Distant Stars are a 2-piece, comprised of Muriel Annic and Richard Payne, operating out of Melbourne and Caen. Originally meeting at a party under a Cathedral in Normandy a while back, they kept in touch and embarked on this trans-global project.
It seemed appropriate that the band name would be taken from the classic Ultravox tune: “..somehow we drifted off too far, communicate like distant stars”.
The design brief was to create something bright that lives and breathes in the spaces between the cold, the dark, the deconstructed and the minimal.
The resulting sounds turned out to be somehow primal and sophisticated, with contemporary Bass throb, retro synth and those timeless vocals unbound by language or other useless constraints.
Following “The Ways Things Work” 2018’s album and the early in the year “Robots (Do it Better)” EP, Distant Stars‘ upcoming sophomore LP “The Tides” is scheduled for release on the 11th December 2019, via Australian independent label Detonic Recordings, featuring 10 tracks of stomping electro hits that swing dangerously from minimal to totally saturated .. often in the same song.
The opening track “Brothers And Sisters”, WL//WH is very pleased to premiere, lyric-wise is poetic prose describing the invisible bond that flows between “Brothers and Sisters”, if left to blossom can strengthen, but if betrayed can disintegrate.
Instantly dynamic, endearing and arresting, it erupts with hypnotic lashing snares and kicks, obsessively, intermittently pulsing, steady bassline and Devo-like buzzing stab of analogue synth distortion amidst jolting blips, jittery skips, droning hisses and winding desolate icy synth drifts, as shape-shifting emotionally-charged female vocals, interspersed by monotonous, fleshy male breaths menacingly exhale ‘brothers and sisters’, grows from weak quivering panic to clear, confident walls of controlled fear and pain.
It’s modern, infectious and disturbing, sonically arresting and challenging at the same time, whilst harking back to the early ’80s pristine heydays of minimalistic and mechanical synth-infected leftfield pop experimentalism.
It’s modern, infectious and disturbing, sonically arresting and challenging at the same time, whilst harking back to the early ’80s pristine heydays of minimalistic and mechanical synth-infected leftfield pop experimentalism.
Now you just have to discover the full Distant Stars‘ second album “The Tides”, slated to be released, CD and Limited Cassette, on the 11th December 2019, through Detonic Recordings with global Digital distribution by Believe.
Keep up with Distant Stars:
