Emily Graham
CYMBALS
Announce Tour Dates
Share the video for ‘Where Nothing Can Be Defined‘
New album, Light In Your Mind out now on Tough Love Records
CYMBALS — the London-based duo of Jack Cleverly and Dan Simons — have announced new tour dates for November and December, including shows in Cardiff, Brighton, Leeds and Glasgow (see below). The band has also shared the video for “Where Nothing Can Be Defined,” the latest single from their stunning second album, Light In Your Mind, released in August 2017 on Tough Love Records.
The video is directed by Danny Nellis from Proper Ornaments and Charles Howl, who says of it, “I love making videos with projectors but everyone always seems to chuck found footage over the top of a band without any thought in the hope it will just look cool. When the guys told me the inspiration for the song I wanted to try and put Jack in a spaceship using the projections and send him catapulting towards earth as part of a looping, never ending, open narrative.”
CYMBALS’ Jack Cleverly says of the song: “At the time I had the idea for the song, I was doing something I had got into, which was to flip a sunset sky in my mind upside-down and backwards, so the clouds look like islands in a vast sea. I can now see that at that time I was also trying to escape in my mind. And a sea, in a sky, was an image that carried me a long way.”
Live dates:
Wednesday 8th November – Porters, Cardiff
Friday 10th November – Green Door Store, Brighton w/ AUTOBAHN
Tuesday 28th November – Headrow House, Leeds
Wednesday 29th November – Broadcast, Glasgow
Tuesday 12th December – Supersonic, Paris, France
“Where Nothing Can Be Defined” follows previous singles “Car Crash“, and “Decay” (via The FADER) and its Matthew Reed-directed video shot during the winter months in a number of British seaside towns.
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About Light In Your Mind:
“These ideas, of a world in decay, a world subject to constant change, and of the shortness of human life, made many things bearable” – VS Naipaul
Light In Your Mind is the first new material from CYMBALS in two years, and their first album since January 2014. If the wait seems long for the listener, for those involved in its creation the time in between pulls in a lifetime of unexpected experiences. That Light In Your Mind even exists is a testament to not giving in.
Since inception, CYMBALS’ line up has been subject to a great deal of change. Amidst that change there has always existed the songwriting duo of Cleverly and Simons, who formed the band in 2011 with the sole intention of “having fun”. At various points over the last six years and across three albums, an EP and single, a rotating cast of at least ten other people have formed some version of CYMBALS. It wasn’t until everything else was stripped away and all others had left that the two finally began to be what they first tried to be.
Others still contributed to Light In Your Mind – Justin Goings and Josh Hefferman both provide drums, while Alabaster DePlume plays saxophone on “Fully Automated Luxury.” Producer Kristian Robinson (Capitol K) is a major presence across the album and played a key role in guiding the transition from the band’s sound on their previous record to this one (indeed, this was the first time the band spent any significant time in a studio). Jorge Elbrecht, whose work with Ariel Pink and Tamaryn had inspired the band, mixed the record in Miami, adding those elusive final touches that make it CYMBALS’ best album to date.
Cleverly explains, “When the band cut down to just me and Dan, and we stopped trying to find more people, I remember that it was scary at the time, and we didn’t know if we would keep going. We agreed to a few rehearsals together and see where it went. We had a great surprise: it felt great, the writing was easy. It was if together we gave up trying to be anything other than what we are. We cut any bullsh*t between the two of us and talked honestly about the last few years. We found that when we started writing together, we were going faster towards the feeling that had given rise to CYMBALS in the first place.”
The ‘bullsh*t’ that Cleverly refers to was hardly trivial. Failing relationships, betrayal, addiction, illness: the emotional challenges were huge. Thankfully, they were not insurmountable, and as with so much creative practice, it was through the music itself that a wider understanding of the world was found.
Light In Your Mind features 11 eclectic original songs, ranging from melodically memorable pop (“Car Crash,” “Talk To Me”), bucolic instrumentals (“My Body,” “Numbers”) and longer, pensive songs that explore the space in between (“ASMR,” “I Thought I Knew You”). “Fully Automated Luxury,” the sole song fully written by Dan Simons, is minimal and soulful, accompanied by strings, harmonies, and a beat akin to Rhye.
Cleverly recognizes the unexpected contrasts best when commenting on the name of the album: “The title Light In Your Mind comes from the song “Where Nothing Can Be Defined.” The idea of not being able to name what’s happening is kind of a cop out, but it’s about grasping at something within when that thing within is not a clear light or dark.”
Cleverly elaborates, “In this title I see the image of a guy escaping an imaginary world. But the Light In Your Mind is that there is nothing to escape. In the constant decline, there is always revival.”
As final track “Lifetime Achievement Award” concludes, a synth loop first heard on the opening track is subtly re-introduced, completing a circle of sorts. Like decay, the album never really ends. And like CYMBALS, at the end it’s born anew again, stronger than before.
Order:
http://smarturl.it/lightinyourmind
CYMBALS on the Web:
https://soundcloud.com/cymbals
http://www.cymbalsmusic.com/
Tough Love Records on the Web:
http://toughloverecords.com/
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