Indie-rock titan John Vanderslice announced today that he’s delving deeper into glitchy electronic by not only releasing a new album with songs of that variety — but “renaming himself” as OrangePurpleBeach to boot. The unusual band name refers to the password that encrypted the dark web market Silk Road.

This new project’s first release, d E A T h~b U g, will drop April 8 along with an accompanying 12-part 16mm film directed by Serena Hughes and Sammy Lamb, and commissioned by Vanderslice. Today, he released the first taste of OrangePurpleBeach by unveiling the project’s first single, “Pylon Shadow,” along with a video for the song.

Vanderslice provided the Big Takeover with this exclusive comment on “Pylon Shadow”: “This song was made with an array of unruly early ’70s modular synths (2 ARP 2600, Moog IIIc) all synched up to one drum machine. It took us a day to get everything to talk to nice and stay in time, after that the song was recorded in a two-hour fever. We were doing overdubs and vocals without even listening back to the tracks. I trust the process when recording with people I love and knew it was a special moment.”

Check out Vanderslice’s brand-new video for “Pylon Shadow” here:

Three years in the making, OrangePurpleBeach’s debut finds Vanderslice performing vocals, piano, guitar, Yamaha C7, Mini Moog and Moog IIIc. James Riotto handled bass, along with other Moog, keyboard and Hammond B3 duties; Rob Shelton, the third member of the group, took the reins with additional synth instruments, a drum machine and a string ensemble. Andrew Maguire played drums and percussion.

Vanderslice, Riotto and Shelton wrote and performed the songs on d E A T h~b U g, which was mastered by legend Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service.

Vanderslice decided to create OrangePurpleBeach after his move from San Francisco, where he closed a branch of his Tiny Telephone studio, to Los Angeles in 2020. During the pandemic lockdown, he started moving away from analog recording, and explored electronic music and hip-hop.

Vanderslice has credited Silver Jews co-founder David Berman, who passed away in 2019, with providing tips to the OrangePurpleBeach founder as he explored new songwriting territory.