Minor Victories — the group made up of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, Editors’’ Justin Lockey, and Hand Held Cine Club’s James Lockey — released their debut self-titled album earlier this year, and they’re following it up with an instrumental reimagining of songs from the album called Orchestral Variations. It’s being released on vinyl for Black Friday, and will be out digitally on 1/27. Here’s how Lockey frames the release:

I don’t really know that much about music in terms of theory, notes, scales etc. I generally just fuck about with things until it sounds right to my ear… So I guess to call this album ‘Orchestral Variations,’ it would have to be in the loosest ever sense of the term.

When we were putting together the Minor Victories album, a lot of the music came about through string arrangements, motifs, melodies, countermelodies and other such noodlings I was messing about with. This record kind of takes it back to that initial point, and re-imagines the whole record from that standpoint–the bare bones, the hint at a vocal melody, not relying on any backbeat–but stripping the songs back to the base elements and then piece-by-piece making an entirely new record. It takes the songs and elements around them and the phrases into a new place, mostly born out of hindsight and I guess a curiosity to fuck around with it all long enough until it sounded right to my ear. From all that an entirely new record was formed. It’s not a remix album, or b-sides… it’s just another way at looking/hearing things.

To announce the release, the band has shared a new video for “Cogs” featuring the orchestral version. Watch and listen below.

Tracklist:
01 “Cogs”
02 “Breaking My Light”
03 “The Thief”
04 “Give Up The Ghost”
05 “Scattered Ashes”
06 “Folk Arp”
07 “For You Always”
08 “A Hundred Ropes”
09 “Higher Hopes”
10 “Out To Sea”

Orchestral Variations is out on 180-gram double vinyl on Black Friday (11/25) in the US. It’s out digitally and worldwide on 1/27 via Fat Possum. Read our interview with Rachel Goswell about the project.