Commencing with the spit and hiss of an 80s drum machine Headspace blooms with sidewinding guitars and the kind of synth swell that wouldn’t be out of place in the title sequence of a Nordic crime drama.
The track is positively tidal in its ebb and flow, reaching out for the shoreline of a chorus and receding back into the press of a textural, gothic surf. When the final chorus hits, it’s like shoving your head inside an avalanche, suffocating and overwhelming. “Perhaps the most relatable song on the EP. Everyone has a crush they’ve tried to get over.” states Amber.
The EP in question is Nice Things Now, All The Time, the follow up to 2022’s debut Wishful Thinker and this time out a big consideration was physical space and how it could be mapped into sound. Like The Pixies on Surfa Rosa, the physicality of rooms, areas and buildings each had a sonic fingerprint: “We thought more about the rooms we recorded in. Drums, for example, we used a very small and detailed space with a lot of mics for ‘Headspace’” says Arthur.
With so much newer shoegaze being created from sample packs, digital manipulations and corroding ones and zeros, there’s something special in a band using pedals, picks and the unnatural echoes of manmade spaces to build a complex, sonic world. Both EPs will be packaged onto 12’ vinyl for the first time in a limited edition run that you do not want to miss out on.
Nice Things Now, All The Time is out on Friday 12th April. Find out more by clicking here.
