Strange Flesh

‘The Hardest Thing to Burn Is the Heart’ is the new album from
Brooklyn’s finest angular pop duo, Strange Flesh, released

6th December ‘24 via House of Zed.

“Merging organic with electronic and cherry-picking sounds from their
surroundings, these elements fuse to create a dichotomy between playful
and pensive.” CLUNK MAGAZINE
“Anthemic production rooted in soaring vocals underscored by robotic
yet punchy beats. Bringing a gleeful defiance to life.” EARMILK
"Their unique blend of sounds and thought-provoking lyrics will continue
to captivate audiences who are seeking something truly different in the
music landscape." BORED CITY

The heart. We all have a complex relationship with that tough, often
inscrutable organ, and Strange Flesh are no exception. Varrick's beats a
little too fast. Ed's sounds as though it's being played backward. And on
their new album, they journey into some of the heart’s darkest, most
mysterious recesses.

The title track, taken from a line in one of the band’s favorite films, is
concerned with the armoring of one's heart against emotional vampirism,
whilst simultaneously acknowledging the near impossibility of such a
fiendish task.
From here, they go on to plumb emotional quagmires of various kinds,
from time paranoia (Many Clocks), familial alienation (In the Harbour),
reclusive fame (Our Dinner With Anna), the desire for physical and
emotional flight (Single / No Return), and the twin specters of anxiety
and depression (Dog Days, Dog Nights).
They celebrate a woman's defiantly haphazard life with Very, skewer
tabloid-driven moral panic in Croydon Fox, and via their latest single,
Chaos Hearts, deliver a poptastic paean to their own chaotic but
unbreakable bond with each other (view the video here).
It's unusual for Strange Flesh to record covers, but this album features
two: their driving techno-punk interpretation of The Cravats' Burning
Bridges, and a particularly disquieting version of Leon Payne's classic
murder ballad, Psycho, sung by Varrick with ghostly detachment.
Sonically, the album finds the band embracing a crepuscular minimalism,
with their trademark found sounds and animal calls still very much
present, but now more often cocooned in glacial reverbs and delays.
Their synth-pop, dub and bass music leanings are also filtered through a
more lunar lens—the result is a haunting work with one foot on the dance
floor, the other hovering over the abyss.
For the as-yet-uninitiated, Strange Flesh is comprised of transatlantic
couple, Varrick and Ed Zed. They make left field pop music in their NYC
apartment using synths, drums and whatever else they find littering their
inner and outer landscapes, as they flutter toward eternity with the
briefness and clamor of two cicadas.