It was just us having fun and doing what we do best.”Īs for the lengthy title of the EP, Took explained how it was inspired by harkening back to their formative years with a fair share of nostalgia. He continued: “It felt like we could do anything, not that there are any rules usually, but you’d be conscious of going ‘this is the kind of album we’re going to make’ with certain producers. “So as much as you try and rekindle that early energy, it’s never going to be the same thing – because you’ve naturally grown and changed as people.”
“It was funny going back to the same studio to our early practices but we’re all seven years more experienced,” said Took.
Not only is the release a return to their early sound musically, the band also self-produced in the same place where they made their debut album ‘Hills End’. “We realised we weren’t going to be able to tour – and for the first time ever we’re actually at the stage where you can surprise drop an EP and it might have some impact,” he said. The band themselves also missed that element of their early sound, with Took explaining how the new four-track release marks a “nostalgic trip back to their roots” brought on by the quiet life of the pandemic. “It’s important for us to keep pushing the boundaries and changing what we do, but at the same time we left some fans wanting that noisier, guitar-driven, raucous sound.” The guitarist explained that the possibilities felt “limitless” while working with Price, but that ultimately the band selected songs that would play to the strengths of the producer. “We had strayed away from our original sound with ‘The Glow’, which was natural because we were working with the producer Stuart Price who is very dynamic and mostly known for his electronic stuff which was important for us to explore.” “This is one of four videos Archon made for the record – this grand and bizarre voyage is just getting started.“It was born out of the pandemic but also our third album,” he told NME. But for now, she suggests just taking the journey one leg at a time. After all, Chrystabell has long been primary muse to his cinematic exaltedness David Lynch. The trip from impending doom to cosmic dance party takes under five minutes, so you can do it over and over again, without a shred of space trash.”Īt the risk of pure speculation, one can easily imagine Midnight Star the album becoming a full-length feature film.
He meticulously sculpted worlds with his hands to bring the vision to life. “When I asked Archon to direct,” she enthuses, “I knew he could take it way out. Considering the album’s celestial journey, Chrystabell charged him with creating a fittingly alternate reality as a backdrop to the song’s passage from darkness into the light, and the appropriately surreal final product is like a hallucinatory, cosmic opera for a 21st Century so rife with mystery, apprehension and uncertainty. The accompanying video is helmed by Polish director Archon, whose work with the likes of Justyna Steczkowska, Anita Lipnicka and Irena Jaroska has made him a name in his home country. She explains of the song’s place at the beginning of the story: “ ‘Midnight Star’ sets the tone of high drama, mania and ultimately transcendence.” The song later concludes in exuberant, New Order style synth-pop, with Chrystabell more hopefully reporting, “Wish upon a midnight star / Worlds apart but never far.” She sets the story up by lyrically imploring, “Spaceman, soaring to Heaven / Don’t you leave us behind.” We’ve since had it on endless repeat.īut now comes the opening and title track of this highly conceptual project (which she has in the overall described as the title character’s “adventures through the cosmos during various lifetimes as an intergalactic spy, space-age disco artist, and dandy in France at the turn of the 20th Century”), and its sort of suite of disparate musical movements ultimately end up stringing exhilaratingly together to create a distinct emotional arc. Just one month ago today, Chrystabell released the first hint of her eagerly anticipated album Midnight Star (due January 21 via Love Conquered Records), with the new track ‘Breathe Into Euphoria‘ coming off as something of a psychological instructional guide for how we might move forward from all the fear and anxiety of the last nineteen months.