{"product_id":"ekko-astral_beltway-is-burning_2026_disco-bertus-france_1","title":"Beltway Is Burning","description":"When Ekko Astral released their striking debut album, \"Pink Balloons,\" in 2024, it would still be a year and a half before Trump took office and the National Guard was deployed in Washington. Recorded just after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Ekko Astral's second album, \"The Beltway Is Burning,\" was always conceived as a real-time historical document in the form of dark comedy. Each track unfolds like a vignette, with Ekko Astral inviting the listener into their fictional version of the Beltway (the area bounded by I-495), where Adam Sandler is a god-president and the DMV has become a demilitarized zone, a desert controlled by rockers with round butts and Soundcloud rappers. In the surreal first single, \"Lil Xan Goes to Washington,\" the main character goes to Washington to lobby for a drug addict aid bill before succumbing to the grotesque horror of K Street (where all the big lobbying firms are based), and ends up selling himself out. These loud, absurd caricatures abound on Beltway, whose foundations are both heavier, poppier, and more complex than on its predecessor, Pink Balloons. Where Pink Balloons was designed to lift the soul, Beltway Is Burning aims to remind us of the stakes. On the penultimate track, \"Blood Mountain,\" Holzman wonders: \"If I don't know what's wrong, how can I fix it?\" This kind of tension is omnipresent in Ekko Astral's work, anchoring Beltway in our current reality and infusing each song with urgency and realism despite their surreal contours.","brand":"Ekko Astral","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57489923375448,"sku":null,"price":23872853.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/ekko-astral_beltway-is-burning_2026_disco-bertus-france_1","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}