WL//WH New Music David Long & Shane O’Neill
Following last year’s atmospheric long-form epic “whoiwasandwhatiam” and the evocative re-imagine of the The Sound‘s “Hand of Love” on the second volume of the Tribute To The Sound & Adrian Borland compilation via the DIY label The Beautiful Music, Dubliners childhood friends and veteran musicians David Long and Shane O’Neil, both celebrated frontmen and main songwriters in distinct ’80s Indie Rock /Post-punk Irish cult bands, respectively Into Paradise, the former; Blue In Heaven, the latter, tease the upcoming fifth album with the new 2-track single “25.”
A hopeful stripped-down yet evocative Post-punk raw anthem in honour of authentic living, with lyrics rooted in the stark realism that it’s the year 2025, “25” hops earnestly on a magnetic backdrop of relentless crisp beats, punctuated by ominously resonant, sparse bass stabs and wired guitar glimmers, swept by a dramatic cloak of trembling chromatic synths, to ecompass a rugged, grateful vocal narrator, searching for truth amid a long list of alternative answers.
More pensive and downbeat, the electro-acoustic “Wont” shakes over a bed of shuffling, subtly knocking percussions and somberly murmuring bass lines, surrounded by forlorn keyboard glows, shivering with nostalgic, heartbroken vocals, stuck in a river of regret.
Both thought-provoking tracks are accompanied by grainy black and white film footage taken from the 1930 silent movie “Earth,” from one of the Soviet cinema’s, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, most influential and visionary directors, Alexander Dovzhenko, distinctive for his overwhelming visual magnificence and innovative, intricately dizzying montage, to convey powerful, spiritual and poetic cinematic paintings of life and nature.
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