Our new album, “Twin Feathers” will be released on the 16/08 on Little Red Rabbit Records as a CD and double LP. Here’s the track listing:
1. Obscura
2. Fallen Trees
3. Through Water
4. The Museum Song
5. Lucida
6. Rituals
7. Shipwrecks
8. Slowing Time
9. The Sea & The Heather
We’re really stoked to announce we have been invited to play at the End of the Road Festival in September. Some of us went in the last couple of years and it’s really one of the best festivals around, it’s on a beautiful site and has a truly special and magic atmosphere.
This year the festival site will open on the Thursday and there will be music from that day with a secret headliner and loads of amazing bands, so it’s a good idea to stay the whole 4 days. We’re still sorting out the exact date and time we’re going to play and will keep you posted as soon as we know!
END OF THE ROAD FESTIVAL, 09-12th September 2010
This year’s End of the Road Festival will be the fifth instalment of a very special event that won Best New Festival at the UK Festival Awards 2006. It’s an intimate affair, which takes place at the beautiful Larmer Tree Gardens in North Dorset. The festival has a unique selection of music over four stages with bands including Wilco, Modest Mouse, Yo La Tengo, Black Mountain, Felice Brothers, Iron & Wine, Wolf Parade, Caribou and more playing amongst specially curated comedy and cinema tents, a mysterious library and piano in the woods, a Healing Retreat, Swedish Viking games, a wide range of delicious local and organic food, as well as the lovely company of free roaming peacocks and parrots. Come join us!
TICKETS: www.endoftheroadfestival.com
Although Fuzzy Lights’ 2008 debut LP, A Distant Voice, was certainly an impressive introduction, its somewhat austere and inconclusive character didn’t welcome as many return visits as it first seemed open to. However, this newly-cut 4-track EP does feel like a far more engaging and welcoming creature, even if it comes with the disclaimer of being unindicative of the group’s sophomore long-player, due out later this later. In some ways, Helm radiates like a different band. Which is true in a roundabout way, given that core – and married – members Xavier and Rachel Watkins appear to have recorded some/all of this 4-tracker without their regular full set of bandmates. Yet even if it is more of a between-album detour than a new forward route, this EP stands up sturdily to scrutiny.
Opener “Things We Left Behind” is a mesmeric smouldering triumph. With its desiccated drum machine, grimy keyboards, serene strings and murkily-cloaked duetting vocals, the prologue piece feels like a finely-matched collaboration between Arab Strap, Thurston Moore and Yo La Tengo. In its wake, the insistent voice-free arrangement of droning violins and earthy finger-picking across “Aira” imagines a long lost Velvet Underground barn session. “Burn With Lights” is more impressive still, with its layers of wordless incantations and treated violins being stretched over six sublime minutes. The closing “Black Diamond” offers a slightly lighter touch to round proceedings off, through a blur of rippling acoustic guitars, strings and distantly-relayed vocals. Although a sense of violence cuts in towards the song’s end, it crucially holds back from drawing blood.
Whether Fuzzy Lights’ upcoming Twin Feathers LP will match the diverse yet compact execution present here remains to be heard. Should it not however, there is certainly plenty of dark intriguing matter left to be drawn from the same well of inspiration in future. In the interim, this EP sounds exceptional in its own pocket of time.
Here’s a taster for Helm:
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Still a couple of weeks to pre-order it with free postage & packing from the shop! Pre-orders will be shipped the day before the release, which is on the 07th of June.
Here’s the tracklisting:
1. Things We Left Behind 3:51
2. Aira 3:25
3. Burn With Light 6:05
4. Black Diamond 3:57
Here’s some photos from the location where Helm was written/recorded.
Take care.x
In autumn earlier this year we set off to an old barn in the middle of the Lake District with acoustic instruments and some recording equipment. During the couple of days we spent there we wrote and recorded some songs. “Helm” is the result of that, it will be released on Little Red Rabbit Records on the 7th of June and features artwork by Gemma Lacey beautifully printed on a chipboard record sleeve.
You can pre-order it from us here.
There will be more info about Helm in the new blog section in the next couple of days, along with track excerpts.
In other news, welcome to the world Noah Watkins, born 21/03/10!
Article written by James S – Apr 21, 2005
The Fuzzy Lights are Xavier and Rachel from Cambridge and beyond that I can provide no biographical detail. They are of an unknown age, except that they clearly remember that week around five years ago that Godspeed You Black Emperor were declared the future of music by the NME. “In Silence We Weep” sounds a lot like GYBE and their ilk, only with around 16 members fewer members. Consequently, it’s about as groundbreaking as a paraplegic mole.
What it is, though, is bloody gorgeous. The mournful sweep of Rachel’s violin and the rolling rumble and riffs of Xavier’s multi-layered guitar tracks combine to make the epic No Signal – Help! very special indeed. The fact that it becomes an entirely different song half way through, before building to an incessant and punishing climax, does nothing to detract from it.
The other track, Picture Thoughts, which also tops the eight minute mark, sounds like Depeche Mode’s Pimpf being played by two particularly melancholic undertakers, which probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. The Fuzzy Lights are a great reminder that, when it’s done this well, post-rock still has the power to move you.
It’s true what they they – nice things really do come in small packages. This limited edition ep comes on one of those cute mini-cds and features original photo artwork hand assembled.
The music is a collage of strings and minimalist percussion, expertly woven into a rich and constantly evolving soundscape. Reminiscent of Detwiije and Deerpark, both reviewed elsewhere in tasty this month, the two tracks make for slightly uncomfortable listening at times, but that extra challenge only makes the experience more valuable.
Shane Blanchard
Formed in Cambridge back in 2004, three-piece Fuzzy Lights have since made quite a few ears prick up with their softly sweeping, ambient live sets. This EP neatly pulls off much the same trick, serving up a three-track helping of the aforementioned soundscape in the comfort of your own home – or, indeed, anyone else’s. The smaller scale doesn’t stop the songs having much the same effect as they do live, creating the same feeling of time having been put on hold for the music’s duration and the same desire to just lean back into the sound and let it envelope you for the next howeverlong.
A large part of that feeling of time suspension comes from the drones that Fuzzy Lights use to create an all-but-imperceptibly shimmering base for their sound. Over this they pick out darts of emotion using violin and the odd strum of guitar, creating enough of a focus to their sound to stop the listener getting bored with the drones droning on. This tremulous, violin-washed noise contains enough emotion to easily prevent it being relegated to background noise, but expresses it in such a gentle, abstract way that the EP never stops being a soothing, welcoming listen. Those who like a bit of emotional substance and subtle complexity to their spellbinding ambient noise are advised to navigate by Fuzzy Lights.
7 / 10
A lovely bit of chamber ambience (that’s in the classical sense) from Mi & L’au’s backing group and band in their own right – Fuzzy Lights. This short EP is full of bowed guitar and violin swells. Sort of reminds me of Godspeed or Esmerine with all that slow and majestic unfurling, but is probably more reminiscent of the Amateur soundtrack, with track three’s choral aspects capturing the comparison superbly. There’s lots of emotional attachment to be found here with an oddly optimistic slant that makes you hungry for more. The sound of falling stars and flickering candle light – simply lovely…