Certainly not strangers at WL//WH, although mainly as occasional yet impeccable record reviewers, English ambient shoegaze band, CORASANDEL, named after early 1900s Norwegian author/painter Cora Sandel, return to ‘our screens’ with a brand new 2-track single and the fantastic news to have been hired by the influential Portland-based independent US label Shelflife Records (Airiel, Pinkshinyultrablast, Tears Runs Rings).
The founder duo of Mark Merrifield (guitar, vox, and things) and Jimmy Osborne (processed guitars and fx), started the project in 2017, driven by a mutual love of reverb, soundscapes, and stories, with the habit of write and record, late at night, off-grid in the Lincolnshire countryside.
Recently expanded to a 4-piece with the addition of Holly Hall (bass) and Chris Lody (Keys and beats), Corasandel have just shared the Official Music Video for the fog lifting main track “Cracked Light,” according to the band
it’s about hoping that the people we care about are safe, no matter where they are in the world. The people that we all care about should mean everyone
“Cracked Light”, punctuated by subdued gentle cymbal-charged rhythmic accents, only episodically more resonant and sharp, unfurls a soothing and intense interweaving of glistening, crystalline uplifting guitar melodies, dense ripples of winding rich dreamy textures, sinuous swelling hearty bass palpitations and droning keyboard saturation, growing over comforting euphoric vocals, that wax and wane into the seamless sway between a rarefied, ethereal atmospheric bliss and ecstatic swirling echoes of shimmering reverberations.
Layered vocalizations express an array of emotional states revealed in emotive lyrics, wandering through past regrets to a present state of self-healing, acceptance, and into future growth and inner harmony, in a beautiful milieu of transcending catharsis and shared love.
Majestic audio-visual interplay combines bipolar spatial expansions with blooming sonic horizons, to depict a fluid progression of flashing geometric shapes and black-light planes swept in negative space absorption.
A band in constant development, increasingly aware of their means, willing to explore and push their own boundaries.
We’ve gladly lost a couple of talented reviewers, apparently…
Corasandel‘s new single “Cracked Light”, backed by the instrumental b-side “Alaudidae”, will be available on all major digital and streaming services, via Shelflife Records, from 26 June 2020.
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Written by Catt Gillette & Fabrizio Lusso