One of the many highlights from the punk greats’ astounding 2019 album, Breathe In/Breathe Out is the Membranes‘ latest single. The established grandiosity of the track is elevated further still by an appropriately breath-taking 26-piece choir, a ravishing riposte between the poetic words from frontman John Robb.
The accompanying video is as striking as the track itself, with the band appearing alongside Membranes fans, in a moving monochrome art direction. It is also laden with a number of the band’s music associates, from punk icon Jordan, Alan McGee, Brix Smith, to Rowetta. The UK’s leading wind farm and green energy provider Dale Vince also appears, who has collaborated with John Robb to author a book called ‘Manifesto’ – the book lays out what and how the post virus world needs to do to get green. Released in November, the book envisions how to create a vegan, green transport and energy world.
The aim of this impossibly moving emboldening of the track was to emphasise the importance of breath in our current universe, “celebrating the power of breath and the right to breathe in an increasingly suffocating world.” The track also captures “the simplicity of breath and the right to breathe…”, where these have become vital in regards to the coronavirus and BLM, the most primal and basic “of human functions” becoming “the defining expression of everything.”
“Because of this we remade the song to celebrate the power of voice and made the choir the key to the track.“
Listen here, or watch the video below.
