William Tyler will release his next album, Time Indefinite, on April 25 via Psychic Hotline. In advance of the LP, the guitarist has released the first three pieces of music on the set, which he describes as a suite of sorts: “Cabin Six,” “Concern” and “Star of Hope.” All three are accompanied by short films compiled entirely from Tyler’s old family home movies. 

Time Indefinite is Tyler’s first solo album in six years. A statement about the project’s creation reads:

In early 2020, as the world teetered at the edge of unrest still unimagined, Tyler left Los Angeles for Nashville, where he’d lived most of his life after his parents left Mississippi. Most of his gear (and, for what it’s worth, all of his records) stayed in California, awaiting what he presumed would be a rather rapid return. It, of course, wasn’t. So as Tyler dealt with the depression, nerves, and questions of those endlessly tense times, he began recording little ideas and themes with his phone and a cassette deck, resigning himself to the distortion inherent in those devices.

Tyler was in early talks to make a record with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, and some of these bits felt like test cases for what they might do together. As that collaboration crept in other directions into what would become the staggering, lauded Darkness, Darkness / No Services,  Tyler magpied other sounds. He soon asked Davis to help stitch them together and perhaps clean up those imperfections. ) Davis and Tyler opted to go the other way: embrace the hiss and wobble and, in the end, unintentionally make a record that reflected those times and these—uneasy, damaged, honest.

Too, Tyler’s albums have been nests of non-musical references and influences, as he has pivoted between spirituality and philosophy and summoned the landscapes and legends of the greater American imagination. Time Indefinite conjures the deeply personal films of Ross McElwee, whose film of the same name provided inspiration. In the mid-’80s, McElwee began to make a movie about Sherman’s march through the South, but it spiraled into a tangled history about family, loss, and what we do when our best instincts surrender to the worst things we can imagine. It is no great revelation that the lives we lead shape the work we make, whether or not we intend that to be the case. In these songs, you can hear Tyler, like McElwee, wrestle with incoming demons out loud—addiction, middle age, loneliness, neurosis. All of our struggles are different, but we are united at least in having them. Time Indefinite is the soundtrack that Tyler creates.

In advance of the record’s creation, Tyler has confirmed three listening events where fans can experience the album on hi-fi sound systems at Public Records in Brooklyn, In Sheep’s Clothing in Los Angeles and Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. A full list of dates can be found below.

Here’s a look at the LP’s track list

1. Cabin Six
2. Concern
3. Star of Hope
4. Howling at the Second Moon
5. A Dream, A Flood
6. Anima Hotel
7. Electric Lake
8. The Hardest Land to Harvest
9. Held

William Tyler Tour Dates
Wed. Mar. 5 – Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records (Album Hi-Fi playback & artist Q&A)
Wed. Mar. 12 – Los Angeles, CA @  In Sheep’s Clothing HQ (Album Hi-Fi playback & artist Q&A)
Wed. Mar. 26 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival (Album Hi-Fi playback & artist Q&A)
Thu. Mar. 27 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival (William Tyler performs Time Indefinite)
Wed. June 4 – London UK @ ICA