Credit: Hanly Banks Callahan

Listen to Bill Callahan and Old Fire’s new song, ‘Mephisto’

Wed 1 November 2023 9:58, UK

American musician Bill Callahan has rejoined forces with Old Fire for the new song ‘Mephisto’.

Old Fire is the project of John Mark Lapham, who also makes music with bands such as The Earlies and MIEN. ‘Mephisto’ teases Old Fire’s upcoming EP, Iterations, which, according to Bandcamp, is “the continuation of the narrative established with Old Fire’s full-length album Voids“.

Callahan appears on several tracks from Voids, including ‘When I Was In My Prime’, ‘Don’t You Go’ and ‘Corpus’, the latter of which has formed the basis of ‘Mephisto’.

Discussing the upcoming project, Lapham explained: “With the way I record for Old Fire, I get so much material recorded with the various contributors that it’s oftentimes hard to switch off the construction process. I get really immersed in these recordings and keep going until there’s nothing left to work on, and no further directions where these songs can go.”

He also elucidated his decision to rework previous tracks, stating: “I got inspiration while working on the original versions and knew there was a different way of presenting them.”

“I don’t see this as a remix; it’s just a different chapter for that particular story,” he added. “Same for Bill’s track, ‘Mephisto’, that was sourced from ‘Corpus’. These songs felt like only half the story was told initially, so wanted to flesh out these other iterations and see where they went.”

Listen to ‘Mephisto’ below.