Stealing Sheep have announced the follow-up to their 2012 debut Into the Diamond Sun with Not Real, out on 13 April 2015 via Heavenly Recordings. The announcement has been accompanied by an album teaser video played out to unyielding beats, synths and a Moondog-like flute finale in which the real world is temporarily placed in suspension with life-like illusions to hammer home the album title. Their own art backgrounds certainly comes to the fore, watch it below:
The album was produced by band members Becky Hawley, Emily Lansley and Lucy Mercer at their studio in Liverpool. As you guessed from the title and video above the theme is the “interplay of fact and fiction; the edge of dreams and limits of reality”. This new release sounds promising, fresh and full of firm intentions as they revealed “We were more focused about what we are trying to do. Everything has a reason for being there.”
According to their PR they’ve experimented with tuned percussion, programmed beats, trigger samples and worked with effected synths, utilising the guitar and lap steel more sparingly and introducing more processed sounds. They’ve drawn inspiration from 50’s exotica, electronic music and 80’s pop and been influenced by the likes of Grace Jones, Maya Deren, Eden Ahbez, Delia Derbyshire, Moondog and John Carpenter.
The colourful album cover below is a collaboration between photographer Charlotte Rutherford (who also did the cover for the equally colourful new single cover from Marina and the Diamonds) and collage artist Louise Mason.
They are performing at Chats Palace on 10th February. Tickets are available now via Songkick here.
Tracks:
1 Sequence
2 Apparition
3 Not Real
4 This Time
5 Greed
6 Deadlock
7 Evolve & Expand
8 Sunk
9 Love
10 She