It’s been all of 15 months since Childish Gambino (or Donald Glover, as his passport says) dropped his last album, “Awaken, My Love!”, but there’s a bright light on the horizon, with news that the modern hip-hop legend is set to premiere new music later this year pretty close to home.
As Vanity Fair reports, Childish Gambino is set to bring his immersive concert experience, Pharos, to a New Zealand audience in November, and it looks as though lucky punters will be getting some new tunes to jam out to.
First held back in California’s Joshua Tree in 2016, Glover says that Pharos “is meant to be a communal space—a place that evolves and reacts to the culture.”
“We aren’t tied to a format and that lets us adapt in a way that others can’t. We’re selling real intimacy.,” he explains. “We protect the experience and it becomes something you genuinely share with the people around you and you take away something special. We’re looking at expanding the world in 2018—there will be more artists involved.”
The initial edition of the festival was designed to take place inside a “colossal V.R. dome constructed in the middle of the desert,” Vanity Fair explained. “A Burning Man for smart, creative millennials more interested in the experience than documenting it on social media.”
This year’s event is set to take place from November 23-25 at an as-yet-unannounced location near Auckland airport, but all other details are yet to be made clear.
One of Childish Gambino’s closest collaborators, Fam Rothstein, managed to up the excitement level by letting slip that “people can expect new music in some capacity.”
“Pharos right now, as it stands in fans’ minds, is that it represents new music,” Rothstein explained. “But not committing to announcing a new album gives us more space to be able to shift while also not giving that much away.”
Of course, while fans are always keen on new tunes, it seems like any new tracks could be the last we hear from the Childish Gambino project, with Donald Glover announcing back in June that the next Gambino album will be his last. However, most fans are assuming Glover will continue with music, maybe just under a new name, with the modern-day legend confirming back in August he’s already been hard at work on new tunes.
While it looks as though this new music will only be heard in New Zealand at this stage, we just hope that someone makes sure that Donald Glover is aware that New Zealand is pretty close to Australia. Who knows, we might see another one of his stunning live shows on local turf sooner than we think.
Check out Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’:
