Empire of the Sun rises again with a tour in support of Ask That God, the forthcoming fourth studio album by the electro-pop outfit from Down Under.
Led by Luke Steele (frontman of indie-rock act The Sleepy Jackson) and Lord Littlemore (Nick Littlemore of electronic trio PNAU), Empire of the Sun will embark on a tour of Australia, kicking off October 24 at Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, before visiting Melbourne and Brisbane and wrapping November 1 with a show at Red Hill Auditorium, in Steele’s hometown, Perth.
The national trek, produced by Frontier Touring, is the first announced in support of Ask That God, the group’s first album in eight years. Additional international shows are yet to be announced.
“Ask That God is an album we searched for and were thankfully blessed with. We are nothing more than conduits, gathering experience and finding what is meant for the Empire to find,” Steele said in a statement.
Since their breakthrough debut album from 2008, Walking On A Dream, which housed the title track and “We Are The People,” Empire of the Sun has collected eight ARIA Awards (including four at the 2009 ceremony), two APRA Music Awards, an APRA Billions Award, and collected 7.6 billion streams, according to EMI.
“Walking On A Dream” belatedly became a U.S. hit in 2016, peaking at No. 65, after hitching a ride with a Honda Civic campaign. The track would become a U.S. chart leader, hitting No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs, for their second leader after 2013’s “Alive” – a song that was released five years after “Walking on a Dream.” Empire of the Sun would also preside over the Billboard + Clio Music’s Top Commercials chart for successive months in the United States, where the single is now platinum certified.
Empire Of The Sun’s Ask That God will be released on July 26 via Capitol Records. The album has been billed as “a holistic musical adventure where imagination and reality blur and the surreal reigns supreme.”
“It has been a journey unlike any other that Empire Of The Sun has undertaken. We always ‘go there’ when it comes to exploration of both the self and the outside world,” says Littlemore. “This body of work represents the greatest shift in consciousness our world has ever seen and that’s reflected in the music.”
