Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo announce collaborative album ‘Phantasmagoria in blue’
(Photo by Matthew Ellery) Out on September 1st 2023 via Mute is the all new 14-track album by Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo, “Phantasmagoria in blue”.
The album follows a European tour that will see Harvey and Acevedo join J.P. Shilo and Berlin band Sometimes with Others, presented as the Invisible Blue Unicorns throughout May with further dates in Autumn across the UK, Ireland and beyond. Here’s already their interpretation of Jackson C. Frank’s “Milk & Honey”, taken from his 1965 debut.
Mexican singer and filmmaker Amanda Acevedo met Mick Harvey several years ago in Mexico City while Harvey was on tour with P.J. Harvey, but it wasn’t until 2021 that their current project burst into life. After Acevedo initially suggested the collaboration, Harvey sent over some ideas and, Acevedo explains, “The first recording we did was amazing, our voices matched very well”. Harvey expands, “Little by little it started to feel like something that could be an important project and gradually became the dominant focus for the following 18 months.”
Following their initial long distance collaborative work, Harvey and Acevedo met up in Los Angeles so they could continue work in person. Harvey explains, “We aimed big, I wanted it to be a big production to match the level of ambition in the whole idea. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve been involved in, for a long time”.
In LA they worked with Alain Johannes (Eleven, Mark Lanegan, Queens of the Stone Age), recording most of the vocals at Norm Block’s Happy Ending studios in Silverlake. Late in 2022 they continued work in Melbourne, while also playing some shows in Australia together with J.P. Shilo (Hungry Ghosts, Rowland S. Howard) who is also featured on the album playing guitar and miscellaneous instruments. Harvey finished mixing the album, and coordinated the mastering with Mikey Young, before Acevedo returned to Mexico.
About Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo
Mick Harvey is renowned as a musician, record producer and composer who has been active for the last 45 years and is perhaps best known as a member of The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds and for his long term collaborative work with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave. Aside from scoring a dozen feature films and numerous short films and documentaries, split almost evenly between Australia and Europe, Harvey has also released eight solo albums in the last two decades.
This is Mexican artist Amanda Acevedo’s first project, and sees her stepping out onto the international stage for the first time. After spending 2020/21 studying film in her home town of San Luis Potisí, Acevedo has teamed up with one of her heroes to create a thematically rich collection of duets.
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