The xx have released a new mini documentary to launch the online archive of their record label, Young. Watch it below.
In the 10-minute clip, the band revisits their 2014 residency at New York City’s famed Park Avenue Armory with a performance of the album cut “Shelter” off their 2009 debut album.
“In March of 2014, the xx took up residency at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City for 25 live performances, designed to test the perceptions of intimacy and scale,” the doc’s introduction reads as it flashes on screen. “Across 10 days, each 50-minute event started with the band and a crowd of only 45 spectators installed together in a small, sunken white square.”
The text continues, “The band and the audience faced each other as the ceiling rose and eventually fell away, revealing the 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall in full — a vast, shapeless space, illustrated by smoke and projected light, creating a uniquely voyeuristic and deeply personal shared live experience. This video attempts to capture that space and the transfer of energy that took place in it.”
Named “Young then,” the indie label’s archive is set to include both new and previously unreleased material from its roster of artists like Sampha, Jamie xx, Koreless, Mount Kimbie, and more.
In January, the band’s 2010 single “VCR” was covered by Arlo Parks from her own bedroom (a.k.a. the “lo-fi lounge”). Meanwhile, Romy Madley Croft dropped her debut solo single “Lifetime” in September of last year — just months after Jamie xx returned with “Idontknow,” his first solo single in half a decade.
