LIARS have always been a pretty unique presence in our musical landscape, gnawing and needling away at the bones of rock as the whole edifice collapses, from right back when they presented that noise-rock concept album about witchcraft, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, jeez, 17 years back now. Never mind always finding them in the kitchen at parties; you’re more likely to find Angus Andrew, the sole ever-present in the Liars project, down in the cellar, lights off.
And the latest track the band are pulling back the heavy black drapes on ahead of August’s The Apple Drop is “Big Appetite”, with a hallucinogenic video that you can slip inside below: a rush of colour like that sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrew distorted and sheared, staring back down the lense from some strange point within.
“Big Appetite” follows last month’s dark subterrenea, “Sekwar” and employs a camera mounted on a drill to generate the stark psychedelic madnesse.
“I thought that spelunking with bats for the “Sekwar” video tested the upper limits of my fear threshold, but it turns out having a revved-up drill pointed close to my forehead for a day is truly the stuff of nightmares,” confesses Angus.
“The drill spun the camera at up to 2000rpm, and the very real potential for an accidental trepanation gave the filming an extra potency,” says the director of both videos, Clemens Habicht.
“The terror experienced by the almost broken but fiercely determined space traveller mixes with the candy colours of a delirious unhinged euphoria, with lucid recollections of band members Cameron Deyell and Laurence Pike joining a more fresh-faced Angus from a distant, optimistic and simpler past.”
The Apple Drop, which will be released by Mute on August 6th, follows 2017’s TFCF and 2018’s Titles with the Word Fountain into the catalogue; the previous two were both distinctly solo affairs, but for this, Liars’ tenth album, Angus chose to expand and embrace collaboration. “My goal was to create beyond my abilities––something bigger than myself.”
The new album thus finds him working with avant-garde jazz drummer Laurence Pike, multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell and lyricist Mary Pearson Andrew.
“For the first time I embraced collaboration from an early stage, allowing the work of others to influence the work of my own,” he says.
“Throughout Liars’ history I have consistently tried to develop new methods of creating music. On each project I’ve essentially abandoned previous methods and attempted to instead learn different ways of writing and producing songs.
“Where once I perceived this journey as a straight line, I’m increasingly realising my trajectory is more akin to a spiral. As new ideas are generated, older ones take on new meaning and evolve further.”
Liars’ The Apple Drop will be released by Mute on August 6th digitally, on limited edition recycled coloured vinyl and CD; additionally, one of two exclusive flexidiscs, each featuring a different acoustic version of an album track, will be available while stocks last through select independent shops. Pre-order your copy here.
Connect with Liars at their website and on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
