Lowlakes are a band after my own heart. Take a quick listen to Now, She Said off their upcoming debut Iceberg Nerves and you’ll be confronted with the most distant sounding song you’ll ever hear.
The amount of delay and reverb on basically every single instrument means that there is more white noise than original signal for like half the song. It’s not gazy, it’s not fuzzy, it’s incredibly clean and remote. Move as close to your speakers as possible, turn it up as loud as you can and it’ll still feel like it’s being performed 2,500 km away.
Lowlakes return to Alice Springs in this fascinating and colourful mini-doco. Get an exclusive first look here at Happy.
And in some strange way, there’s a good reason for it to sound like it’s being performed at that very specific distance. Lowlakes are originally from Alice Springs, a town most of us only know of because of it’s inclusion on national weather forecast maps.
Frontman Tom Snowdon explains that the origin of this distant sound and sad lyricism is the disparate experience between living in a small, tight knit community like Alice Springs and living in a big city like Melbourne. If I’m honest though, I’m pretty sure this sadness is experienced when moving from anywhere to Melbourne.
How do I know this? Lowlakes have shot us an exclusive first look at their mini-doco about their experience of growing up in and then moving back to Alice Springs. Even if you’re not a fan of Lowlakes haunting ambience*, there is some wonderful imagery in the short piece of film and the soundtrack (obviously provided by Lowlakes) seems to fit perfectly into the flat red expanse and the wide purple sunset skies.
Lowlakes are currently touring Europe and recording material for their new album in the Austrian Alps. They’re locked in for a few festivals, with more to come, so if any of you Happy people find yourself somewhere between Stuttgart and London in the coming months, go catch ’em! Dates below:
TOUR DATES
26.07.14 AT Göfis / Open Hair Festival
02.08.14 DE Münster / Auf Weiter Flur Festival
03.08.14 DE Offenbach / Hafen2
15.08.14 DE Hamburg / Dockville Festival
23.08.14 NL Amsterdam / Brave Festival
24.08.14 UK London / Old Blue Last
26.08.14 UK Manchester / BETA @ Gullivers
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*You Philistine
