GRAMMY-Winning Songwriter Jesse Harris Laces Airtight Compositions With Combustible Chaos On New Album Silver Balloon, Out Today 

Shares Video For “Hummingbird,” A Beautiful Jazz Melody Set Amid Torrid Distortion — Watch Here

Upcoming Live Dates Include Zebulon in Los Angeles on November 5 + Sultan Room in Brooklyn on November 9

When Jesse Harris — a GRAMMY-winning songwriter ("Don't Know Why"by Norah Jones) and a consummate collaborator for artists ranging fromBright Eyes and Maya Hawke to Lana Del Rey and John Zorn — set about writing and recording his new album Silver Balloon, he was enamored with the esteemed science fiction author Philip K. Dick. “I love how he bends reality, and I wanted to do the same in the music," Harris says.

Today, Harris’s Secret Sun label releases Silver Balloon, a collection of 10 exquisite songs assembled like miniature Goldbergian contraptions whose machinations, while beautiful, confound expectations. "Almost all of my other recordings were made live with a band, aspiring towards hi-fi recording, but on this one we played to drum pre-sets of old keyboards, processed sounds through vintage harmonizers, and layered the songs as we went along," Harris recalls of the process of recording Silver Balloon, listing just some of the tools he used to dismantle any notion of staid tastefulness.

Recorded over the course of eight days in Harris’s home studio with longtime collaborator and percussionist Kenny Wollesen, Silver Balloon was the product of a relaxed, laissez faire creative process. They would start casually at around 1pm and by 7pm, having recorded a complete song, go out to dinner at Frenchette — always Frenchette — down the block, come back and work some more. Many of their songs would be run through the H3000 Harmonizer, a piece of outboard gear first designed in the 70s that lands somewhere between Nuggets-era garage psych and modern autotune. Says Harris: “We’d turn on effects to random settings and embrace whatever occurred."

Despite the experimentation, Harris’s refined songwriting style is still everpresent. On “Hummingbird,” the most beautiful melody on the album, Harris writes what initially feels like a classic jazz standard in 32 bar form, accompanying himself with a simple yet elegant guitar part. But Wollesen adds a distorted drum machine beneath it, louder in the mix than you’d ever expect. At points, he seems to be playing radio static as an instrument. The horns are sent through effects, the sax solo collapsing on itself with random moments of distortion that could never be recreated.

Watch a new video for “Hummingbird” here. 

Cool Hunting called lead single “The Hanged Man” “moody, macabre and offbeat…It’s strangely alluring and melodic—and an exciting glimpse of what’s to come.” Listen to “The Hanged Man” here.

Meanwhile, Jazziz highlighted “One In A Million” — a bleary-eyed ballad as performed by an after-hours romantic — as an Editor’s Choice. Watch the video for “One In A Million” — an isolated fireworks display — here. 

Listen to Silver Balloon here. 

Earlier this month, Harris debuted a series of video accompaniments to Silver Balloon inspired by avant garde film, from Jonas Mekas and Warhol to Chris Marker (La Jetée). Using Super 8 film, still photography and digital cameras, Wollesen and Harris shot and edited everything themselves, creating a visual companion to the album that emphasizes its ephemeral and otherworldly collision between man and machine — a retrofuturist fantasia of sight and sound. 

You can watch the complete suite of Silver Balloon videos here.

Harris — a New York native who is a published short story writer as well as a DJ of vintage Haitian and French Antilles vinyl — came to fame after he won the 2003 Song Of The Year GRAMMY for "Don't Know Why," a song he originally recorded in 1999 but was most notably performed by Norah Jones. He first linked up with Norah when he was hitchhiking to a gig in Texas — she gave him a ride and later on that night they jammed. The rest was history.

From then he’s kept busy, whether playing on his own solo records or with famous friends. He played guitar on Bright Eyes' commercial breakout I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning; had his songs performed by Willie Nelson, Cat Power, and Emmylou Harris for the soundtrack to the film The Hottest State, written and directed by Ethan Hawke; he's also worked with John Zorn, Maya Hawke, Lana Del Rey and countless others. He now runs his own prolific independent label Secret Sun Recordings. 

Jesse Harris will be performing songs from Silver Balloon at a series of upcoming performances, including a November 5th show at Zebulon in Los Angeles and a Brooklyn concert at the Sultan Room on November 9th withTōth and Mirian Elhajli. 

Read an interview with Harris on his creative process over at 15 Questions.