Orbury Common

ORBURY COMMON exists as a place in the musical imagination of Emlyn Bainbridge and Josh Day-Jones: an opalescent, dream-like otherworld of fogged memory and refracted mythology.

Having explored the frenzied nightlife of this place with The Traditional Dance of Orbury Common EP (PRAH Recordings, 2022), the Bristol / Stroud duo now announce details of their debut album: Sylvan Chute will be released 7th June on PRAH, a panoramic overview of the world they have envisioned, a series of individual yet interwoven vignettes, a musical map of abstract melodramas.
 

Today, they share first single “The Resident” and a music video [watch HERE] made by Alfie Dwyer, who has recently produced visuals for Aphex Twin and Eric Andre.

““The Resident”’s origins date back years, arguably centuries. The original version, which was a fixture of our live set in 2023, featured the verse’s looping bells, bass synth and beat, alongside ancient Gregorian chant, the melody of which we later emulated when writing our own vocals.

“Our lyrics and unison vocals came together in a session at the PRAH Foundation in Margate, describing a dream-like vision of a crumbling mythic landscape, through a yearning, reaching lens - a theme that recurs often across Sylvan Chute.” - Orbury Common on “The Resident”

“The visuals for ‘The Resident’ were inspired by the dreamlike nature of the lyrics to the track, and by mythological and ancient landscapes. The audience is taken on an oneiric journey through four different environments, where humans long ago affected the land. What remains of these once-‘residents’ is a lingering and mystical presence. Their intentions with the land and their practices are lost to time, but something is still felt of them at the four sites.” - Alfie Dwyer (video director)

Departing from the distorted club pulses of Traditional Dance…, we now hear subverted pop songs and surreal ballads, wherein earthy (and unearthly) synths, deformed samples and mangled drum beats coalesce with and ensemble of zithers, flutes, organs and guitars.

Orbury Common’s shift in sound is most notably emphasised by the introduction of the pair’s vocals, placed at the heart of arrangements; bringing a new, animate and intimate life to their dreamscape. The songs’ subject matters stretch from chrome-coated medieval fables through to depraved landscapes and even to technologically ill-fated romance. There are moments of light, darkness, grandeur and tenderness, tethered together by an iridescent thread of yearning for something, someone or someplace.