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AMBER ARCADES Shares new single ‘Fading Lines’

April 14, 2016
Nick Helderman

Nick Helderman

 

AMBER ARCADES

Shares new single, ‘Fading Lines

Debut album, ‘Fading Lines’, due 3rd June 2016
via Heavenly Recordings

Live dates inc. an album release show at The Lexington in London on June 7th & appearances at The Great Escape, Green Man & End Of The Road

Amber Arcades, the moniker of Dutch musician Annelotte de Graaf, announces‘Fading Lines’ as her new single, with an impact date of 3rd June 2016.

The title track from her debut album, also released on 3rd June 2016 via Heavenly, isdelightfully bouncy’ (Drowned In Sound) and presents a floating melody over ‘elegant drifts of blurred guitar-pop’ (The Quietus). One of the standout track from her recent lives shows at Moth Club in London and at SXSW in Austin, Texas, ‘Fading Lines’ is available to stream below…

Recorded at Strange Weather Studio in New York with producer Ben Greenberg (The Men, Beach Fossils, Destruction Unit), ‘Fading Lines’ was inspired by time, continuity, coincidence and magic. Other inspirations include early-morning jetlag (‘Turning Light’ – listen HERE) and an artist’s plans for a utopian city (‘Constant’s Dream’). Although that sounds pretty dreamy (and these songs do have wonderful ethereal qualities), De Graaf’s dreams are not the whimsical kind. De Graaf’s dreams have led to her working as a legal aide on UN war crime tribunals (she currently works in human rights law with people leaving Syria), to inviting strangers to share her Utrecht squat (which led to a friendship and later to her signing to Heavenly), and to spending her life savings on a flight to New York because that’s where she wanted to record her first album.

After researching producers and deciding to work with Greenberg (‘the odd one out as he’d produced all this hardcore punk shit’), Annelotte was joined by Shane Butler and Keven Lareau of Quilt on guitar and bass, Jackson Pollis of Real Estate on drums, plus Meg Duffy on slide guitar on the eerie, clip-clopping ‘Apophenia’. They listened to “a lot ofSuicide, Broadcast, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, The Gun Club…” and worked on the songs that Annelotte had written at home in Utrecht. “In New York everything came together beautifully – the whole team, the producer and the band. It was a magical time – writing an album had been an abstract thing in my mind and recording it in New York had been a wild, surreal plan. It never really occurred to me that it would happen until I sat on the plane. I had this money in my savings account and I thought, I’m going to make an album.”

Right from woozy, soaring opener ‘Come With Me’, this album invites endless interpretations – or simply emotional and physical reactions of joy, loss, acceptance and “the billions of different views there are to this life and whatever we’re doing here”. The result is a dazzling debut, full of swirling, steely songs, from an exceptional new talent.

Watch the video for previous single, ‘Right Now’, directed by Jeroen van der Poel & Anna de Rijk,  HERE.

A headline album release show has been announced for June 7th at The Lexington and the band will also appear at this year’s The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, Secret Garden Party, Green Man and End Of The Road. Full live dates are as follows with UK shows in bold:

April 16 Phono a Recordstore Day Afterparty @ Tivoli de Helling, Utrecht, NL
May 6/7/8 Here Comes The Summer @ Vlieland, NL
May 19 The Great Escape, Brighton, UK
June 2 Albumrelease @ EKKO, Utrecht, NL
June 4 Lunar Festival @ Tamworth In Arden, UK
June 7 The Lexington, London UK
June 8 L’Espace B, Paris FR
June 10 4AD, Diksmuide, BE
June 11 Auster Club, Berlin, DE
July 22 Secret Garden Party, Abbots Ripton, UK
July 23 Deer Shed Festival, Topcliffe, UK
August 21 Green Man Festival, Brecon Beacons, UK
August 26/27 Amsterdam Woods Festival, Amsterdam, NL
September 2/3/4 End Of The Road Festival, Larmer Tree Garden, UK

Fading Lines’ will be released on CD (HVNLP126CD), LP (HVNLP126) and Digital (HVNLP126DIG). The album is available to pre-order now physically and digitally (HERE)with an instant grat of ‘Right Now’, ‘Turning Light’ and ‘Fading Lines’. The tracklisting is as follows:

1.       Come With Me
2.       Constant’s Dream
3.       Fading Lines
4.       I Will Follow
5.       Perpetuum Mobile
6.       Right Now
7.       Apophenia
8.       This Time
9.       Turning Light
10.     White Fuzz

Fading Lines Single Artwork:

Album Artwork:

Previous praise for Amber Arcades:

“de Graaf’s gorgeous melodies float by in a dream-like state, before heavenly harmonies take hold and strike a glorious melancholic chord.” – The Line of Best Fit

“what a damn fine thing it is – as suitable for sleety January days as it is balmy festival mornings.” – Noisey

“On one level you’ll find those beautiful, sweet, innocent vocals, but on the other sits granulated synth noise that pirouettes from speaker to speaker.” – Clash

“Imagine what Yo La Tengo might come up with if they tried to reframe Republica’s “Ready To Go” as one of their trademark melancholy drifts, or think of some incredible lost Stereolab B-side as remembered from the back of your subconscious. ” – Stereogum

“Amber Arcades will pull you under her spell” – Consequence of Sound

“It’s a lo-fi garage-rock number, not unlike Courtney Barnett, Stereolab or Deerhoof.” –Loud and Quiet on ‘Fading Lines‘ Single

Connect:

http://www.amberarcades.net
https://www.facebook.com/AmberArcades/
https://soundcloud.com/amber-arcades/
https://twitter.com/AmberArcades

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