James Blake - James Blake

A&M
Released: February 7th 2011

James Blake is virtually peerless. This is not to say that his debut album is wholly original. On the contrary, it draws inspiration from a variety of sources. It is to mean that James Blake works solely on his own terms and isn’t afraid in the slightest to delight, surprise, or disappoint listeners. Blake’s growth has been nothing short of phenomenal and not even the most astute in the dubstep scene could have initially predicted anything so markedly diverse as this self-titled release to come from the 22-year-old producer. But 2010 was a definitive year for Blake. His CMYK EP propelled him to the forefront of the underground, while the piano-driven Klavierwerke hinted strongly at the artistic direction of his successive full-length.

Even from the album’s cover art you get a sense of the split personality of Blake’s music, encapsulated by the ghostly overlaying of his image. On ‘The Wilhelm Scream’, Blake’s voice is almost lost in a haze of distortion and pulsing sub-bass, haunting the back of your mind while he sings about yearning and loss: “I don’t know about my dreams / I don’t know about my dreaming anymore / All that I know is I’m falling, falling, falling - might as well fall in.” The track that follows, ‘I Never Learnt To Share’, builds around the sparseness of a simple drum kick and what sounds like an askew Ben Frost melody, along with the repetition of a two-line stanza: “My brother and my sister don’t speak to me / But I don’t blame them, I don’t blame them.” After 3 minutes and 41 seconds of barrenness, the song bursts into a mind-warping mental breakdown with a  drop of warbling bass.

Bon Iver-inspired tracks ‘Lindesfarne I’ and ‘II’ precede the beautiful lead-single ‘Limit To Your Love’, exhibiting the same vocoder/acoustic guitar dynamic that Justin Vernon employs on ‘Woods’. ‘Give Me My Month’ is a highlight of the record’s more vocally- driven and sonically-subdued second half and the album’s gentle close provides a pause for thought about where Blake will go next. Like 2010, this coming year will be a shaping one for Blake as he juggles his new role as an emerging mainstream artist with his already established life as an electronic producer.

Luke Morgan Britton

Rolling with the blackout crew

Jon Bauckham meets The Go! Team’s Ian Parton to discuss the band’s adventurous third album, Rolling Blackouts

It is six years since The Go! Team earned themselves a Mercury Prize nomination for their debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike. In a shortlist that included Hard-Fi and the Kaiser Chiefs, it was not particularly challenging to stand out as something ultimately refreshing from their contemporaries. Starting life as a solo project for Brighton resident Ian Parton, their debut embraced a cut-and-paste aesthetic, plundering samples from a variety of different sources and combining them to create something new altogether. “I’m a bit of a hoarder!” laughs Ian, when recalling the initial stages of the songwriting process. “I gather loads of ideas and listen back before whittling it down to my favourite bits. By then, even to your own ears, it can feel almost like someone else has done it.” New album Rolling Blackouts  continues this trend by taking conventional song structures and melding them with a mishmash of different influences, incorporating soundbites as diverse as old school hip-hop and Bollywood soundtracks.

But with a stronger emphasis on live instrumentation rather than sampling, it also stands as perhaps their most accessible record. “I think the main thing with this album was that I really wanted to make it more ‘sing-y’. I think that The Go! Team had become synonymous with just having a girl shouting over the music,” explains Ian. “I definitely wanted a bit more light and shade, a bit more variety and some space to breathe in between the songs. The last album was a bit fucking relentless. It was like someone poking you for half an hour!” That album was 2007’s Proof of Youth, notable for its guest  appearances from Public Enemy’s Chuck D and electro diva, Solex. Four years down the line, however, Rolling Blackouts picks up from where its predecessor may have faltered – and it hardly begins with a whimper. On ‘T.O.R.N.A.D.O.’, frontwoman Ninja spits tough-tongued cheerleading chants, layered over knockout brass arrangements. Such an opener reassures us that the band have not lost their swagger, drawing the listener into a globetrotting collection of songs, taking ideas from around the world and experimenting with unusual new instruments such as kalimbas and Omnichords. “I hate the word ‘journey’, but the album puts you in different places,” says Ian. “One minute you find yourself in a ticker tape parade with a marching band, and the next minute you’re in an office in Tokyo.”

The latter scenario refers to ‘Secretary Song’, featuring lead vocals from Deerhoof frontwoman Satomi Matsuzaki. “The idea for that really just came from the song backwards. You think about what kind of voice you would need to bring it to life and who you would imagine singing it, so you pull out all the stops to make it happen.” With the addition of typewriters, the track captures the buzz of Tokyo as a city at work, present also in the internal dialogue of Matsuzaki’s frustrated office assistant, counting down the hours until the end of her shift. In contrast, lead single ‘Buy Nothing Day’ shifts continent and drives the listener “straight down the Pacific Coast Highway”, with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino at the wheel, adding the same sun-kissed Californian splendour that characterises her own output. ‘Ready To Go Steady’ is of a similar vein, the chorus of which could easily have been retrieved from a time capsule buried by Phil Spector, with its coy ‘60s girl group leanings and Wall of Sound drum fills. “When I hear tracks like that, I think of high school proms, with the Prom Kings and Queens dancing like they’re in Carrie or something like that.”

Though perhaps without the blood and electrocution, there is definitely a romanticised, inherently stateside feel to fragments of the album. But Ian is keen to point out that there was no geographical agenda when he first began writing. “I wasn’t particularly fussed about making the record sound British,” he explains. “I liked the idea of it sounding global and international, but at the same time, I don’t kiss Yankee ass! I don’t think everything’s better in America.” But if there is one thing that can be agreed about the direction taken on Rolling Blackouts, it is that it offers a darker dimension than previous outings. With the title track’s minor inflections, it shows there are more to The Go! Team than first meets the ear. “Everyone says that ‘Rolling Blackouts’ sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but it actually started life sounding really Ennio Morricone. I think I like the fact that you’re able to confuse people by putting such wildly different things next to each other.”

Soon, Rolling Blackouts will take to the road. However, the prospect of an intensive touring schedule does not threaten to rid all six members of The Go! Team of their on-stage energy; swapping instruments and generally making a lot of noise. “It’s the highlight of the day, so everything is building up to that moment,” explains Ian. “We still have as much energy now as we did on the first album - more energy possibly. Ninja treats it like a marathon. Her commitment is just ridiculous.” Despite ready to unveil a collection of brand new songs to the world, Ian is merely of proud the band’s greatest existing achievement - to have forged a unique and instantly recognisable sound. “I think it’s just about putting a stamp on your music,” he concludes. “I’m not massively fussed to be honest about getting really big now. But I definitely think we have created a sound which is distinctively ‘Go! Team’ – whether you like it or not.”

Mystery Jets turn luminescent

Jon Bauckham gets an exclusive glimpse at the freshly recorded Mystery Jets LP, courtesy of lead singer Blaine Harrison.

Mystery Jets have been keeping rather quiet lately. Only having recently emerged from the studio after nine months of recording their third long player, the band have spent time road testing new material in Berlin, playing impromptu gigs in bedrooms and art spaces under various guises, turning up at whatever venue available. Lead singer, Blaine Harrison, recalls these unusual shows with fondness. “It was quite simple really. We just wanted to play the songs before recording them to get an idea of their character and where they would stand amongst the others. Playing with a different stupid made-up band name each night took the away the pressure really. In many ways, it was very liberating.”

With the working title Luminescence, the new album is set to mark new musical territory for the band. “When I think of the word, it has these otherworldly connotations, and I think this applies to some of the new songs,” explains Harrison. “It sums up the sound and those feelings the sounds give you. It’s uplifting and it suits what we’ve made.” A band not afraid to wear their influences on their respective sleeves, he explains his current fascination with ‘70s bands, citing the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Supertramp, musing over an era that saw significant technical advances in studio recording. “They were probably seen as really commercial back then, but listening now, there’s a lot going on in there. It’s all very ahead of its time.” Perhaps rather coyly, he also declares the band’s current penchant for ELO. “If you can just look past the poppy falsetto vocals, there’s a lot to be taken from them. Time for example… it’s a concept album about time travel, which is not actually as pompous as it sounds. It’s incredibly subtle in a lot of ways, but also really beautiful”.

Formed whilst still at school, Blaine and his father Henry, a former architect, began writing songs together along with guitarist William Rees. After a few shifts in the line-up and instrumental duties, Kai Fish joined on bass and Kapil Trivedi was recruited as a drummer. It was in 2005, after gaining notoriety for hosting a series of illegal gigs and parties on Eel Pie Island, a small chunk of land in the middle of the River Thames at Twickenham, that they were signed to 679 Recordings and unleashed their debut, Making Dens the following year. A wildly eccentric, prog-infused record that quite clearly demonstrated their love for Syd Barrett, Making Dens featured perplexing tales of imaginary characters caught up in the complications of childhood, loneliness, unrequited love, and even unrequited love for transvestites.

The release of Twenty One in 2008, notable for its unashamedly ‘80s direction, exhibited in the highly successful single ‘Two Doors Down’, saw the band’s live presence reduced to four members, with Henry Harrison stepping into a ‘back room’ role, limiting himself to the studio. Blaine is adamant that things haven’t changed. “We still write lyrics together and the collaboration is still as strong as ever.” Yet, the inclusion of Henry as a full-time member in the band when they first arrived on the scene often overshadowed their music when featured in the press, a journalistic attribute which Blaine hopes has been shaken off. “It was definitely a weight on our shoulders at the end of touring the first album and we really didn’t want the music to be overwhelmed by it, even though it’s because of him the band came about in the first place. But I think people do now listen to the records because they know it’s Mystery Jets, not because they’ve read some funny article in The Times about a dad who plays music with his son.”

This sense of freedom has also been influenced by their recent move to legendary label, Rough Trade, “a tremendous privilege to be part of that legacy” explains Blaine. Yet, something that has always remained endearing about Mystery Jets is the heartfelt lyrical content and clear attachment to their work, most songs dealing with personal experience (“It’s the only way I know how to write really” explains Blaine). Whilst tracks such as ‘Little Bag of Hair’ on Making Dens dealt with Harrison’s own experiences of a hospital childhood, having been born with spina bifida, Twenty One was a “coming-of-age album, about growing up, making relationships and having your heart broken for the first time”. However, Blaine insists the new record is a more mature effort. “Sonically, it’s a step-up” he explains. A step-up then, may have been the outcome of working with veteran producer Chris Thomas, famous for his work with The Beatles and Pink Floyd, even producing The Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. With both Making Dens and Twenty One produced by young upstarts, Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford and Erol Alkan respectively, working with a producer from a different generation has been a humbling experience. “You don’t take it lightly. There’s definitely a lot of respect involved.”

With Luminescence (if that is its final title) due in spring, Mystery Jets are set for a busy year. Soon to be touring Europe with Arctic Monkeys, they are as keen as ever to do the usual round of summer festivals. “The record was originally going to come out in January but we felt that was too soon. This way, it’s out just in time for the festivals.” When asked how he feels home crowds will react to the new material, Harrison returns to the opening topic of conversation, expressing a desire to recreate the experience of last year’s Berlin shows. “Well actually, we were thinking of doing that again, it was so much fun!” he laughs.  Now ready to come out of hibernation, it seems that Mystery Jets are more than ready for radiance… whether it’s in the guise you expect to see them or not.

Twee no more: Los Campesinos!

Gareth Campesinos! checks in with devoted fanboy Dylan Williams to chat about his new philosophy: Romance is Boring.

With a mission statement centrally covering sex, death and football, if new release Romance Is Boring does nothing else for Los Campesinos!, it should finally put to rest the unwelcome ‘twee’ tag that’s dogged them since their saccharine, clamorous debut two years ago. Grave, and with a diminishing sense of geographical identity; the album focuses on figures drifting apart whilst living on the move, whether through the American South, Mexico or across the Alps and the Andes. Along the way, relationships are enacted and dissolve in church pulpits, on front lawns, on the road, by the sea. Gareth Campesinos! (each member adopts Campesinos! as their surname), the band’s singer, glockenspiel player and emotional core relates the frustrations that inspired their work: “A lot of the record is about loneliness and separation and they are two things that are prevalent for me when on tour… it heavily affects the ability to live 'a normal life'…and it makes it an impossibility (for me) to start a relationship”.

The (English) septet formed in Cardiff in 2006, sounding peppy, literate, and sweetly punk. With their first full-length Hold On Now, Youngster, full of off-beat rhythms and dense wordy interplay between Gareth and Aleks, the band were bursting with vitality and ideas. But despite all the giddy, skittering songs, there were always sad undercurrents present. A prime example was ‘Knee Deep At ATP’, where the sharp guitar solos are interspersed with a violin and Gareth beautifully documenting a boy’s discovery that his girlfriend cheated on him at the Butlins music festival. And while the stopgap We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (an EP that inflated to LP length) signified a move into grievous territory for the band, Gareth’s lyrical lead set an altogether darker tone for RIB, with death creeping in and the characters often settling for lust over love. He admits the progression toward the album’s caustic tone was assured: “I've changed a lot since writing the lyrics to [Hold On Now, Youngster], which was written in the excitement of being in a band and skipping lectures to rehearse and play shows…it's the experiences and emotions of the last few years that have doubtlessly led me to this point.”

All tracks on RIB are conceptually linked and form a loose narrative, but the scenes are staggered, almost adhering to the cut-and-paste technique. Tellingly, the album opens with ‘In Medias Res’, a soft song following a couple with their relationship in mid-flow, the narrator waking from a nightmare in a car’s backseat and realising things are probably too good to last. Gareth realises the album’s plot may be hard to follow:  “I've convinced myself that if the album was listened to in a certain order…tells the story of one relationship from beginning to end. It does, I'm sure. Some songs veer closer to the narrative than others, but the events unfolding in each song are relevant to where things end.”

The scattered narrative is both an interesting ploy and a necessity, because the pace of RIB varies frantically. For every sharp, rousing song (‘There Are Listed Buildings’) or quick searing dose of punk (‘Plan A’), there’s a gentle interlude or hazy waltz (‘Heart Swells’ and ‘Who Fell Asleep In’ respectively) and the need to manage all these styles is clear: “This is the first record we've made where we actually entered into writing songs knowing that there was going to be an album at the end of it. So we wrote songs considering how they'd sit together on a record, and how they'd play a part in [both] the oral, and aural, story of the album.”

Lyrically, the cast of “maybe three” unnamed figures are mere outlines, their recurrence being intentionally opaque and easy to miss. But the occasional turn of phrase serves as a reminder of a character visited repeatedly, floating in and out of focus, akin to those of The Sound And The Fury. So the girl nonchalantly dreaming of a sea burial in ‘Who Fell Asleep In’ at the record’s mid-point re-enters with an eating disorder and flippantly toys with the idea of drowning herself in ‘The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future’, the album’s thematic crescendo that overflows with melodrama. Death (or considerations of it) is persistent and pursues the cast despite the general assertion of their youth. Clearly, Gareth’s choice to work in a graveyard between tours doesn’t help to dispel his sense of mortality: “I think I write the songs and worries about death so that I don't have to talk about them. I'd love to be in a mindset where I'm not plagued with morbid thoughts, I really would, but it's a lot more difficult to write a happy song that people like…there's much more of a consensus on what sadness is, than what happiness is, so, really, writing a sad song is a lot more of a banker.”

And really, looming dread doesn’t seem so out of place when the central figures view human connections so deplorably. If there was ever an embittered scene to represent the cold attitude of someone in a stale relationship, the title track surely has it: a lover too lazy to do favours in bed, to prove that the effort, ultimately, isn’t worth it. Yet in spite of the hardened approach to love and sex, that sad reflection on the difficult search for permanency in connections whilst living on the move keeps returning, and never better put than in ‘I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know’, the album’s grandiose high point, where the longing for a lasting relationship is expounded in figure’s desire to keep track of the moles that’ll appear on the object of his affection. Finally though, assuming ‘Coda’ rightfully bookends RIB’s tale, then lost opportunity is the conclusion; the characters on diverging paths, with no coincidence in their destinations. No-one wants to see that happen to partners, even when the results yield a statement as compelling as Romance Is Boring.

Night Slugs

Having run for just shy of two years, L-Vis 1990, Manara and Bok Bok's Night Slugs clubnight has charted the cutting edge of bass-heavy gutter music with admirable consistency. With an ethos that stays true to club music's function as floor filling party music as well as continually highlighting innovation and experimentation, Night Slugs has successfully surfed developing trends in UK bass music whilst boasting ridiculously fun line ups and parties. Over its short history the London party has hosted grime legend Terror Danjah, the relentlessly boundary pushing Zomby, hype party crew Trouble & Bass and a who's-who list of UK Funky's best proponents: Roska, Lil Silva and Scratcha DVA to name a few. 

As with all such endeavours, it was only so long before the night made the leap into becoming a label. Bok Bok's essential Sub.FM radio sets have always showcased a dizzying array of unreleased dubplates, many of which not just totally awesome, but also lingering in obscurity and label-less. With their first release the crew show themselves to be excellent selectors as well as party DJs, with Night Slugs 01 being headed up with the much hyped debut release from Mosca. Square One's tell tale synth hook might ring some bells having spent the last few months being rinsed by every DJ worth their salt. Even more excitingly, the EP boasts a jaw droppingly good remix package from a laundry list of the UK's best rising stars. Bristol's own Julio Bashmore makes an appearance off the back of the Dirtybird released Um Bongo's Revenge, Roska continues his ubiquitous presence around every release worth owning and the Night Slugs guys both contribute their own rerubs. A fairly essential purchase for any fans of remotely funky party music.

And it doesn't end there either. Remarkably good producers in their own right, L Vis 1990 and Bok Bok have tons of devastatingly good dancefloor destroyers on the brink of release. Continuing to fufill his role as UK bass ambassador to Mad Decent, L Vis releases the remix package of last year's excellent United Groove. MJ Cole's refit bolster's the original's haunting tribal stomp with some serious bass weight whilst TRG ups the groove with some of his textbook percussive flex. On the brink of release for Bok Bok is the brilliantly off-kilter Citizen's Dub, coming via Blunted Robots. A disorienting, rising and falling rainbow coloured synth line lends some psychedelic power to the funky template whilst Bubbz lends a few gurgled bars, fittingly about being too drunk to stand up straight. At Numbers' ridiculous take over party at Fabric at the beginning of the month it got numerous airings in every room, its pretty nutso and looks set to really bring Bok Bok out of L Vis 1990's Diplo endorsed shadow.

Simon Docherty

Everything Everything in their right place

The multi-regional pop-bastardisers chat to Jon Bauckham of the great expectations placed upon them ahead of their debut.

“Imagine an episode of Friends called ‘The One Where Joey Gets His Fucking Head Blown Off By A Drone Aircraft’,” explains Everything Everything frontman Jonathan Higgs, attempting to describe the thought process behind recent single ‘MY KZ, UR BF’. “It’s a fairly surreal comment on U.S. foreign policy, using the idea of a bombing raid onto a Hollywood sitcom-type situation. Also there is this relationship sub-plot which was heavily influenced by R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped in the Closet’.” Perhaps a more surprising addition to this year’s ‘BBC Sound of…’ poll, Everything Everything have been gaining attention for their witty, wonky and often proggy indie pop. The accolade, however, has sometimes proved to be a curse rather than a blessing, with artists failing to live up to expectations. “It’s great to be in the top 10 or 15 or whatever it was and not in the very top bit,” explains Jonathan. “If we had been top 5, the pressure would have increased tenfold. The exposure is nice, though these lists actually mean very little in reality.”

With members hailing from both Newcastle and Kent, Everything Everything formed when Jonathan met bassist Jeremy Pritchard at university in Manchester, recruiting old school friends Alex Niven and Michael Spearman to complete the line-up. Having recently signed a contract with Geffen, being a band in Manchester has certainly opened them up to opportunities. “It’s probably the best city in the country to form a band and take it further, without being swallowed up as you would in London.” Hardly compatible with Manchester’s boozy, lad rock heritage, Jonathan does express the difficulties faced when trying to gain recognition in a post-Gallagher era. “The parka does still squat on the city like a giant toad kebab, but we are actively trying to shake it off along with a cluster of other new bands.”

Still “four or five months away” from releasing their debut album, Everything Everything were tipped for stardom at the beginning of last year by The Observer, highlighted for their “sexy indie pop with multilayered vocals” on the strength of debut single, Suffragette Suffragette. Yet, with hype comes the inevitable journalistic practice of pigeonholing, something the band are highly cautious of.  “We don’t want to come across as deliberately anything,” explains Jonathan. “I think we are just very tired of musical cliché, particularly white men with guitars, which, try as we might, we can’t help but be. We don’t go out of our way to be different, we just find that there are a whole world of far more interesting ways to combine and present the few ingredients of music that exist in pop.” Admirers of Destiny’s Child and Michael Jackson as well as Radiohead and Kraftwerk, their music manages to exhibit this delightful bastardisation of mismatched influences perfectly. With intricate, angular guitar figures complemented by shimmering synths and a smattering of cryptic lyrics (“I put a rainforest in an Oxo cube”, anyone?), there’s certainly a lot to digest. “There’s actually a lot of humour and word-play in all our songs, even the most serious ones. We don’t worry about what people will think. If they read the lyrics and listen to the music and interpret us in a serious way, it’s fine”. This playful aesthetic is also captured in the band’s surreal self-produced promo videos. Photoshop Handsome for example, itself a musical assault on vanity-imbued image manipulation, gives the band the green screen treatment and sees them under attack from a violent form of image manipulation themselves. “The juxtaposition of the serious and the unserious is what we’re all about. It’s music for humans.”

With so much expected of them this year, Everything Everything have modest ambitions. “This year will hopefully bring an album to our ears that we are really, really proud of. That’s honestly it.” If that’s all they hope to achieve, that alone is a blessing.

Promised Works - Nick Drake's Pink Moon

By 1971, the English singer-songwriter Nick Drake was reaching the end of his metaphorical tether: depression, insomnia and the near-crippling shyness that marked his earlier career combined with an increasing dissatisfaction at the poor sales of his two previous records, (1969’s Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, released in 1970) and culminated in an almost total withdrawal from public life. This withdrawal, however, also resulted in the recording of his final album, Pink Moon, a collection of songs of such beguiling, unique beauty as to place them amongst the finest ever written. Put to tape over the course of two, two-hour long sessions beginning at midnight, Pink Moon is, quite literally, extremely

sparse: across its twenty eight minutes, the only thing interrupting Nick’s singing and guitar comes in the form of a piano lightly decorating the title track. What’s left behind, after all else is stripped away, are the winding, ever-shifting melodies that struggled to escape over-orchestration on Drake’s previous work.

On Pink Moon, the focus is squarely upon eleven intricately written guitar parts, and the lilting, haunting

softness of Drake’s voice. It is, without wishing to descend to hyperbole, a completely realised, utterly cohesive set of songs: each perfectly complementing both the track previous and the song to come.

Lyrically, too, the album coheres around two central themes: recurrent images of nature, and of a continuous, quiet hope for the future. It’s tempting, as with any artist that dies young, to view any final

work as a kind of ‘early warning sign’ of things to come, (and, indeed, Nick Drake passed away in 1974, two years after Pink Moon’s release, overdosing on anti-depressants) but to do so in this case is to do the album a great disservice. Its gentle, understated feel, though conceived in a state of increasing

turmoil, stands as testament to the ability of an individual artist to create something moving. As Nick sings on the final track ‘From The Morning’: “the day once dawned / and it was beautiful”. A simple statement, but sometimes it’s the simple things that are the most powerful - and therein lies Pink Moon’s ineffable power.

Mathew Pitts

No need for alarm

Bombastic Danish dreamers Oh No Ono converse with Laura Snapes.

It’d be all too convenient to be able to liken Oh No Ono’s hypnagogic sound to the fairytales of fellow Dane Hans Christian Andersen. In reality, they’re far more Grimm than that, creating terrible Freudian prog dreamlands of watery metaphors where snowy mothers melt away and a shoal of siren ballerinas lure wretched souls down to their depths. Their latest release, Eggs, is a world away from the shiny, Clor-like new wave of Yes, their second record, instead dealing in hauntingly glam, proggy Arcade Fire orchestral bombast, the most polarizing high notes since Joanna Newsom and intriguing tales of mystical tragedy, steeped in the history of the locations where it was recorded.

“We started recording on the isle of Møn in an old farmhouse,” says keyboardish Nicolai Koch, on the phone from Denmark. “Then afterwards, we went to Sweden to record some of the strings, and then to this church that we rented in Copenhagen – they have two really old church organs, that you hear clearly in the beginning of ‘The Wave Ballet’. Then we recorded ‘Beelitz’ in a disused military hospital of the same name, in Germany. I think it became a mental hospital during WW1, and it was used afterwards by the Soviet Union. Apparently Hitler had been there. We had this myth of abandoned buildings that we wanted to check out.”

Recording in these historically marked places led Oh No Ono to create a troubled landscape of their own, where stray vespers of thought marry into dreams of gravity-defying queens, gothic images of blood and bridges, of sleep and Sisyphus. At times, Malthe’s falsetto obscures the intricacy of the lyrics, adding to the fractured sense of reality abound in Eggs.

“It’s about these very unconscious thoughts that you have when you’re a child, like, ‘I would never go into the wrong house and help the wrong mother,’” says Nicolai of the fraught mother-child relationship described in ‘Icicles’. “It’s the feelings you have when you’re a kid, like when you’re in a supermarket and you pull the wrong woman’s leg to ask for something; that scary idea when you start to realise that your mother’s just another person.”

It’s fair to say that a certain Sigmund would have a field day with the lyrics on Eggs – even when they move from the dystopian fairytale landscape to fret in domesticity, they’re crossing off numbers on an imaginary psychologist’s bingo card. Take ‘Eve’, lachrymose with depths resonant of Anthony’s rich timbre, a six-minute paean to both a marriage that breaks down “before the in-laws got their pictures”, and the relationship between two robotic Pixar protagonists.

“They’re Aske’s lyrics. You know, in a way we always try to mix everything up, to give the music some sort of twist, and this song became ‘Eve’ after Aske went to see Wall-E! And he really loved that, so that’s in there as well. It’s a very serious relationship song that somehow was also inspired by this Pixar children’s movie! I think that’s a good way to see how the songs are built up.”