On June 9th, 2023, South London indie pop duo Arliston release ‘451’ via the band’s own label Sob Story Records. ‘451’ arrives alongside a captivating, ambiguous music video directed and produced by Bo Morgan. The new track follows previous releases’ Pisco Sours’ and ‘How In Heaven’ and is the third instalment from Arliston’s forthcoming EP set for release in July 2023.
‘451’ unfolds with a chilling cinematic atmosphere. A foreboding mix of erratic soundscapes crashes against surreal, hypnotic interludes, representing a twisted, ominous world and the struggles we face to find our place in it.
Vocalist Jack said, “I was reading Fahrenheit 451 when we wrote this song and was completely hooked. George came up with this amazing beat in 7/8, and it felt like the perfect off-kilter sound to fit a song about a dystopian future where everything is just a little off too. I think Ray Bradbury is an absolute genius and found the idea of the Montag character being besieged by thoughts that “maybe I’m a little lost”, despite having all the trappings of modern life (a room with screens for walls etc) so eerily resonant for the Instagram/TikTok age, but written in 1953! The video is a love letter to the book, just like the song itself. We wanted to create as much of a sense of that ambiguous, nostalgic future as possible. So the 1940s TV and filming in VHS was a big part of creating that atmosphere.”
George continued, “I was messing around with an idea at home, and it morphed into this twisting, hypnotic beat. We took it to 123 Studios and put some piano chords under it, and luckily Jack had a whole lyrical world ready to go (thanks Ray Bradbury!) We both have always liked music videos where people make or destroy something, that narrative arc is so simple but pleasing. So for this music video, we thought we’d do both! And it ties together, in a really satisfying way, the themes of 451.”
Check out the video for ‘451’ – BELOW:
Arliston are South Londoners Jack Ratcliffe (vocalist & instrumentalist) and George Hasbury (instrumentalist & producer), who have teamed up with talented drummers Sylvan Strauss and Sam Catchpole, along with Horn players Sam Scott and Dan Berry for their fourth EP. The duo burst onto the scene in 2018 with their critically acclaimed EP ‘Hawser’. Recorded in Dock Street Studios in East London with Chris Blakey (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Lloyd Williams, Death in Vegas), the release was originally a studio-only project but slowly began to move to a fully-fledged band, winning over an army of loyal fans with their mesmeric blend of spacey production and dreamlike rich harmonies. The EP has been mixed and co-produced by Brett Shaw (The Foals, Florence and the Machine), and you can tell because every thread of the swirling soundscape is expertly balanced.
The band returns in 2023 with their fourth EP to deliver their most mature body of work to date, packed with expansive large-scale songs that zero in on the ‘Arliston’ sound. An irresistible blend of indie pop brought together by a collective of like-minded, talented musicians who have transformed modest ideas into a three-dimensional world.
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