https://youtube.com/watch?v=FbRfK8dcPPc
Here’s a cross-disciplinary imaginative challenge for you: take the desolate dystopia of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”, add a touch of North-of-the-Wall Westeros winter (it’s May. Every thought we have is tinged with Game of Thrones), and filter the two through a dark, British hip-hop sensibility. The result? Ed Scissor and Lamplighter’s latest release “Tell Them It’s Winter”.
Signed to High Focus Records, Scissor – also known as Edward Scissortongue – combines densely sombre imagery with sparse, eerie production; the result could soundtrack a post-apocalyptic Britain, characterised by societal disintegration and a climate even a bare-legged Geordie lass on a winter night out on the Toon would consider a bit much. Typical lyrics? “First stop snowfall; second stop ice forms; third stop winter; last stop misery.” Scissor explains, “The howling bass made me think of the wind, and the drums/castanets that underpin the track made me think of machines and industry. When I wrote the lyrics I would always find myself somewhere super desolate and lost and lacking in life.”
Scissor has worked closely with Glasgow-based producer Lamplighter since the release of 2012 debut ‘Better.Luck.Next.Life’; then came ‘Theremin’ in 2014, followed by 2015’s ‘Chavassian Striking Distance’. ‘Tell Them It’s Winter’ leads their latest LP of the same name. According to Scissor, “‘TTIW’ was inspired by the cinematic properties of Lamplighter’s production. It is most often the starting point and this track is no exception.”
The track is accompanied by a melancholy black-and-white video, following two pensive chaps loping around the countryside before a dramatic change of pace in the film’s last act. And it sounds like our McCarthy associations weren’t far off – of the video’s conception, Scissor says, “Roping in my best friends to play the two main roles, we spend a long weekend in the Lake District honing and developing a weird, drifting relationship between two guys that unfolds throughout the film; on the road, heading somewhere, having been somewhere before.”
Intrigued? Keep an eye out for the full ‘Tell Them It’s Winter’ EP, which will drop on July 15th. We’re anticipating a big year for Ed Scissor – though hopefully sans apocalypse.
