Formed out a collaboration between Lauren Green (formerly of Mirror Travel) and interdisciplinary artist Marissa Macias, Tan Cologne is a dream pop project that represents both the creative journey of its creators and the landscape in which it took place. Ever since meeting in Taos, NM five years ago, the duo have worked together on a whole manner of things, from the formation of an underground gallery space to composing experimental soundscapes. The debut Tan Cologne album, Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico, “emerged from parallel observations and growth,” during this collaboration, “with New Mexico as the axis of the journey.”
Orbiting around the the titular state, the record excavates the physical and metaphysical layers of the specific location, digging through strata both natural and supernatural in attempt to represent New Mexico in all its strange, stark beauty. In this way, Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico is something of a gateway to a multidimensional version of the state—one where the organic and incorporeal exist side by side, and time is accordioned into a single present, eradicating the lines between past and future, earthly and extraterrestrial, science and divination.
Ahead of the record’s release via Labrador Records, we’re honoured to share ‘Alien’, the second single. “Alien tells of a visitation,” the band explain. “It is a prediction of what may and can occur when contact from outer space is made and time is revealed.” The band also directed a video to accompany the song, inspired by potentially extraterrestrial events that took place in Taos back in the summer, as they go on to describe:
Two hunters were out searching for elk in daylight on a volcanic landscape and came across two figures, who then quickly vanished. They then saw a large structure, which also quickly vanished. Their story has since been deemed credible by the Director of the National UFO Reporting Center. It is easy to dig into all the best conspiracies while residing in New Mexico, and this is our sun-drenched interpretation of those experiences. Throughout the video, we also point out to the mysteries that are created by our own kind – What are in our skies?
Ebbing and flowing but never quite breaking its own restraint, the song exudes a sense of the withheld, always threatening to unleash epiphany or violence from within its folds. Instead, like much of the ufological phenomena, the truth is suspended by waiting and undermined by its own plurality. Disclosure is imminent but never present. The story is never exactly straight. They’ll soon arrive from the skies, they’ve been here all along. There’s conflicting evidence, there’s mind control. There’s a cultist insistence on the spiritual and the sublime.
Tan Cologne are here not to reconcile the conflicting strands, nor point us toward the singular truth, but rather remind us that both the Old World and the New Age had very different ideas to our own. What if to look for some single objective reality is to miss the point? To close one’s eyes to the full dimensions of any given place?
Tan Cologne are also playing a series of shows in California in February. Find the dates below.
2/14 Non Plus Ultra (LA, CA)
2/17 Moroccan Lounge (LA, CA)
2/21 Greater Goods (Ojai, CA)
2/22 Lander’s Brewing (Joshua Tree, CA)
Photos by Marissa Macias