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Squid

city: Brighton, London
country: UK
genre: Rock
styles: Kraut, Alternative, Indie Rock, Psychedelic Punk, Art Rock, Post-Punk

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on hashbrandnew.com since July 16, 2020

credits: Harrison Fishman

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Warp Records

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Undergrowth

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Squid present new single, “Undergrowth,” from their sophomore album, O Monolith, out 9th June on Warp Records. Alongside a video game inspired by “Undergrowth” made by Frank Force, they have also shared a visualiser directed by Louis Borlase guitarist in the band and their biggest North American tour to date. Tickets will be available Friday 21st @ 10am Local Time from the bands website.

Already renowned for their unerring experimentation, new single “Undergrowth” sees Squid continue their idiosyncratic sonic journey. The track is a heady cocktail of sounds and styles with dubbed-out bass grooves under cinematic synth chops which explode into bursts of hyper-rock guitar and frenetic brass.

hrough the radical meld of textures and tones, drummer and vocalist Ollie Judge still manages to create an earworm chorus of “Ergonomic for the rest of my days, I’d rather melt away”. Themes of environmental peril, morality and the natural world are all present on “Undergrowth” and further explored on the rest of O Monolith

Judge says on “Undergrowth’s” lyrics: “I really got into animism, the idea that spirits can live in inanimate objects. I was watching Twin Peaks, and there was the episode where Josie Packard’s spirit goes into a chest of drawers. So ‘Undergrowth’ was written from the perspective of me being reincarnated as a bedside table in the afterlife, and how the thought of being reincarnated as an inanimate object would be dreadful. ‘This isn’t what I wanted/ So many options to be disappointed.’ Even though I’m in no way religious I don’t think anyone who isn’t religious is confident enough to not have had the fleeting thought of ‘Fuck, what if there is an afterlife? What if I’m going to Hell?’”

Introducing: “Undergrowth”, the game! A bit like the bastardized love child of Super Mario and Space Invaders, with an English Folklore twist. Who's gonna get the high score? Who's gonna defeat the monolith? Frank Force adds: “Imagine the game itself as an interactive music video where gameplay and animation is synched up to the music and changes as the song progresses, moving into different phases.”

Borlase who shot the visualiser explains the storybehind it: “When we were writing O Monolith we rented a little studio in St Pauls and whichever way we’d walk home, the BRI Hospital chimney would always be standing there – jutting out in front of a disc of countryside beyond: the home of the Devil’s Den, a stable’s worth of chalk horses further afield towards Cherhill, Pewsey and Westbury. Sometimes it feels like most folklore hides in the countryside's nooks. At other times it comes in closer, lurking in the bins on the walk back from the shops.”

First single ‘Swing (In A Dream)’ was added to the A-List at BBC 6 Music and received support from press globally. Production on the singles and album comes from long-time collaborator Dan Carey and is complemented by mixing from John McEntire of Tortoise. “There’s an intensity to Dan’s recordings that works really well, and John added a spacious, natural sound alongside that,” explains trumpet player Laurie Nankivell. The songs on O Monolith came together in rehearsal rooms around Bristol, where the band were based at the time, eventually moving to Peter Gabriel’s luxe Real World studios in Wiltshire. This change in environment further pushed the development of the band’s sound from claustrophobic post-punk to something more free-flowing and spacious.

Expansive, evocative and hugely varied, O Monolith retains Squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit. It’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. “We’re quite a musically stubborn band, and in an endearing way it’s a stubborn record,” says Judge. Like its namesake, O Monolith is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.

[Practise Music]