Max Richter Announces New Album ‘While The Flood Rages’
Taken from his latest collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor, the album features lead single ‘Now We Can Sing,’ out now.
Max Richter’s longstanding partnership with choreographer Wayne McGregor has yielded another achingly beautiful album. While The Flood Rages, out Oct. 16 via Decca Records and available for pre-order now, is taken from the ballet MaddAddam, the Oscar-nominated composer’s most recent collaboration with McGregor. Lead single “Now We Can Sing” is out now.
Click to load video
MaddAddam was a co-commission between the National Ballet Of Canada and the Royal Opera House. Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian MaddAddam trilogy, it’s Richter and McGregor’s third major collaboration following Infra and Woolf Works. Though the duo’s work on MaddAddam dates back to before the COVID-19 pandemic, it speaks to this moment with urgency, engaging in themes of ecological crisis, technological acceleration, and human connection.
Richter has extensive experience composing soundtracks, including his Oscar-nominated score for Hamnet and his acclaimed work for HBO’s The Leftovers. Yet While The Flood Rages is not a direct soundtrack to MaddAddam. Instead, Richter calls it a companion work, its 15 tracks divided into three acts. “I took the material apart and created a trajectory that makes sense just through listening,” he says. “It’s a different way to reach the same destination.”
On this tracklist, the ultimate destination is “Now We Can Sing,” which doubles as the album’s closing track. Inspired directly by Atwood’s text, the song is built from a piano motif that recurs throughout the album, expanding into a choral finale that works as a reflection on the human voice and the power of connection.
Richter is hosting global listening events to celebrate the release of While The Flood Rages. Inspired by the burgeoning culture of listening bars in cities such as Tokyo, London, Seoul, Copenhagen, New York and Melbourne, the intimate gatherings will transform cafés, wine bars and hi-fi venues into temporary listening rooms where guests will be invited to disconnect from their devices and immerse themselves in the music.
