WL//WH Video Of The Day: WOR_KSPACE “song”

Video Of The Day wor_kspace

wor_kspace is the experimental, electro pop project of Glasgow-based musician and producer Finlay Macdonald, as the result of a more focused and refined development from his previous monikers Lenzie Moss and Music and Movement. Meticulously crafted in his tape-based, ‘Analogue Mountain’ studio in the South Side of Glasgow, wor_kspace sound joins the dots between the 90s German indietronica of early Morr Music (Guther, Ms John Soda and Lali Puna), and the pioneers that inspired them such as Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Neu and Kraftwerk.

Already hosted in these parts last year, he returns with an incoming EP, “ext_ended play”, due out on August 6, 2021, CDR & Digital, via London-based label Glass Modern, previewed by a modern dystopic video created by his daughter Ray Macdonald, for the romantic new single “song”.

‘Song’ seems, at first, like an extremely lazy and simplistic title for this track, but here’s the sketch. I was nearing the completion of the debut wor_kspace album in January 2021 and I decided I needed a few snappy, tightly structured songs to balance out the longer more explorative pieces on the long-player. I had for some time wanted to experiment with a very traditional song structure – that of the Tin Pan Alley style of Cole Porter et al; a song that has a complete melody and refrain in the first 30 seconds, then repeats. Think of ‘AnythingGoes’ or ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, for example. The point is made early and the song’s title is arrived at after a short, complete melody. To follow this structure to the letter would mean calling the song, ‘We Still Get Along’. However, observant followers of the wor_kspace aesthetic will by now have noticed that every song has a one-word title, so that wasn’t going to work. The one word that I felt worked for the title was ‘song’ because it comes at the end of another significant line, ‘my life is going for a song.

Beautifully evocative and intoxicating flows of blooming, pulsing bass lines, heart-pounding beats, and fluttering, warbling, and sparkling synth strains swirl into dramatic, blinking textures of pinpoint chiming repetitions and shimmering ringing glitters, whilst soft, atmospheric male vocals release angst, love and melancholy into the mercurial auras of hypnotic electronica.

Romantic lyrics attest to the strength of a relationship despite the idiosyncratic distractions of a dysfunctional society.

Pixelated video, created by Ray Macdonald, blurs a neon-lit retro-futuristic vibe into a heady landscape of dysphoric dreams. Still wind turbines, a burnt sunset skyline, and social decay litter the urban streets of modern disenchantment, where shooting stars burst hypnotically over the pollution, pain, and violence of alienated and fragmented existence. Red and blue dimensions merge into a purple horizon of disassociated pain and subconscious fear to align with celestial entities in the heat of a dual solar system’s ancient battle between two worlds.

Keep up with wor_kspace: