The 1975 Release 22 Track Album 'Notes On A Conditional Form' Plus Online Exhibition

The 1975 released their much-anticipated new album last Friday, but soon, in June, it comes to vinyl at Tower and is available for pre-order. Their fourth studio album, Notes On A Conditional Form is an intricate blend of meta-commentary on their own previous work and a direct and accessible mega-slate of new songs.  

Frontman Matty Healy says the album is full of contrasts: "I think that Notes is an interesting record, because it has our most aggressive moments and our most tranquil moments and they're quite harshly lined up against each other." And part of the reason why the album is so extensive is that it takes in his "musical rollodex" of sounds and ideas.

The album's ambition extends to the audio-visual. Fifteen of the songs have been taken up by fifteen artists, creating experiences based on the songs. Their work will be released, one per day, from the date of the album's release, and will be featured in a Youtube exhibition when they've all be unveiled, in a video directed by Ben Ditto.

Here's the full run-down on Notes On A Conditional Form and the Exhibition:

22 MAY 2020 (TORONTO, ON) - The 1975’s fourth album Notes On A Conditional Form is out today through Dirty Hit/Universal Music Canada, the country's leading music company. It is the follow-up to 2018’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, the record that marked The 1975 out not just as the band of their generation, but as a band for the ages too. Frontman Matty Healy and co-songwriter George Daniel, bassist Ross MacDonald and guitarist Adam Hann formed the group 17 years ago as childhood friends in Wilmslow and Notes On A Conditional Form is another landmark statement in a career full of them. “Every time I do a 1975 record, I kind of just go through my catalogue of music, the mental rolodex,” says Matty. “And I think that Notes is an interesting record, because it has our most aggressive moments and our most tranquil moments and they're quite harshly lined up against each other. I don't have a playlist of one type of music, so I don't consume music like that, and when I'm inspired it'll never happen twice in one genre.”

Seamlessly bridging the gap between A Brief Inquiry and Notes On A Conditional Form, The 1975 have continually released music in the run-up to the album release. Each has been a complete shift, not just musically, ranging from UK garage to electronica to indie-pop, but lyrically and even image-wise: the anarcho-punks amid the chaos in the People video are the Blur-wannabe indie-pop kids in the "Me & You Together Song" video are the CGI avatars in the video for the dreamy "The Birthday Party." The most recent, "If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)" takes things back almost to the source of The 1975 – a John Hughes movie bop with glimmering electronic glisses and cavernous ‘80s chords, but paired with a modern tale of lust-via-webcam and a minimalist, monochrome video. It’s proof of The 1975’s ability to simultaneously explore the leftfield while delivering giant pop bangers and resulted in the band’s highest chart position to date.

Early in the process of making NOACF, Matty spoke about the album being all about the now – about art that reflects the world and the band at the point of creation. It’s a statement that’s borne out in the finished record, a 22-track monster that is as concerned with everyday ennui on the micro scale as it is with ecological disaster on the macro. The record begins with the latest version of The 1975, the signature instrumental piece that appears in a different form on each of their albums. This one, released in July 2019, is a stirring, proactive speech from teenage activist Greta Thunberg mandating fans to wake up to environmental disaster. “To have that voice and that sentiment on the record, I couldn't think of anybody more powerful,” says Matty. Recording for the album has been ongoing since the release of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, taking in 15 studios in four countries and a mobile studio set-up aboard the band’s tourbus as they took A Brief Inquiry…’s spectacular stage-show on the road.

On NOACF, the band’s family has grown to encompass new collaborators too, including actor Timothy Healy, Matty’s father. Don’t Worry was written by Healy senior when Matty was 11, and was dusted down and recorded by the band for NOACF. Elsewhere, FKA twigs and Phoebe Bridgers lend their vocals as backing textures and a duet from the latter. “It became such a personal record that there were no rules any more,” says Matty. “Anybody who had breached the intimacy of the studio was inherently part of the record already. With Phoebe, I just felt like I hadn't loved a female vocal like hers in like a decade – I was obsessed with her record.”

The release of Notes On A Conditional Form marks the conclusion of the Music For Cars era, an umbrella title encompassing their third and fourth records, two releases that changed everything. From here, The 1975 can go anywhere.

To accompany the album release, The 1975 and director Ben Ditto have commissioned 15 artists to make artworks that respond to 15 tracks, bringing out their themes and also offering fresh perspectives on them. These artworks will be released over the next two weeks. The resulting exhibition takes the innovative form of a YouTube playlist and is the first time an online exhibition has ever been hosted on a band’s album, and it’s free and accessible to all.

Working across disciplines like 3D modelling, AI, generative animation, motion-capture animation, performance, robotics and more, artists Ai-Da, Alice Bucknell, Candela Capitán, Joey Holder, Rindon Johnson, Mia Kerin, Sondra Perry, Christopher MacInnes, Frederick Paxton, Demon Sanctuary, Jacolby Satterwhite, Most Dismal Swamp, Weirdcore and Agusta Yr explore themes and motifs that resonate with the new album: technology, hope, love, anxiety and violence. Both the album and the exhibition reflect upon the contemporary search for one’s true self online.