Tashi Dorji turns to the electric guitar for his third Drag City album, low clouds hang, this land is on fire, out January 30. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove the previous two — Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit — his electric guitar now sets up a greater shock: a disarmingly gentle musical drift. Today, the first single "gathering" releases with a music video by Robert Beatty.

When asked why he turned the knob down from 11 for this album, Tashi says simply, “To find the silence.” As ever with Tashi, this is a political statement. In this time of such institutional inhumanity, what is there to feel but exhaustion? In the face of such grief, what words are there to say? These are Tashi’s punk anthems for the year 2026 — for all the years, really — to be thrown to the people outside the walls, to aid them in their quest to be allowed in. It’s a sound that lives within silence; a striking signal, meditative and melancholy, with a delicacy comparable to the lineage of Loren Connors or Bill Frisell. The song titles provide the narrative – or a prism, to allow us to gaze unblinking upon the rotting of the empire. The cover art includes this found verse, sourced from an old anarchist ‘zine:

..here we are, the dead of all time, dying once again,
only now with the object of living
you have to get outside of yourself to save yourself

The lead single, “gathering,” expounds the contemplative depths in Tashi’s oft-hectic free improvisation. Beneath its formal qualities and decorous tone, this piece burns with quiet fire: a simmering ode and an anthem for the deliberations and methodologies of resistance. In mindful progression, figures are considered, developed, restated and begun again, as the power held in reserve grows in reverberant spirit.

Dead time awakens us. We need to feel it all and then get up and get going again. Take low clouds hang, this land is on fire with you on January 30, 2026.