bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit surprise fans with new LP, the great guitar of universal compassion

Following the release of their 2024 debut album all the songs i know about fire –– met with acclaim from Guardian Australia, Music Feeds, Stew Magazine and community radio across the country –– Naarm/Melbourne experimental collective bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit (AKA bodies) return with surprise solo album, the great guitar of universal compassion. The title track is out now, with the full album set for digital release on Friday, October 4 via Dinosaur City.

Vocalist and guitarist Daniel Ward provides the following statement:

“in july, on a relative impulse, i left the city for 4 days with three guitars and some drums to write and record an album alone. this record more or less marks 10 years of ‘bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit’. which seems to loosely explain my hurried return to an isolated, intimate process. i wrote all of the poetry automatically, so naturally songs had an idea of a melody within them by the time i arrived; patterns already emerging. mostly this is improvised work, first or second take. the thing about improvisation is that it’s harrowing. thankfully a great learning comes from a direct engagement with fear. which doesn’t guarantee good music but it does provide a potential site of prayer. improvisation encourages being comfortable with being wrong, questioned, fleeting, vulnerable, disgusting. it requires surrender. its powerless music. that is why it can be so powerful. perched open to time’s unpredictability, and then sing. there is a boundless trust in the circle of time that lives deep in the animal music of our minds. i think even just a glimpse of that is worth looking for.

admittedly, like most music, these are all love songs. the impulse to write these songs at all arrived through a love poem i wrote to brenna. it started with the line: ‘my love went away then came back as your guitar.’ and i took that guitar and an amp called the escort to a rat infested farmstay temple where ben’s grandparents lived for some 30 years. poems are always deliberations on a balance of some kind. what power music has to transform my own little sufferings or ponderings to celebrations, pinning them moth-like as love songs to your ears. and so of course these are also love songs to music itself. i owe everything to music. that’s my access point to understanding the earth (which is known by many names such as god). and so these are also love songs to an ever-presence-non-preence of god; the spiralled lifedeath of time.”

bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit is the project of daniel ward (vocals, guitar), Aldo Thomas (vocals, guitar, saxophone), Ruby Lee (drums, drum machine, sampler), Ben Sendy-Smithers (bass) and a revolving door of collaborators and performers. The group have operated as an improvisational project for almost ten years, self-releasing almost as many demos, EPs and albums in that time. With a proclivity for lengthy, intuitive cuts guided by a desire and search for transcendental states of experience, the group have never played the same set live twice and believe in songs that have the potential for both monotonous repetition and abrupt change.

bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit's debut album all the songs i know about fire was released in October 2023 via Dinosaur City. The record was met with praise from Guardian Australia, Music Feeds, Stew Magazine, The Music, Purple Sneakers, Austin Town Hall, For the Rabbits and Mixdown among others, with plays across FBi Radio, 2SER, 4ZZZ, 3RRR, Edge, PBS and RTR, plus adds to Apple Music’s ‘The New Rock’ and ‘New Music Daily’ playlists. Additionally, the record was awarded album of the week on 4ZZZ and Edge Radio upon release, featured on Bandcamp's New & Notable, added to 3RRR's Soundscape and supported by a coveted live to air show in 3RRR's live performance space.

the great guitar of universal compassion (single) is streaming everywhere; the full album is out digitally on Friday, October 4 via Dinosaur City.

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