Orange Vinyl Edition limited to 100 copies. Both editions come with printed Innersleeve.

Six years after their 2020 debut album High And Dry, Blackbird Mantra are back with their second LP, 2 AM. On this album, the Hamburg-based quartet builds on their groovy sound—a blend of garage and psych rock—while remaining open to experimentation.

What’s happened since then? Well, just life, really. New relationships, family events, a pandemic, wars, crises, Web 4.0 with all its utopian promises and dystopian realities, the pressure to earn more and more money just to survive in the big city, and the uneasy feeling that there’s less and less time left for creative projects alongside day jobs. Enough topics to keep you up at night. And to transform the constant whirlwind of thoughts into creative energy. Instead of recording the songs all at once, David Gradl (bass), Timo Grimm (vocals, guitar, keyboard), Thies Lingner (lead guitar), and Helge Schritt opted for a different approach this time. The album took shape piece by piece in a back-and-forth between songwriting sessions in the rehearsal space and the adjacent Elbdeich Studio in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg. Recorded by Velvet Bein, the result is a mosaic of nine very diverse songs that ultimately coalesce into an organic whole. Compared to the sprawling tracks on High And Dry, many of the tracks on 2 AM sound more compact, condensed, and rich in contrast.

The musical spectrum ranges from driving garage rock tracks like “Bright Morning” and “Neon Lights” to psychedelic instrumentals and experiments with breakbeats, Irish bouzouki on “Indivisible" and Latin rhythms on “2 AM”.