Hey, a whole new Cloud Nothings album! Dylan Baldi and friends have just released The Black Hole Understands, their first release since 2018’s Last Building Burning. Baldi and his longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz made it under quarantine this spring, passing audio files between Cleveland and Philadelphia. Here’s Baldi with further details:

When the world shut down in March, making music was the only thing keeping me tethered to any sense of normalcy. The Black Hole Understands is a record born of this early quarantine anxiety and confusion.

It kind of shocks me that we managed to make this whole album via email. I’d record a guitar track in Garageband and send it to Jayson, who would play some drums and send them back to me, and I’d build the rest of the song out over top of his drumming.

Jayson mixed the record on his laptop in Cleveland, and Jack Callahan mastered it in New York City. Chris Madak played synthesizer on “An Average World.”

We’ll be donating 25% of the album sales, split between two charities: Play On Philly (https://playonphilly.org) and the Rainey Institute (https://raineyinstitute.org), dedicated to music and arts education for children in neighborhoods of Philadelphia and Cleveland where it otherwise would not be available.

On Twitter, Baldi adds that Cloud Nothings are launching a subscription service through Bandcamp: “you’ll get a digital EP every month, a discount on merch, and for the *super subscribers* you get 2 vinyl records a year.” Regarding the new album: “it’s poppy and also kind of sad. which is more or less my state of mind.” Via email, Gerycz says this is not the “emo ambient record” Baldi tweeted about in May, but rather a conjuring of “summer pop vibes.”

The whole album is streaming at Bandcamp, and you can check out two of its tracks, “Story That I Live” and “The Mess Is Permanent,” below.

The Black Hole Understands is out now. Sign up for Cloud Nothings’ subscription service here.