I'll never grow tired of saying how much I love Hidden and its radicalism. Fusing so many disparate worlds (pop vs erudite, industrial vs tribal, beauty vs scariness) in such an ambitious and coherent piece of work, it's slowly becoming one of my favourite albums, well, ever. Hologram is a small piece of that big puzzle built this year by These New Puritans, and it now gets a simple and quite effective video treatment which is definitely worth watching. And on a side note: really happy that I'll be seeing these guys in concert soon!
Connecting different worlds to create something truly unique seems to be the word of the day for These New Puritans, and so far the results have been nothing short of absolute amazingness. In their new video, the mechanised-grime rhythms of the song are synchronized to slow-motion images of bodies moving in a highly choreographed way, all shot with a seemingly obsessive detail. The effect sits somewhere between concepts like trippy, frightening and disturbing, but most of all, it all just looks absolutely stunning.
Even after many listens, there's a question that still springs to my mind regarding Hidden: basically, where the hell does all of this come from? Excuse my surprise, but I'm still in shock over what this young U.K. band has managed to achieve in what is only their second full-length album. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the few that really liked the electro-punk hooks of their debut Beat Pyramid, but Hidden is something else, and for lack of better expressions, a true beast of its own. Inventing a dense and grandiose sound that seems genuinely new and like nothing ever heard before, These New Puritans take elements from surprising and until now quite unrelated sources (like reverberating drums, choral harmonies, grime rhythms, dissonant keyboards, children choirs, and more classical instruments like horns, oboes or pianos) and end up creating an unique conceptual universe, one which may be challenging to enter but ends up being totally worth the effort. And actually, the word "beast" is a very appropriate one to describe this dark universe, what with all the ceremonious vibes that come from it, like some sort of black magic voodoo, or pagan tribal rituals, to be equally fascinated by and scared of. With their model looks and Hedi Slimane endorsements, these four guys had all the hype and whatever else was necessary to become a reference for a whole generation, if they ever had that ambition. But in Hidden, they do the unexpected: basically, sending out a big fuck off to all of that, and making a fierce creative statement on their own terms, one that blends antagonic worlds like classical and rock music, minimalism and baroque, the ancient and the futuristic. And after being taken aback by the power of such extreme and epic sounds, this writer has just three words to say: amen to that. (9/10)
These New Puritans - Three Thousand (mp3 via Punkreas.org)
Just in time to start the week in the best way possible, here's the EPIC new single by These New Puritans, loaded with thunderous tribal drums and infectiously apocalyptic keyboards, just like a glorious soundtrack to all things doom and gloom that even includes disturbing choir chants. The album is called Hidden and will be out on January 18th...and judging from the first sample above, it will be nothing short of absolutely amazing. Really, this song and video have just made me completely speechless... Have a great week!
Speaking of These New Puritans, their new video finds vocalist Jack Barnett standing almost still in front of the camera, with a few juxtapositions between his face and the other members, topped by some psychedelic effects. Though I quite like its dark and primitive atmosphere, the really treat in here is the fantastic song, included in Beat Pyramid, with its wicked jungle rhythms, industrial guitars, hypnotic vocals and unique sample structures.
With friends like Hedi Slimane or The Horrors and a fast-rising hype surounding them, it was easy to predict that These New Puritans would mark 2008. Now that their first album is finally out, I'm happy to announce that this time you should believe the hype, as "Beat Pyramid" completely fulfils every expectation you could have and then some. Being another one of those objects that uses many different references and sources to create its own unique sound, this time the experience is highly successful, as everything really sounds exciting and new. Exploring claustrophobic atmospheres and using a dense sonic-architecture, sharp guitars (that somehow remind me of Gang Of Four) and an enormous panoply of electronic sounds and samples, its biggest asset actually comes from the rhythmic section. Drawing highly intricate structures, it's here that everything is based upon, supporting an hallucinating approach to rock that is topped by vocalist Jack Barnett and his schizophrenic shouts. A soundtrack to futuristic industrial landscapes or artificial paranoid societies, strange at first but immensely seducing and, above all, extremely addictive. (8,5/10)
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