Arrow Fat Left Icon Arrow Fat Right Icon Arrow Right Icon Cart Icon Close Circle Icon Expand Arrows Icon Facebook Icon Instagram Icon Twitter Icon Hamburger Icon Information Icon Down Arrow Icon Mail Icon Mini Cart Icon Person Icon Ruler Icon Search Icon Shirt Icon Triangle Icon Bag Icon Play Video

Fire Records

  • Virginia Wing 'Ecstatic Arrow' PRE-ORDER - Cargo Records UK

    Fire Records

    Virginia Wing 'Ecstatic Arrow'

    £11.99

    v

    Fire Records

    Virginia Wing 'Ecstatic Arrow'

    £11.99

    Their favourite records are the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Whether it's Madonna, Talking Heads or Holger Czukay - we enjoy these artists in the background with friends or profoundly and alone.
    Virginia Wing both understand and embrace this concept fully as they return with Ecstatic Arrow, an album which finds them in a place of renewed strength, optimism and clarity.

    Recorded in Switzerland, in the family home of longtime friend and collaborator Misha Hering within the domesticity and gentle routine of communal life, the album represents a world as predisposed to solemn introspection as it is to blithe conviviality.

    Ecstatic Arrow borrows from the heterogeneous terrain of The Flying Lizard's Fourth Wall, the exuberant technology assisted pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the playful sophistication of Lizzy Mercier Descloux's Press Colour, arriving at the evergreen intersection of pop music and conceptual art.

    The resolute opener of Be Released and album centre point The Female Genius pair resonant Fourth World instrumentation with sonorous, loping drum patterns. Elsewhere, the sentimental march of single The Second Shift plays out like an after-hours ballad re-imagined by Wally Badarou and For Every Window There's a Curtain is coloured by the blue-lit haze of an Eventide warped tenor saxophone. Three albums in, the voice of Alice Merida Richards is more compelling and expressive than ever.

    The glacial deadpan of previous records has given way to a more candid, self-possessed delivery, showing an appreciation for the humour and tragedy innate in the downtown Arcadia of Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley or even Lynn Goldsmith's Will Powers.

    It's with this voice that Richards outlines a simple ideality that fortifies the entirety of Ecstatic Arrow - inequality pervades, destructive behaviours are inherited and each subsequent generation has to reconcile the debts of its precursor - yet a space exists within ourselves and each other that houses a fact we must be reminded of - we have the ability to choose.

    Even in moments of frustration; the ascerbic eye-roll toward male entitlement, Glorious Idea or the world-weary Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, there persists a joy for living that refuses to be confined. A depiction of a group finally at ease with itself, Ecstatic Arrow is a tribute to the internal momentum that quietly guides us toward our destination.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Be Released
    2. The Second Shift
    3. Glorious Idea
    4. Relativity
    5. For Every Window There's a Curtain
    6. The Female Genius
    7. Eight Hours Don't Make A Day
    8. A Sister
    9. Pale Burnt Lake
    10. Seasons Reversed

    Release Date: 08/06/2018
    Visit product page
  • Virginia Wing 'Forward Constant Motion' - Cargo Records UK

    Fire Records

    Virginia Wing 'Forward Constant Motion'

    £11.99

    LP Single sleeve with DL postcard.

    With many groups, a reduction in their personnel is often mirrored in a simplification of their sound. In Virginia Wing's case, their reconfiguration from a trio to a two-piece sees them blossoming from the previously cold, Kosmische palette found on their debut LP Measures of Joy into the wider-reaching, fully focused sound of Forward Constant Motion.

    The album dives headlong into the synthetic waves that lapped around the edges of their initial work, drawing as much from the compressed thump of Homework-era Daft Punk as the languid new age-isms of Laurie Anderson to create a bold and inventive modern pop record. We felt quite out of our depth when it came to making our first album. For the sake maintaining focus and not completely wrecking our self-esteem, we limited ourselves (in terms of influence) to the sound heard on Measures of Joy,' says Pillay.

    'This time around, we had the confidence in the fact that we were actually capable of making a full length record so we cast the net a bit wider. More than anything, we wanted this record to expand in every direction: the poppy parts are poppier, the weird parts are weirder, hopefully' Virginia Wing's strength is in taking recognised pop structures and unearthing the exit points within them. Case in point is lead-off single Grapefruit, which emerges from a cacophony of crackles and hums and drifts in and out of focus, even while clocking in at a lean sub-four minutes.

    Elsewhere, Miserable World is far more rigid; with Richards'vocals tied to its jutting, jerking movements. Standout-track, Hammer A Nail abruptly taking off from powerful stomp to high-def escapism. Underpinning much of the record, though, is a sense of the dreamlike or otherworld, the album split up by short, drifting passages where structures melt away. It's a key thematic point which, in-part, arose when Pillay developed Labyrinthitis (a disorder of the inner ear which results in vertigo and disorientation).

    'When you're all of a sudden spending most of the day in a world of your own, things can quickly turn to the melodramatic' he explains 'I started thinking about the human body, health, degeneration, decay, that sort of thing'.

    The symptoms would often come in spells, so I liked the idea of loosely replicating that feeling with the music. That's why some of the songs stop abruptly or sound as if they are falling apart. I wanted to reflect the fallibility of the human body.

    As for Richards, the themes of Measures of Joy - the claustrophobia of being stuck in one place figuratively and literally - remain in the background, however Forward Constant Motion offers a mirror in the approaching idea in the freedom and fear of being displaced. On songs like Lily of Youth or Miserable World, such movement is pointed and direct.

    Elsewhere, as on the wistful murmur of Move On (the group's warped interpretation of late night Lovers Rock tunes) or Sonia and Claudette's early AM stupor it's more uncertain. Then there are tracks, like the glimmering finale Future Body, that focus on the strength of women and female friendship. As Richards explains, the group are acutely aware of misguided perceptions when operating within the paradigm of a male-female electronic duo.

    It's a record made out of a union that is vital for the on-going evolution of the group. Reduced to their very nucleus, they now sound at their most natural, comfortably processing the boundless ideas that they previously eschewed and shaping them to work, pushing the pair ever further forward.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Lily of Youth
    2. ESP Offline
    3. Mecca Cola
    4. Grapefruit
    5. Miserable World
    6. Andalucia
    7. Sonia & Claudette
    8. Local Loop
    9. Be Contained
    10. Permaboss
    11. Hammer A Nail
    12. Move On
    13. Baton
    14. Future Body
    Visit product page
  • Virginia Wing 'Measures Of Joy' - Cargo Records UK

    Fire Records

    Virginia Wing 'Measures Of Joy'

    £11.99

    v

    Fire Records

    Virginia Wing 'Measures Of Joy'

    £11.99

    Measures Of Joy is the debut album from South London based group Virginia Wing, due to be released on Fire Records in November. The album is a work of psychedelic majesty that avoids the rockist trappings that many contemporary bands fall into; speaking to everyday anxiety and isolation and in contrast, seeking to evoke an inner world of pastoral fortification. The startlingly realised collection draws influence from the radiophonic sounds of Broadcast, the kosmische wonder of Cluster and the rhythmic propulsion of This Heat whilst never directly emulating any particular style.

    Building on the experimentations found on their 7" on Critical Heights and a 12" EP on Faux Discx, Measures Of Joy encompasses spoken-word passages, brooding electronics and musique concrete influences to create songs that are at once immediate and truly strange. From the metronomic pulse of "World Contact" and the avant-pop of "Marnie" to the sonic experimentation of "Gold Thread", Measures Of Joy is a record that consistently surprises and ensnares; a collection of hallucinogenic pop-songs played with a sense of urgency and an experimental verve. Virginia Wing is Alice Merida Richards, Sam Pillay and Sebastian Truskolaski.

    The album was recorded at Holy Mountain Studios by Misha Hering.

    1. The Body Is A Clear Place
    2. Estuary
    3. World Contact
    4. In the Mirror It's Sunday
    5. A Complex Outline
    6. Meshes
    7. Juniper
    8. Read The Rules
    9. An Arabesque
    10. Marnie
    11. First and Fourth
    12. Gold Thread
    Visit product page