Four songs about energy (generation/extraction) played on guitars, drum machines and pulsing synths (plus some clarinet and harpsichord).
Written in Helsinki and London, and recorded at drummer Lewis’s Drone Lodge studio in Walthamstow, they contemplate human traffic, the legend of the king asleep in the hill, untouchable electricity and the loneliness of the deep sea diver.
For these songs about energy we mostly turned to synths and drum machines (SH101, OP1, DrumBrute, plenty of soft synths), though there are still a fair amount of electric guitars, drums and other acoustic instruments on the EP (not least of which is Mike Cranny’s excellent clarinet). They were written in Helsinki and London, and recorded in the most part at drummer Lewis’s Drone Lodge studio in Walthamstow.
Flowers At The Border:
This song contrasts invisible gas, flowing (mostly) freely over borders – even during times of war and between nations otherwise in conflict – with restricted peoples; hemmed in and harrowed, unable to cross. Flowers at the border for those that tried and failed. A rare excursion for us into a non-4/4 time signature, though we’ve as yet been unable to agree on what that time signature actually is (answers on a jazzy postcard to CIS HQ, please).
The Long Dead King:
The long dead king is coal, quietly sleeping in the hill until the time comes when he is needed most. A lonely sleep; long enough to forget past mistakes, but not deep enough to erase the doubts that inevitably wander in during the small hours. A song in two parts, one that hopefully answers the question “what would it sound like if Electrelane attempted a version of Blue Monday?”. The main metallic loop that can be heard running through the whole thing is provided by that most dancefloor-friendly of instruments, the harpsichord.
Bowed Clusters:
When you want to see electricity you look up, to thunder clouds or to search for St Elmo’s fire. My tiny brain gave up trying to understand physics around the age of 11, instead I picture comets delivering electricity to us from above, soaring in and seeding the skies with silver. You can’t hold it, and only the effects of it can be heard; the crackle in the clouds or the hum in the speaker wire (though this one features the sounds of our attempts, captured by holding a smartphone with the camera on over the pickups of an amped up electric guitar). In a very Spinal Tap move, this song features three different types of bass (synth, four-string bass and Bass VI).
I Learned To Swim Under Water:
My dad used to work as a commercial diver on North Sea oil rigs, spending days below the surface working on pipelines or in decompression chambers, isolated and in danger. At a comfortable remove of four decades (and many miles inland) I wondered what it would be like floating about down there, the faint lights of the support vessel far above you and endless, colourless expanse all about, a space full of unknowable creatures (worrying) and enormous, man-made structures (somehow even worse). I asked my dad if he had always been happy in the sea – “not especially” was his pragmatic, unfussy dad answer. The exception to the others above, most of the music for this track was recorded several years ago in my front room whilst trying to write a score for a short film. It has been waiting to find its right place (in this case the North Sea) ever since.
Matt Ashton