Ali Beletic is best known for her work as an installation artist. She creates symbolic art stunts as expansive as setting up mahogany and glass Judd-like sculptural pools in remote deserts, throwing parties with drummers hidden throughout the backcountry, and illuminating an entire boulder field you can hike through. Needless to say, she has an eye for provocative imagery, and apparently her senses are fluid because she has an ear for the provocative as well. The sense of roaming, exploration, and wanderlust in her visual components transfer to her music.

Beletic is gearing up to release her debut LP, Legends Of These Lands Left To Live, this summer, and the first foray is the Ennio Morricone-esque excursion “Band Of Outsiders.” As vast and barren as the remote deserts she roams for her installations, the song is minimal but dramatic. Resounding, rumbling drums, and twangy guitars ring out as Beletic’s low, sultry tone spreads across the soundscape like desert sands in the wind. She sings of time and traditions lost as electric guitar and crashing percussion join halfway through to punctuate her longing for a connection to the past. She had this to say about her inspiration for the song:

“Band of Outsiders” was one of the first few songs I wrote for this record. I was exploring the notion that there are legends that this culture does not partake in: legends passed down from generation to generation, told by great artists, legends of wildness, archetypes of our own humanity, experiences, journeys, sensibilities, passions, living left undone and unexplored. It’s a myth type song, a reference to a lost generation looking for a more profound existence. Sensing you are a part of a long lineage of vanguardism, and you are running to reclaim your heritage.

Listen.

Artwork:

Tracklist:

01 “Ends Of The Earth”
02 “Stone Fox”
03 “So Much To Love”
04 “Walk This Earth”
05 “Rugged Ancestry”
06 “Dead Serious”
07 “Band Of Outsiders”
08 “Lit Museum”
09 “Brilliant White Heat”
10 “The Hunting Fields”
11 “Wild American “

Legends Of These Lands Left To Live is out 6/17 on Lightning Records. Pre-order is available here.