XL Recordings

SAM MORTON – the musical duo comprising singer, songwriter and acclaimed actor and director Samantha Morton, and music producer and artist Richard Russell – today release a new single, “Cry Without End”, via XL Recordings. Featuring musician and composer Alabaster DePlume, “Cry Without End” is simultaneously fragile and powerful, a gorgeous, heart-jangling song that sees Morton’s ethereal vocal – acapella for the first verse – ultimately enveloped by delicate, lush orchestration. The single is complimented by a deeply personal music video directed by, and featuring, Morton herself.

“Cry Without End” is the first full release from SAM MORTON and sees their music available digitally for the first time, alongside 7” vinyl which is available to pre-order here. It follows the release of two highly sought-after, vinyl-only releases in 2023, the AA-sided singles “Hunger Hill Road / Ghosts Are Dancing” and “Supplication / Headbouncing”. The two, hand-stamped releases were met with widespread acclaim with Boomkat describing the music as “like a parallel universe Hype Williams, successfully teetering on the high-wire between order and chaos”, while adding how Morton “shimmied into experimental pop with rare grace”. Meanwhile The Guardian, who placed “Hunger Hill Road” at number 1 in their weekly playlist, described it as “eerie dub... skulking and spooked” and The Times as “a dubby, claustrophobic, souk’d-up song that wraps itself around you”.

Despite a lifelong love of, and involvement in, music, SAM MORTON is Samantha Morton’s first ever artist project. The collaboration came out after Russell reached out following her much talked-about appearance on Desert Island Discs and shared love of one of her song selections in particular: “I Remember” by Molly Drake. A period of spontaneous and intense collaboration followed, one that yielded more than an album’s worth of music and acted as a cathartic vehicle for their part-autobiographical lyricism and song-writing.