Joseph Arthur news

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Singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur will launch his own label, Lonely Astronaut, with the Sept. 19 release of his fifth studio album, "Nuclear Daydream." The imprint will be distributed Red/Sony. Arthur's last record, 2004's acclaimed "Our Shadows Will Remain," was issued by Vector.

 

"It's interesting, starting your own venture like this," Arthur tells Billboard.com from Los Angeles, where he's already working on another new album, due next year. "There's a lot of resistance to doing something independent." Arthur will be assisted running Lonely Astronaut by Eric Gerber, a longtime friend from their formative days in Akron, Ohio, who now works in band management in Los Angeles.

 

Arthur initially intended to release separate albums derived from studio sessions in Berlin and Los Angeles, but wound up spreading out the material on "Nuclear Daydream."

 

"I didn't keep everything in its own section," he says. "I opened it up and started assembling records based more on other factors than where they were made and when. Things opened up quite a bit creatively after that." Three songs from Berlin, including the haunting, acoustic guitar-and-piano-dominated "Electrical Storm," wound up making the cut.

 

"I wanted the first release on the label to be sort of more stripped down, but also song-oriented and straightforward," he says of the new album. The new Los Angeles sessions have taken on more of an experimental bent, and will feature contributions from multi-instrumentalist Mathias Schneeberger and Twilight Singers leader Greg Dulli.

 

 

Arthur will hit the road this fall beginning Sept. 25 in Philadelphia. The tour is expected to run through mid-November.

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