Sweden‘s Cult of Y are something of a mystery. Describing themselves as an ‘audiovisual’ duo, producer August Vinberg and film director Robin Kempe-Bergman (core member of electronic music collective iamamiwhoami) explore themes of isolation, loneliness and dread with creations as rooted in cinema as they are in music. Previous single ‘Mountain’ offered a glimpse of their work, the distinctive blend of gospel, rock and electronic sounds accompanied by a film of brooding noir directed by Kempe-Bergman himself.
The first chapter of a forthcoming EP Work in Progress, latest single ‘Glory Glory’ further hones this style, challenging the line between song and short film with its evocative and abstract style. Again directed by Kempe-Bergman, the video opens with near-silence for the first minutes, its eerie, surreal imagery populated by staccato bursts of panicked voices, confusion caused by the appearance of some strange entity, although the picture only shows a figure edging around a cat on the road. The effect is somewhere between Lars von Trier and David Lynch, where stillness belies some darkness below the surface which threatens to spill out. The foundation upon which the rest of the EP will build.
The song itself consists of an almost acapella version of the classic hymn, the sounds of the video bleeding into the track as its characters continue their journey along the road (to Hollywood, in true Lynchian style). “Often when I make Cult of Y music I’m looking for contrasts but in this case there wasn’t any need to do so because of the story in the video,” explains August Vinberg. “Knowing where the girls are heading and what’s to come there’s already a dissonance between the beauty in the music and the horrors to come in the story.”
‘Glory Glory’ is out now and available from all the usual places.
