These New Puritans releases their fourth studio album Inside The Rose. Recorded in Berlin, London and Southend-on-Sea, and mixed in Los Angeles, Inside The Rose is a record unlike anything else you’ll hear this year – 40 minutes of powerful melodies, lush strings and progressive electronics, packed with jaw-dropping sonic left turns.
These New Puritans began playing music together as children – writing songs on a massively over-sized guitar and a pair of bongos from a charity shop. “We’d learn Captain Beefheart songs together,” says Jack. “And I would slow down Aphex Twin songs to analyse them, then create copies, to learn how to make those kinds of sounds.”
Together they began to create their own musical world and in the years since they’ve successfully blurred the distinctions between pop, classical, electronic, rock and experimental music, earning rave reviews and praise from artists as diverse as Björk, Massive Attack and Elton John along the way.
2008’s debut Beat Pyramid, released when the brothers were still in their teens, was a circular work of fast rhythms, repetitive lyrics and fractured field recordings, stood out like a sore thumb amongst the conservative, guitar-based music of the period. The follow up, Hidden (2010) defied expectations and garnered numerous ‘album of the year’ accolades. After appearing on Björk’s Bastards remix album, the band released the cinematic Field of Reeds in 2013. Since then, Jack and George’s desire for new sonic challenges saw them produce the musical score for the first authorised theatrical production of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Inside the Rose’s sharp romanticism grips like a vice, drawing you into a nocturnal alternate reality where nothing is as it seems. “The songs are about beauty, transcendence, desire, oblivion, ecstasy and eyes,” says Jack. The album’s adventurous spirit is summed up by a band phrase George would use as a touchstone throughout recording: “why dream backwards when you can dream forwards?”
Inside The Rose isn’t just These New Puritans’ most affecting music yet, it’s further proof that they operate in a different realm to most bands, making music with true fearlessness.
“I want to go beyond myself and my time,” says Jack. “That’s the art I like. Whether it’s Francis Bacon or William Blake. You fail, inevitably, but that’s the challenge.”
Live
- Thursday 4th April - Rotonde, Brussels
- Friday 5th April - Paradiso, Amsterdam