Cold Specks Announces Album With New Single
- Written by Marky Edison
Ladan Hussein, known on stage as Cold Specks, announced her highly anticipated new album Fool’s Paradise, set for release on 22nd September via Arts & Crafts. The single ‘Fool’s Paradise’ shows Hussein singing in Somali for the first time, calling out to a semi-mythical Somali queen of female empowerment named Araweelo, who was rumoured to castrate male prisoners. Like Cold Specks, Araweelo is a polarizing dream, always dangling between varying abstracts. Within the track is a Somali idiom, “kala garo naftaada iyo laftaada,” which translates in English to “understand the difference between your bones and your soul.”
'Fool’s Paradise' arrives on the heels of the recent single 'Wild Card'. Quickly receiving accolades from The New York Times, Indie Shuffle, Consequence of Sound and more, both tracks were produced and mixed by long-time collaborator Jim Anderson at Easy Life Studio in Toronto, with Tim Kingsbury of Arcade Fire performing bass.
Intimately exploring her identity as a Somali-Canadian woman, Fool’s Paradise is Hussein’s most personal work yet. The album encapsulates the naturalness of existing during difficult times. Hussein recently learned about her family’s former life in Somalia - including her father’s musical legacy. During her 2015 Neuroplasticity tour in Australia, Ladan discovered that her father helped form a famous band in the ‘70s called Iftin. During the writing process, she dug deep into grainy VHS recordings found online of Iftin, and of many other Somali musicians, songs and videos that had survived war. “My parents never talked much about life in Mogadishu growing up” Hussein explains, “the war split up my family, scattered them around the world, left many missing, and those that made it were forever changed.” Saling her way to shore after grueling trial, error, and musical acclaim - Fool’s Paradise is the sound of finding home, identity, and self-love.
Cold Specks is set to launch the Fool’s Paradise World Tour 2017 in the UK at the end of September:
30 September 17 - The Cluny - Newcastle,
01 October 17 - Lending Room - Leeds,
02 October 17 - King Tut's - Glasgow,
03 October 17 - Night & Day - Manchester,
04 October 17 - Cube - Bristol,
05 October 17 - Omeara – London.
