Ed O'Brien puts his Blue Morpho B-side “Abbeycwmhir” online

Ed O'Brien released “Abbeycwmhir” on streaming services and his Bandcamp on 9 July. It comes from the Blue Morpho sessions but missed the album, which Transgressive put out in May. Rolling Stone reported that until now it was only the B-side of the “Blue Morpho” 7-inch, sold in a bundle on his web store. He takes the album on a short tour of Europe and the UK from 4 October.

The track runs three and a half minutes and has no words. Layers of processed, wordless voices open it before a fingerpicked guitar comes through, under reverb and drones.

The title is a village in Powys, in the valley of the Nant Clywedog, and the Welsh name means “Abbey in the Long Valley”.

O'Brien made Blue Morpho over more than four years, through depression and what he called a midlife crisis after the pandemic. In March he told Rolling Stone that he would take his dog, Ziggy, out walking in Wales. There are a lot of places of spiritual significance in this land, whether it's an old monastery or abbey, or a mountain or a waterfall.⁴ I was drawn to these places, and through that, I healed.⁴