Temples to release new album 'Volcano'
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UK band Temples have announced details of the release of their second album Volcano, out through Heavenly Recordings on Friday 3 March, 2017. The band’s highly anticipated new collection was self-produced and recorded at the group’s home studio in Kettering and mixed by David Wrench.
The band recently unveiled the first track to be taken from the album, ‘Certainty’, which has already racked up over half a million plays on Spotify and Soundcloud, bagged a triple j spot add, B-list on 6Music and was #1 on Hype Machine for three days straight.
Talking about the recently unveiled video for ‘Certainty’, director Alden Volney says “This is based on a recurring dream I have been having since childhood about getting into a sea of plastic. So when the band approached me about doing something inspired by those JPOP videos that ooze quirkiness and eccentricity, I thought injecting the colour palettes and aesthetics of Japan into this idea could be a good fit. It's designed to feel like a fever dream you'd have after spending too much time in a Japanese dollar store.”
It doesn’t take too long with Volcano to realise that, while all the things that made Temples special the first time around remain intact, a noticeable evolution has taken place. It’s there from the outset: the beefed-up beats of ‘Certainty’ reveal an expanded sonic firmament, one in which bright synth hooks and insistent choruses circle around each other over chord sequences that strike the right balance between nice and queasy.
“If there’s a sense of scale,” says lead singer James Bagshaw, “it was really just a result of implementing a load of things that we didn’t know about the first time around.” Co-founding member and bassist Thomas Walmsley describes a record in which“we discovered a lot as we went along, and the excitement at having done so radiates.”
One thing you do notice is that it’s harder to spot the influences this time around. It would be disingenuous to evade the psych-pop tag for sure, but mystical language has been supplanted by something more direct – and while those influences are still there, it’s no longer possible to pick them out. They’ve been broken down and blended together – fossilised into a single source of creative fuel, so what you hear this time around sounds like nothing so much as Temples. It’s the sound of a band squaring up to their potential.
Temples released their debut album Sun Structures in February 2014. Bagging the prestigious top spot in Rough Trade’s ‘Albums of the Year’ list, Sun Structures also charted in 18 countries, including a top-10 spot in the UK, and became the year’s biggest-selling vinyl album in independent British record shops, with early pressings of first single ‘Shelter Song’ changing hands on Discogs for up to £150. It was also a triple j Feature Album.
Less than a month after its release, Temples played to a packed Shepherd’s Bush Empire and would sell-out the Forum in London, make a number of festival appearances over the summer including Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, Primavera Sound and Lollapalooza and perform on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”. Following their recent, sold-out show at Oslo in Hackney where they played a number of new tracks, the band announced another London show at The Electric in Brixton on Thursday 30th March 2017, with further UK shows to be announced shortly.
Temples are: James Bagshaw (vocals & guitar), Tom Walmsley (bass & backing vocals), Sam Toms (drums) and Adam Smith (keys).
Volcano Tracklisting
Certainty
All Join In
(I Want To Be Your) Mirror
Oh The Saviour
Born Into the Sunset
How Would You Like To Go
Open Air
In My Pocket
Celebration
Mystery Of Pop
Roman God-Like Man
Strange Or Be Forgotten