ALASKALASKA – have announced details of their new album, Still Life, which is due to arrive October 14th on Marathon Artists (Courtney Barnett, Pond, Lava La Rue).
They’ve also shared a video for the title track that pulses and punctures with a grooving and inventive tapestry of electronics and is garnished with Lucinda’s artful vocal that delves into the irony of us being more connected than ever through our screens, yet we use them largely for vanity, distraction or surveillance.
The band says: “Still Life asks, is what is supposed to connect us on a worldwide scale being used more for vanity/ego, distraction or even surveillance/control? ‘Look at it breed, modern greed…’. It’s a bit of a cautionary tale, much like 1984…if you get my drift. Still though, there are glimmers of hope – ‘I’ve got the seed in my pocket….’ as in I’ve got seeds to sow, seeds to grow. Small gestures can make big changes
It follows last month’s ‘ Growing up Pains (Unni’s Song), which saw a return for the band. It finds writers and producers Lucinda Duarte Holman and Fraser Rieley embrace a more free-form electronica. They’ve really opened up their sonic world, embracing a more free-form electronica full of digital sounds, drum machine and synth melodies that sit beside rich, organic, acoustic instrumentation – a blending that symbolises a tug of war between existential dread and everyday simple pleasures, one of the central themes on Still Life.
The last few years have seen the band–who rose up in parallel with both the South London jazz scene and the post-punk movement of Brixton Windmill before going on to open up for acts like Tame Impala, Nilüfer Yanya and Hot Chip–navigate new ways of working. Because they weren’t able to get the full band together during the pandemic, Lucinda and Fraser adventured into more electronic soundscapes together, a new phase they’re really excited to express live.
