How to Dress Well The Anteroom

Back in June, experimentalist Tom Krell released his first How To Dress Well sounds since 2016’s Care. The Land Of The Overflowing Urn EP was just two songs, but its itching expanse harnessed too much rumbling energy to not be the start of a larger, ongoing project. Today, Krell is officially announcing that project, the forthcoming album The Anteroom, and sharing its lead single.

“Nonkilling 6 | Hunger” is just one moment in the record’s continuous psychedelia. The song opens with a distorted stanza from the poet Li Young-Lee, transforming into Krell’s empathic, fragile lyrics atop jumpy house music. The accompanying video is a collaboration between Krell and visual artist Justin Daashuur Hopkins, and its beginning rightfully contains a seizure trigger warning. The video flashes with a heavy manipulation, full of x-ray-like visuals and fuzzy bursts of light, and Krell trashes about shirtless.

In a press release, Krell explains how the album grew out of a state of chaos in the aftermath of moving to LA and the 2016 election. He continues saying, “The Anteroom is testament to a two year period in which I felt myself slipping out of the world and into a cosmic loneliness in which I would eventually be dissolved. In order to give myself a way back, I began to try to understand my station as some kind of anteroom — a space between — a chamber that separates the known and the unknown, stable life from total disintegration.”

01 “Humans Disguised as Animals | Nonkilling 1″
02 “Body Fat”
03 “False Skull 7″
04 “Nonkilling 3 | The Anteroom | False Skull 1″
05 “Vacant Boat”
06 “Nonkilling 13 | Ceiling for the Sky”
07 “A Memory, The Spinning of a Body | Nonkilling 2″
08 “Nonkilling 6 | Hunger”
09 “July 13 No Hope No Pain”
10 “Love Means Taking Action”
11 “Brutal (feat. Ocean Vuong) | False Skull 5″
12 “False Skull 12″
13 “Nothing”