New track provides a colorful exploration of post-rock, intelligent dance music sounds and abstract visuals; premiered on The New Fury
NEW YORK CITY | February 8, 2019 – Diving into a lush soundscape of layered sounds, Brooklyn’s Semaphore continue to break barreirs as they explore elements of post-rock and IDM (intelligent dance music) with their new single “Pie“. An accompanying music video provides a colorful, abstract-oriented visual, creating a hypnotizing, emotive vibe.
The New Fury premiered the track earlier this week, citing how it “diverges from their previous shoegaze-influenced output with a more electronic and IDM bent”. Vocalist Siddhu Anandalingam shared that the band took direct influences from Tycho, Minus the Bear, Interpol, and Vasudeva as well as other post-rock and IDM artists. Never limiting themselves to a single genre, Semaphore seamlessly works their way into this new sonic territory with masterful precision.
“This song is about feeling used by people,” said Anandalingam. “Slowly, piece by piece, parts of you are taken until there’s nothing left.” A repetitive line throughout the song “is this what you wanted, is this what you wanted, is this what you wanted from me?” provides a trance-like atmosphere. An aura of slight relaxation is built, yet there is also a sense of loss, redundancy and frustration, perfectly reflecting the emotional exhaustion. Cresting, the track shifts into a heavier, louder, emotional wall of sound. “This song was born out of experiments with a DL4 guitar pedal, which has been a good writing tool,” Anandalingam shared. “Usually, I loop small sections until I can figure out how to layer them, but also constantly came up with ambient loops while playing around with the pedal, never thinking about incorporating those into songs. This was the first time I decided to record one of the ambient loops I made and create a song around it.”
Visually, the video changes to an abstract style, of reflected prisms. “We worked with our friendGeorge Ivanoff again on this video. I came up with the full idea for the video, and wanted it to have two distinct parts, a “reality” based one and an “abstract” one, both dealing with the feelings of despair.” Ivanoff also directed and filmed the band’s music video for “Unreliable“, released last month.
“Pie” is the second single from Semaphore’s upcoming EP Leave With The Season, scheduled for release on Friday, February 22, 2019. Digital and limited physical cassettes are available for pre-order on Bandcamp. The album was self-recorded by the band, with mastering by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (Converge, Chelsea Wolfe, Animal Collective). Semaphore will celebrate with an EP release show on February 27 at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn, NY. “Pie” is out today and can be found now on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Youtube.
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Photo by Dani Sacco.
ABOUT SEMAPHORE:
Between jazz saxophone transcriptions and chemical engineering problem sets and, Siddhu Anandalingam decided that the only way he had time to explore his musical interests would be to combine his varied musical tastes – thus Semaphore was born. Drawing from the musicality and social commentary of artists like Pink Floyd, Tycho, The Dillinger Escape Plan Smashing Pumpkins, M83, and Tigran Hamasyan, Semaphore’s music is intricate, lush, and hard to pin down to any one genre. Check it out and you will hear a combination of all the best parts of 90s grunge with floaty shoegaze vocals, delayed guitar effects, glued together with subtle jazz chord voicings and great production.
After graduating from Columbia University in 2015 with a minor in music, Siddhu moved back home to the suburbs of DC, where he spent the year focusing on writing music, and getting involved in the DC music scene. Upon returning to Brooklyn in mid-2016, Siddhu quickly found the correct musicians for the task of bringing Semaphore’s music to life. At a 2016 Dillinger Escape Plan show, Siddhu recognized Emmett Ceglia while Emmett was crowdsurfing, and remembered him as a friend of a friend who was a fantastic drummer. After connecting with Emmett, he recommended Jay Kohler as a virtuosic mathcore guitarist/composer who brought sensitivity and musicality to all projects he was associated with. A couple of months later, Siddhu and Jay met Niko Hasapopoulos while waiting in line to hear Ben Weinman (from Dillinger) give a talk about the music industry. While Niko was just a college student at the time, his excitement and energy was infectious, and he soon signed on as Semaphore’s permanent bassist.
Sometimes sweet, sometimes bombastic, but always entertaining, Semaphore excels at creating an enveloping experience, whether live or through headphones!
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