TOURISTS
Smokescreen
Digital Single Released 6 March 2020
Tourists share their enveloping and driven new single Smokescreen now. It’s the second single following Align (Oct 2019), to be taken from Tourists’ long-awaited debut album Another State, mixed by producer Daniel Schlett (The War on Drugs, DIIV, Here We Go Magic), and set for release late 2020. Tourists are a five-piece from Torquay whose sound is a distinctive strand of dark melodic dream-pop which combines elements of shoegaze and synth-pop with a deeper-rooted post-punk influence.
New single Smokescreen is indicative of the band’s more driven, darker side, created with a deliberate urgency emphasised by its persistent drum beat and siren-esque guitar riff. The song explores the Western world’s consumerist culture, one that controls and distracts us from what is important.
The song took inspiration from Graham Hancock’s banned TED talk ‘The War on Consciousness’ which explores the hypocrisy of drugs laws, and what Tourists describe as “the repression of our rights to a meaningful experience that gives us an alternative perspective on our lives and our true meaning.”
Prior to the release of Align and Smokescreen, Tourists released a string of singles to introduce their sound to the world. Their Cut and Run (2016) single landed in the Spotify Global Viral 50 chart earning over 500,000 plays, receiving support from tastemakers such as DIY and Clash, culminating in Tourists playing to a packed-out tent at Glastonbury Festival on the BBC Introducing stage in 2017. The band spent the following year writing and then recording their debut album Another State, with aforementioned Daniel Schlett in his Brooklyn studio.
Smokescreen is self-released as a digital single today, with Tourists forthcoming debut album Another State following late 2020. The band play the following London date in April with more tbc.
LIVE: 23 April: Hope & Anchor, London (Scruff of the Neck presents)
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