Bella Union’s Private Pressing label has announced the June 30th release of DIY artist Icebeing’s album, titled Striped. The project is the work of prolific Brighton-based multi-tasker Luke Phillips, whose recording output over 10 years has numbered almost 30 albums, released online under different names. Icebeing is his newly outgoing, song-based front: “My first conscious effort at making pop music,” says Phillips. The album’s announcement is marked with the release of the first single, ‘Channel What I Was Feeling’, which we are debuting below. A fuzzy-psych scorched delight that’s insidious lysergic melody, burrows for escape through a time tunnel of noise and delightfully woozy instrumentation.
He says: “‘Channel What I Was Feeling’ is escapism through joyful mucky noise and tumbling junkyard percussion, a pop song hardened in the centre. “Sometimes I make music just to play with sounds like a kid. This one’s a kid one. It’s good fun rabbit-holing in your bedroom and singing, and making a load of noise – messiness on record sounds ecstatic to me. I think pop songs might get too shiny and wet sometimes but dressing them up in mess gives them a bit of electricity. Noise is scary and dangerous on the outside but if you’re right in the middle of it it’s nice and warm.”
Striped touches on themes of “losing time, wasting youth, missed opportunity and retreating to the comforts of childhood”. But it also brims with life, a controlled cacophony of distorted riffs, organ wheeze, tumbling drums, shiny synths, scrunchy samples and more: essentially, indie-pop self-reflection taken to the funfair of ’60s psychedelic exploration with a bedroom-load of modern tech. “I wanted it to sound like a good time,” says Phillips. ‘Channel What I Was Feeling’ couples ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’-ish rhythmic loops with an Elephant 6-grade melody.
Album artwork + tracklist below…
1. They’re Holding
2. Channel What I Was Feeling
3. A Figment
4. Then
5. One Shadow & Fly
6. King Of Pyrotechnics
7. Sidewalk 1
8. Everything Goes Blind
9. Correctional Shoes
Pre-order Striped HERE.
