Our Song of the Day is a slice of summery pastoraldelica from Southend on Sea born, Brighton and Hove dwelling brothers Mik and Rich Hanscomb better known by their non de plum, Junkboy under which they have been releaseing records since 1999.
Release the Sunshine is taken from their forthcoming album Sovereign Sky which has been in gestation since the release of Koyo back in 2010, it also marks a new direction – song based pastoraldelica, a sound born of the home studio and a shared brotherly love of the soft-focus, bucolic and just-so-psychedelic.
Talking about the new album and Mik explains
‘Rich and I made the conscious decision to sing the tracks ourselves and create a more song based album. We spent a long time crafting the music before getting it down onto tape which is different to how to we’ve worked in the past, playing the studio as in instrument. We also wanted to make the album entirely ourselves, to give the songs our personal stamp, character and to push ourselves creatively. Apart from the cello and violin parts that we couldn’t manage!’
Sovereign Sky channels the kind of music Mik and Rich have listened to since youth. A Thames Estuary take on the lo-fidelity baroque of Cardinal, the quiet experimentation of American Analogue Set, the vintage mellifluousness of The Lilys and the hushed pop-classicism of Elliott Smith. There’s also a healthy dose of British Romantisicm – an imaginary Albion in their heads somewhere between the socialist utopia of William Morris and Bob Stanley’s Gather In The Mushrooms compilations- while their hearts lie sun-kissed and blissed in Southern California like a pair of burnt out troubadours in deck shoes sourced from the Shebuya Kei district of Tokyo.
Sovereign Sky is a meditation on place and the past, of emotions experienced and rekindled, of futures anticipated and dreamt of by two brothers growing up together sharing a life not a career in music.
Sovereign Sky is due for release in November 2014 on Enraptured Records.
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