Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard’s sonic universe continues to expand with “Gangsters”, the third official preview of Tall Tales, the joint album that will be released on May 9, 2025 on Warp Records. With a music video directed by visual artist Jonathan Zawada, the piece continues to consolidate this project as one of the most ambitious releases of the year within experimental electronica and contemporary art-pop.
👁️🗨️ “Gangsters”: a disturbing atmosphere between the digital and the human.
The music video for “Gangsters” is a visual and emotional experience. Directed by Zawada -considered by Yorke and Pritchard themselves as the “unofficial third member” of the project-, it presents a dreamlike square inhabited by animated puppets of Boschian aesthetics, which seem to dance on the verge of the grotesque. The fusion between the organic and the synthetic, the thematic axis of the album, is shown here with a disturbing clarity.
Musically, “Gangsters” is an exploration between dark ambient and minimalist dub, crossed by Yorke’s unmistakable vocal textures and Pritchard’s electronic architecture. The result is a hypnotic track, which manages to be disturbing and seductive at the same time.
🌀 Tall Tales: a concept album that plays with perception
Tall Tales has been described as a “sonic odyssey”, a sort of sonic diary of anxiety and transformation. According to its creators, it is an album gestated in full pandemic introspection, which gathers influences from synth-pop, krautrock, ambient dub and experimental music. The production, completely handmade, has not relied on artificial intelligence at any stage of its elaboration, which stands out as part of the conceptual discourse of the project.
The list of songs already confirmed includes titles such as:
- “This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice”.
- “Back in the Game”
- “The Spirit”
- “Gangsters”
- “Wandering Genie”
- “A Fake in a Faker’s World”.
Each of these cuts will be accompanied by a portion of Zawada’s animated feature film, which will be released in select theaters on May 8, the day before the album’s release.
🧠 Yorke + Pritchard + Zawada: an unprecedented artistic triad
This project not only marks a new collaboration between Yorke and Pritchard (who had already worked together on 2016’s “Beautiful People”), but also cements Jonathan Zawada as a key player in Tall Tales‘ visual narrative. The music video for “Gangsters” functions as both a standalone chapter and part of a larger work: a complete film that complements, expands and resignifies the album’s sonic experience.
🎧 Why shouldn’t you miss Tall Tales?
Because it is much more than an album. It is a multimedia experience that invites reflection, estrangement and beauty in its most distorted form. Tall Tales is shaping up to be one of the key releases of the year in the alternative and independent scene, and its third preview, “Gangsters”, only reinforces this idea.
🗓️ Tall Tales will be available on May 9, 2025
🎬 Full Visual Movie: theatrical release May 8, 2025
Editor: LoffMusic / Experimental & Electronic Music / April 2025
