Magic Tuber Stringband have shared Where the Place Becomes Forgetting, a gorgeous, bucolic single from their upcoming album Heavy Water, due May 22nd via Thrill Jockey. The track arrives alongside an intimate live performance video.
As KLOF noted in an earlier feature, Magic Tuber Stringband’s music seems to embody the very essence of nature — and Where the Place Becomes Forgetting takes that quality into darker, more complicated territory. The single layers a counterpoint of steady, round-like guitar and banjo riffing with fraught fiddle swoops and the sounds of a pond that is both teeming with wildlife and bound within the shadow of a nuclear plant.
The track features field recordings captured at the Savannah River Site in Northern Georgia, where fiddler Courtney Werner was conducting research into the lasting effects of nuclear production on the surrounding landscape. The band explains:
“The field recording in the background of this piece was taken at Craig’s Pond, a former fishing pond on the edge of the Savannah River Site. Because it is located at a remote boundary of the SRS, it is surrounded by barbed wire fences and marked with no trespassing signs warning visitors that they are at the edge of federal government property. The pond has a thriving ecosystem and was home to many rare plants and animals.”
That tension — between thriving ecosystem and federal perimeter, between beauty and contamination — runs through the heart of Heavy Water, which addresses the toll of a nuclear arms plant on local landscapes and the communities that once lived among them. Where the Place Becomes Forgetting captures it in miniature: resilience and dissonance held together by masterful playing and the patient unfolding of the music itself.
The trio continue to tour throughout the US this spring, with more dates to be announced soon.
Pre-Order Heavy Water: Bandcamp | Thrill Jockey
Magic Tuber Stringband tour dates
May 13 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves Denton, TX
May 14 – Austin, TX – Radio / East
May 16 – Marfa, TX – Ballroom Marfa
May 17 – San Antonio – Echo Bridge
May 21 – New Orleans, LA – Siberia
Jun. 18 – Nelsonville, OH – Nelsonville Music Festival (June 18-20)