Beirut has shared the first single, “Caspian Tiger”, off a new soundtrack titled “A Study Of Losses” created for the Swedish contemporary circus Kompani Giraff.

The video for the song was directed by Jan Pivoňka.

Zach Condon shared this about it: “When I was first approached about writing a soundtrack for a circus, a certain amount of “Elephant Gun” era trauma initially came rushing up. I had been pigeonholed for years as a whimsical circus waif, full of sepia-toned images of penny farthings and perhaps lion tamers with handlebar mustaches. It couldn’t have been further from how I pictured the music I was making. I had been quietly avoiding the subject for years.

Ironic then, that I found Kompani Giraff’s project so enticing, and writing something for acrobats to perform so enjoyable. ‘Caspian Tiger’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the new album, with images in mind of the poor animals caged or fighting in Roman colosseums. They had been taken from the Asian steppes around the Caspian Sea and from as far east as Tashkent, an area I’ve been fascinated by for years. The sonic influence came in large part from choir music that I was obsessing over at the time.

Perhaps I subconsciously aimed to embrace and even improve on the imagery I had been originally written off for.”