James Krivchenia (drummer and producer of Big Thief) announces his new experimental album, Blood Karaoke (Reading Room), out April 15th, and today shares its lead single, “Emissaries Of Creation.” Krivchenia’s solo work continues to surprise and Blood Karaoke has perhaps the widest palette of any of his work to date. Driving through a near-constant barrage of sound and information, the album passes through zones of hardcore techno, poptimistic kitsch cruisers, glitched-out quasi-grooves, and deeply weird YouTube ambience. Blood Karaoke is a private dance record appropriate for the overstimulated weirdness of our world.

Blood Karaoke is composed mostly of hundreds of tiny samples of unwatched YouTube videos found through random online generators (such as Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations, video game walkthroughs, old local news clips, etc), mangled midi fed into Krivchenia’s rig of synthesizers and pedals, and then meticulously layered and collaged. Work on Blood Karaoke began in the summer of 2019 while Krivchenia was living in New Mexico and was finished in his Los Angeles home in April of 2020. “It was a very iterative, long process,” says Krivchenia of creating the album. “Lots of editing and putting together little moments or 10-second chunks with lots of samples. The music was conceived to be a somewhat unbroken 40-minute long composition and I think of the singles as excerpts.” The opening track “Emissaries Of Creation” encapsulates the chaotic, cyber world of Blood Karaoke.