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Landshapes Share New Single “Rosemary” – Third Album “Contact” Due 20th November via Bella Union

September 29, 2020
photocredit: Coen Rees

Landshapes Share New Single “Rosemary”

Third Album “Contact” Due 20th November via Bella Union

With their new album Contact due for release November 20th via Bella Union, London outfit Landshapes have shared a psychedelic new single titled ‘Rosemary’, along with an accompanying video.

The band explain that… “In ‘Rosemary’ we were exploring the herb and its ability to aid and stimulate memory, which led to the idea of connecting with ancient lineage, whether that be human ancestors or even trees. The idea of placing ourselves within a deep time trajectory, rather than seeing ourselves as special beings, separate from the world around us. The song starts with a feeling in the body, which I suppose is the holding place of so much ancestral DNA.” 

Landshapes perfectly captures the bleak utopia we surround ourselves in and mix that reality with more madness. Desolate yet destructive instrumentation reek havoc throughout “Rosemary”, with harsh, angular, and jarring rhythms exuding out through these crushing increments, fighting back with the lustrious and harmonious vocals. The complementing contrast to the sheer sharp sound stands out. The lyrics lure the audience and provide safety to their obliterating projection.

The title speaks clearly to the album’s themes, as intended. As Luisa Gerstein (vocals, synths) explains, “The working title for a long time was ‘Collapse’, but when we came around to naming it, and having the conversation from our respective isolation, we wanted to give it a name that was more hopeful, and about connectivity.  Dan suggested ‘Contact’ and it clicked – Contact with each other; contact with the wider world amidst its unravelling; music feels like a really essential part of that right now.” 

Contact took form after extensive touring for Landshapes’ second album, “Heyoon”, where the band’s shape-shifting hybrids of alt-folk, psychedelia, math-rock and more brimmed with brooding beauty. The desire to sustain the focused fluidity and elemental power of their live energy – honed from Green Man to End of the Road and beyond – compelled them to continue playing and writing together, with strict principles to light the way. As Heloise Tunstall-Behrens (bass, vocals) puts it, “We approached this album with the idea of creating more space, simplifying and allowing things to breathe. We also wanted to keep the songs briefer, with fewer deviations.” 

A few years later, Contact sustains those principles beautifully. The sulphurous sludge-rock guitars and depth-charged synths of “Rosemary” throb with a rapt intensity: while the lyrics reflect on ancestral DNA and the memory-stimulating powers of the titular herb, the physicality of the sound embodies a sense of the past living in the present, registered deep in the gut.   ‘

Rosemary’ is taken from the 2020 album ‘Contact’ by Landshapes: http://smarturl.it/landshapes_contact

https://www.facebook.com/Landshapes/

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