Orchid Mantis, the project of Atlanta based Thomas Howard, is readying a new EP, the follow up to last year’s album Yellow House. If you’re unfamiliar with Orchid Mantis, then expect heaps dreamy lo-fi pop that is interested in the fluid border between the tangible and intangible, what Howard calls “analog totems reflecting the nostalgic veneer and evocative stylings of old films and decaying formats.” As we described in a review of the previous record:
The oneiric consistency of these tracks is not some adolescent lesson in performative weirdness, but rather an attempt to engage with reality beyond its strict physics […] surreality born of Howard’s own experiences, where coincidence and happenstance prove a little too convenient, and strange connections form between moments in his life.
Titled Light As Leaving, the EP is the first of two small collections that Howard wrote in the aftermath of Yellow House. “After three consecutive albums working at a certain sound I wanted to give myself space to experiment without expectations,” he describes. “I pushed myself to try some things I couldn’t seem to get right in the past, while drawing from a lot of what I’d learned recording the last album.” The result is a release concerned with the transience of life, how what we hold dear can change in ways we could not predict, even down to a title that is taken from lyrics that have since been scrapped.
Today we have the pleasure of unveiling first single, ‘Where You Are’, which features Josh Augustin of Vansire, making it the first Orchid Mantis song made with a collaborator. Starting as a demo written on a Casio sampling keyboard and a Univox SR-55 drum machine, the song conjures a rich soundscape that is soft and textured, the edges removed like a memory recalled fondly. Augustin’s vocals, worked into the track while it was still in its flexible formative period, feel wholly at home amongst the other elements, a pebble rounded in the same pond.
‘Where Are You’ also comes complete with a video by Joseph Skillas, which you can check out below:
Light As Leaving is out tomorrow (30th August) and you can pre-order it from the Orchid Mantis Bandcamp page.