Shawn Foree, aka Digital Leather , is excited to announce the forthcoming release of a new album.  New Wave Gold will be released on September 15 via No Coast Recordings. Today sees him share the album’s first single, “ A Cut Above .” The track, a warm and oscillating song, talks about being courageous enough to love someone from afar and Foree notes, “Sometimes, if you care about someone, it’s better to just stay away from them, no matter how much it hurts.” The video for “A Cut Above” is a video collage compiled by Shawn and his young video artist friend, Mat Badura. It features deep-fried footage from two films they both love: Deadly Prey (1987) and Jennifer’s Body (2009), which works to create a pleasing contrast to the song, as well as complement its sizzling tone. 

This year marks almost 20 years since Foree has been making music under the alias Digital Leather. Yet even with releasing numerous albums and working with some well-known artists during this time, Digital Leather has clung to obscurity. The project, which began in Arizona with Foree and his childhood friend, Ryan Rousseau (Destruction Unit), was initially just an experiment, a toying around with some dusty synthesizers, the Cold Wave aesthetic, and a subversive disregard for audio clarity. Rousseau left early on to pursue other music, but Foree never stopped, and his writing game kept growing stronger. With New Wave Gold , Foree has shown creative maturity, and has proven himself to be a master songsmith as well as a competent producer with a penchant for sound texturing and a “mid-fi” aesthetic. 
Recorded in Foree’s apartment in Nebraska over the last couple of years, during which time Shawn also travelled the country doing environmental work, New Wave Gold is its own genre; something uniquely wonderful. Lyrically, each song is crafted of deceivingly simple lines, but the words soon reveal their true identities: culprits to a dazzlingly moody manifesto. It’s a mid-life crisis and a global crisis smashed together and thrown onto tape. Scattered with analog synths, acoustic guitars, and a fully operational DIY approach, New Wave Gold is also reminiscent of work from groups like Sebadoh and Psychic TV. References aside, New Wave Gold is a trenchant exploration of a self, coexisting with an often bleak and doubt-inspiring outer setting. It is the battle of the subject versus the all-consuming, fiery leviathan, the object, the world.