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Cigar Cigarette is the solo project of producer, sound engineer, and multi-instrumentalist Chris McLaughlin. Today, Cigar Cigarette has announced his debut single “Hard Five.” One listen to this track, written pre-election in the wake of a friend’s funeral, calls to mind both a hot summer day pounding the pavement in New York City and the nervous jitters of a world mid-collapse. “I think there’s a lot of anxiety in the music,” he says. “These songs were written about an apocalyptic future I felt was coming, the rise of know-nothings, anti-science and nationalism that was starting to bubble up. It’s terrifying because a lot of it was open-ended imagery, but now serves as a kind of gallows humor—it’s just getting worse and worse, and all you can do to stay sane sometimes is laugh!”
Read the latest piece on Cigar Cigarette via American Songwriter and listen to the track via Northern Transmissions.
His upcoming debut EP, Cigar Cigar Cigar Cigarette is an industrial-tinged alternative soundscape guided by anxious, apocalyptic mystique as much as it is by McLaughlin’s wide-spanning ear and expansive vision. Boasting ten years of production work ranging from Kanye West and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver to F*************** of The Strokes’ machinegum collective and a recent Neon Indian remix, McLaughlin’s solo debut is a strange and stirring collection of songs that calls to mind The Smiths and The Virgins if they played on the ashes of a fallen city.
Rooted in distorted guitar amplifications and ominous synthesizer the songs on Cigar Cigar Cigar Cigarette are seething with anxiety and urgency. McLaughlin’s project may serve as a respite amid the chaos, but his ethos remains generous as his production work, rooted in aiding and uplifting the voices of other musicians and participating actively in the fight against the oppressive forces at hand, including taking part in a compilation put out by Rough Trade in support of the Black Visions Collective.
Connect with Cigar Cigarette:
WEBSITE // FACEBOOK// INSTAGRAM //SPOTIFY// YOUTUBE
