Sam Blasucci has released a video for Creature, the single from his new album Black Rose, out 21st July on DoublePlay Records.
Blasucci does not hang about. Black Rose is his fifth solo album since he stepped out from Mapache in 2023, and it arrives three months after Physical Dream, the sprawling 28-track double LP he cut on a remote island property in British Columbia. Where that album spilled outwards, this one pulls in. Ten tracks, recorded mostly in the middle of the night at DoublePlay Studio in Ojai, California, engineered and mixed by Travis Frost, and nocturnal in a way you can hear rather than merely infer: a steady pulse, supernatural synths, jazz-inflected funk, an infectious levity that never quite settles.
Creature is the album in miniature. It takes the flesh-and-blood self and asks what we trade it for.
“Creature is about the soul, flesh, & blood that we have and that we seemingly often forfeit in exchange for acceptance from others or for money or our own misplaced self worth,” Blasucci says. “I think that keeping your creatureness at the top of your mind might open up some new doors that help stitch our hearts closer to the sky rather than digging ourselves deeper underground.”
Watch the accompanying film by Nicole Hawkins, starring Juju Wang & Creature the beta fish.
Black Rose circles thresholds — darkness, death, the artificial, the luminosity of the soul — and its lyrics are intimate and confronting in equal measure. Contributions come from Mia Wilson (vocals), Andres Renteria (percussion), Randal Fisher (saxophone, aerophone), Rafael Langa (congas) and Laena Myers (violin), plus what Blasucci calls “a group of Ojai legends” providing group claps on C.I.T.M.
We reviewed his solo debut, Off My Stars, back in 2023. He has travelled a considerable distance since.
Black Rose (21st July 2026) DoublePlay Records