While British politicians are getting all riled up about Brexiting and calling elections they don’t need to lose a majority that was otherwise firmly within their cold dying hands, British musicians are busy getting on with the business of making amazing music in an open, collaborative way that, you know; doesn’t suggest isolation as an admirable end-goal.
Case in point is a newly announced surprise-collaboration between electronic everyman Shackleton and Bristol-based chanteuse Anika (whose 2010 debut album was produced by the lord of Bristol Geoff Barrow). The freshly-formed duo will release their first album, Behind the Glass on July 10 via Shackleton’s own Woe To The Septic Heart label.
The details on the ground are still a bit thin, so we’ll have to rely on the press release, which promises “layer upon layer of musical depth and complexity and an emotional quality that is both haunting and moving at the same time,” wherein Anika “narrates a tale of love, longing, fate and compulsion which stretches out in the style of a surreal fable” atop “a vivid backdrop of infinitely detailed sonic complexity that conjures up something between devotional music and avant-trance, with the use non-standard time signatures often running against each other — an unusual and occasionally atonal sound palette, repetitive melodic motifs and a blatant disregard for the conventional 3 minute song format.”
Wow. Did you get all that? After you’re done reading it twice more, check out some representative clips from both Shackleton and Anika to help fill-in any remaining aesthetic gaps. After that? Hold your breath and wait for July 10, I guess. Provided that Britain as a country can hold its shit together for a few more weeks, we should be in for a rich reward.
Behind the Glass tracklisting:
01. Endless Memento/Regression/Wading Through The Underworld
02. The Future Is Hurt/Dirt And Fields
03. Hinter Der Vitrine
04. Our Sharpened Blade/Rid Yourself Of The Parasites/Endless Longing