Danish post-punks, Less Win have announced their new album, Given Light scheduled for released by The Big Oil Recording Company on April 17th.
Their third album finds the trio at their most explosive and introverted yet; as if guarding something with all their might, tensing every musical muscle. Stream their new single, Root &
Branch, today - a song about the potential hazards of democracy inspired by Greek philosophy - notably Socrates and his distaste of it.
The story behind the video for Root & Branch is that Less Win wanted to be more front and centre with what they’re doing; each member is the focus of every new video for the track on which
they sing. The idea is lifted directly from Andy Warhol’s screen tests.
Writing a new album never comes easy. Once the Copenhagen trio had come back from a huge touring spree promoting their 2016 album Trust, (that sold out two weeks after release) all three band
members took a few months off to regroup and returned, creatively restless, with a wish to write in a structured way with each individual member acting as a separate songwriter to work on and
build collectively. The process was long, hard and draining, and nothing tangible was emerging from their creative bedrock, so they scrapped at least one album’s worth of music on the spot.
After taking an adopted ‘tabula rasa’ approach: "We gave no thought to our earlier material, to our friends in other bands or to the record label. Material was to be written quickly; all
preconceived material was to be disallowed. Criticism and editing of material during the writing process was to be swift and decisive," says drummer Matthew Moller. If any doubts were raised
about the material, it would be scrapped and they would start again.
With this approach, writing was finished in a couple of brutal weeks, the studio was booked, finishing touches were considered and recording and mixing took place over a four-five day session at
Black Tornado Studios in Copenhagen.
Gone are the string section and the avantgarde saxophone bursts from Trust; dirgy, soul-tinged group horns, percussion, distant harmonica, flamenco guitar and piercing lonesome viola taking their
place. The result sees post-punk, art rock and flamenco sensibilities meet in a furious mesh of relentless, yet melodic songs. The flamenco touches, especially, loom large; Casper Morilla (also
of Iceage) has spent the years since Trust studying flamenco, adding a severity and finesse to his playing that has coloured the whole album: "The touch of flamenco, which I feel so strongly
about, as an ingredient and how we write together, has been a means to transmitting the stories, advice and sentiments expressed on this album." he says. Fittingly, the title, Given Light, is a
Spanish saying for giving birth.
