The National to release its six-hour performance of one song as an extremely nerdy LP set
The National plans to release its ridiculous six-hour long art museum performance of “Sorrow” as an LP—or, rather, as a nine or 10-LP set. So far there’s no hard plan of when or how this extremely for-diehards-only set will be released, but in a Reddit AMA, the band’s Matt Berninger says he hopes proceeds from the release will go to benefit charity.
Playing the same song for six hours might seem like torture to some, but, during the AMA, the group’s Aaron Dessner said it was a quasi-religious experience. According to Dessner:
“As the hours went on I think we all realized that this experience was something special for us—there was a weird hypnotic resonance and spirituality to repeating the song over and over. We almost didn’t want to stop and we learned something about our capacity for endurance and the song opened up in surprising ways…by the end it didn’t feel like we were playing it anymore.”
The National's new record, Trouble Will Find Me, is out May 21 in the U.S.