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Hollow Ponds (Lo112)

by Astronauts

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1.
Skydive 04:31 video
2.
3.
Vampires 03:46
4.
5.
6.
Hollow Ponds 06:59
7.
8.
9.
Openside 07:14
10.
Slow Days 06:03

about

After the acclaim for the Skydive single we are pleased to announce the debut album from Astronauts, the new project from Dan Carney, previously of critically acclaimed East London alt-folkers Dark Captain.

Initially conceived last year, while Dan was laid up in hospital awaiting surgery for a badly fractured leg, and written and recorded with the help of a number of his friends (most frequently former bandmate and Firestations chief Michael Cranny), ‘Hollow Ponds’* is named after the section of Epping Forest a few yards away from the fracture ward which housed him, and which took on an inappropriately mystical quality in his morphine-enhanced mind as he fantasised daily about being able to walk around it, fibula and tibia intact.

Musically, it’s a collection that revisits the bleepy folkish melancholy so beloved by Dan in his former incarnation, while also taking in some new and unfamiliar territories. So while the open-tuned acoustic guitars and bubbling electronic textures are firmly in evidence on tracks such as the cascading opener ‘Skydive’ and ‘Flame Exchange’, it’s the spiky, psyched-out ‘Try To Put It Out Of Your Mind’, and the good ol’fashioned guitar abuse of ‘Vampires’ and the anthemic ‘Openside’ which serve to launch Astronauts into galaxies previously uncharted**. This broader sonic approach is particularly illustrated by the latter, which romps joyfully along like ‘Dirty’-era Sonic Youth, before collapsing thrillingly, and unexpectedly, into a taut Fugazi-play-free-jazz end section.

Elsewhere, the claustrophobic, swooping ‘Everything’s A System, Everything’s A Sign’ comes on like Ian MacKaye and friends playing grumpily out in the street with Massive Attack, while the sparse Songs: Ohia-esque ‘Slow Days’, which features beautiful vocal harmonies from London psych-folk songstress Jess Bryant, brings the album to a sad, shimmering close.

credits

released July 21, 2014

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Astronauts London, UK

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