Santigold almost done with second album

June 23, 2011 by Alan Pedder in Blog

It’s hard to believe that Santigold (then Santogold) released her eponymous debut way back in 2008, but it has indeed been three whole years. After teasing us with Karen O collaboration ‘Go‘ in April, Santi has been a little coy with details of a new album, but in a new interview with Billboard she has finally revealed that the album is very close to completion. Scheduled for release this autumn on Downtown/Atlantic, the as yet untitled album features contributions from the likes of TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, The Bird & The Bee’s Greg Kurstin, dancehall producer Ricky Blaze, and long-time Santi studio man, Switch.

“I wanted it to feel dynamic and powerful. I still have the songs that sound very electronic and clubby, but I have a couple ballads on this one – my own type of ballads, where they just sound big, like the way some old Kate Bush or Peter Gabriel songs were…” she told them. “On this one song, we did a whole section that has a bottle used as the percussion, so there’s layers upon layers of Greg Kurstin playing a bottle and literally filling it with different layers of water, and stacking each note. Mixed with a marimba and taiko drums!”

She also hinted at some behind-the-scenes troubles with the label, who sound like they wanted to release the album a while back. “I never really had the experience of labels and stuff, because last time I made the record and then got a deal…, ” says Santi. “I didn’t have to deal with people talking about singles and stuff before I was even done the creative process. That was new, and annoying. So for the last six months I’ve been trying to tie up loose ends and do a couple more songs… I wrote in the direction that [the label] were telling me, but secretly I kept writing in my own direction. At the end of the day, nobody will hear anything but things that I feel 100 percent are great.”