Because we at Big Stir Records love you, we're pleased to announce a special Valentine's Day Single aimed straight at your heart. “Ohma, Bring Your Light Into This Place” b/w “Magenta Moon”, the debut tracks from THE CERAMIC AGE, are out Sunday, February 14, and up for preorder at bigstirrecords.bandcamp.com now. Share it with someone you love, especially if they also love glam-psych odes to vintage Miyazaki manga characters and starkly beautiful Nick Drake-inspired balladry.

Once, so the story goes, there was a symphonic metal band in need of a mythology around which to base their complex and theatrical song cycles, tapping Los Angeles poet WAYLON YUTANI to craft their lyrics. The band was fated never to perform before disbanding, but Yutani's words, inspired by the post-apocalyptic and toxic world depicted in Hayao Miyazaki's classic manga Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind, outlived them. Through local performances, Yutani was to meet fellow poet Elena Scott, also a pianist-composer-vocalist with a gift for melody and an ear for rich balladry in the style of the '70's singer-songwriter greats and an affinity for glam-era Bowie. Yutani's long languishing lyrics for “Ohma, Bring Your Light Into This Place” and Scott's own meditation on loss and longing “Magenta Moon” served as the cornerstones of a new musical partnership: THE CERAMIC AGE.

It's an appropriately Elton John/Bernie Taupin-style collaboration that leaves Elena as the sole performing member, so THE CERAMIC AGE is here augmented by an all-star remote recording crew culled from the extended Big Stir Records family. Scott's piano is dominant and she takes the lead vocal on “Magenta Moon”, while JOHN BORACK (POPDUDES) plays the drums on both tracks with JEEZE CRIMINY and LAURENCIA TATE (both from ZED CATS) sitting in on bass and strings respectively. CHRIS CHURCH provides the ace arena-ready lead guitar on “Ohma” with KENNETH “KIX” CRÉCHE handling the other six- and twelve-string duties across both tracks.

The sleeve art by artist megatruh (whose work can be viewed on Instagram @megatruhart) brings the two tracks together with an impressionistic rendering of Ohma the God Warrior from the A-side bathed in the “hellish purple-pink” light about which Elena sings on the B-side. The single is an ambitious art- and glam-soaked departure for Big Stir Records, but built upon the harmonies and jangling guitars you've come to expect. We offer it to you with nothing but love on Valentine's Day, hoping these tunes warm your heart as they do ours!