Animals As Leaders: Weightless – new album

ANIMALS AS LEADERS', led by fleet-fingered 7 and 8 stringer Tosin Abasi, second album entitled ‘Weightless’ is already out in Europe (November 4th, 2011) and will hit American stores November 8th, 2011 through Prosthetic Records. Head over to Guitar World to listen to the album's opening track ‘An Infinite Regression’ by clicking here, visit L.A. Weekly here to hear the tune ‘Somnarium’, and check out ‘Isolated Incidents’ and audio samples of all the ‘Weightless’ tracks via YouTube players available below. The CD was produced by drummer Navene Koperweis and his bandmates, mixed by guitarist Javier Reyes and mastered by  Dustin Miller. The album marks the recording debut of Koperweis and Reyes with ANIMALS AS LEADERS.

Once his Washington D.C.-based metalcore band REFLUX disbanded, Tosin Abasi was asked to record a solo album by the group's record label, Prosthetic Records. Abasi began work on an instrumental solo project as a way to further express his musical personality. The resulting self-titled debut from Abasi's new band ANIMALS AS LEADERS, a 12-track collection of guitar-driven progressive instrumentals with ambient and electronic influences, was released in 2009 (click here to find out more). After extensive touring that ensued the release, the band released a digital single, ‘Wave Of Babies’, via iTunes in 2010. As for the band's curious name,  Abasi explained it relates to looking at the world from an animal's perspective, and that it was in part inspired by Daniel Quinn's anthropocentric novel “Ishmael” (in which the author uses a telepathic gorilla to critique human culture):

“A lot of what we do is completely removed from the fact that we’re all essentially animals,” [further explained Abasi] “We have a niche on the planet and we have a role in sustainable sort of ecology, but we’ve gone against our natural calling. The name is acknowledging that we do have more of a natural role on the planet, but it’s also like, who would follow an animal to do anything? I think of the name as being both nonsensical and really literal.”