of human life.

This first instalment feels emblematic of the beginning of a journey—one that sonically represents both possibilities but also uncertainties. There are heady and immersive atmospheres that wash over the listeners via waves of glistening electronics, there are gently cracking and snapping beats that allow melody to glide in and out of them, and vocals that at times resemble choral music.

“In many ways, this is a return to the melancholic early days of Arms and Sleepers,” Ramic adds. “It’s a slow record with our more heavily ambient leanings of the past, but the focus is more on the overall mood and experience. It offers a different feel both musically and emotionally— perhaps a darker, more pessimistic overall tone.”

For well over a decade, Max Lewis and Mirza Ramic have explored trip-hop, electronica, ambient, hip-hop, and subtle pop with deftness and grace. Their previous albums have come on Pelagic Records, Fake Chapter Records, and via self-releases.

Tracklisting

01. SAE
02. Art and Scope
03. Ruined By Geography
04. Open To The Elements
05. Give Me This
06. If I Had Drowned, I Would Be Here
07. Leon (feat. Sofia Insua)
08. Roman and Mayan
09. After World’s End
10. Don’t Forget
11. Black Out / Sun Shine
12. In The Jaws Of Life
13. Both But None
14. Centralia
15. Unwound
16. … .- .
17. That Is What Human Beings Do [BONUS]

Safe Area Earth is out January 17 on Future Archive Recordings, with “Give Me This” and “Ruined By Geography” streaming below.