Dark Angels

Hot on the heels of his stunning All That Is Not Solid album of improvised piano pieces, and acclaimed The Sand That Ate The Sea soundtrack, Mercury KX are excited to announce a new 3 Track EP from composer and instrumentalist Luke Howard which reflects a new musical direction. The ambient, melancholy Dark Angels EP is a collaboration with fellow Australian composer Tilman Robinson with whom Luke has worked previously, on the single ‘Requiem’ (Secretly Canadian, 2017) and his recent Culturecide album (Bedroom Community, 2020).

The beautiful video for ‘Intermittent Reinforcement’ was created by architect, designer, coder and artist Jessica In. Watch it here

The Dark Angels EP continues the collaborative conversation between Howard and Robinson. In the weeks immediately prior to the impact of Covid-19, the two artists isolated themselves in Luke's studio to reimagine some of his pre-existing recordings. The resulting work is an exercise in stasis and highlights the duo's respective individual practices: a vacillation between light and darkness. Angelic voices are contorted beyond recognition while organs are manipulated into layers of texture. Dark Angels is both mournful and hopeful, preaching cautious optimism to a melancholic world.

Luke explains the creative approach: “The EP Dark Angels explores the shadow and darkness that exists in all of us, and our relationships. I took the choir tracks from The Sand That Ate The Sea (sung by Shards) and treated them with a variety of electronic processing, to form the starting point for the tracks ‘Dark Angels’ and ‘Dark Ascending’. (The other track, ‘Intermittent Reinforcement’ – named after a pattern in behavioural psychology – is derived from a chamber organ piece from the same record.) So, in some sense, this is a remix record of The Sand That Ate The Sea, with the exception that the pieces are not intended to be recognisable, and that the remixing was done by the artist.”