via musicadeaves:
Walls: Heat Haze
It’s difficult to take apart an album like Walls’ second, ‘Coracle’. Granted, what gives a song like ‘Heat Haze’ an added sense of excitement is its lurching, animal-like vocals; its kaleidoscopic layers of synths; its unexpected and very gradual build. But it’s all part of a very calculated album, in which each song looks the other right in the eye. They all work together like cogs in an extravagant, beautiful machine.
With this pair, there’s certainly a belief that the album is anything but dead. From the record’s structure, to the perfectly designed sleeve, to the luscious white vinyl you’ll adore when picking it up from a store.
I recently interviewed Sam Willis, one-half of the pair, for a piece that will soon appear in full on DIY, and asked him how much of a role he thinks visual aesthetic plays when releasing an album.
Sam: “It’s definitely important to us- we’re really happy with the job that Robert Bellamy, the photographer did on the artwork.. It was his concept to shoot steam against a black background, and then invert it… through a series of tints and different whirls of steam it all came together.. We’re particularly happy with the white vinyl of the LP, we think it works really well agains the pink of the cover. Also, the visual aesthetic definitely does give a suggestion of how the listener will perceive the record, so we were keen to have the image be somewhat opaque and open to interpretation.”
