London dark-pop artist Circe announces new EP Drawing Wings From The Light for July 19 and shares new single ‘Riot of Sunlight’.
Swirling shoe-gaze-esque reversed guitars reverberate into gigantic Florence and The Machine influenced choruses. Throughout, the vocals rise and fall between a Portishead inspired string and synth quartet mesh. Stand out lyrics about ‘Judas falling apart’ and ‘walking for miles ’to find‘ a dream to sleep on’ are reminiscent of Nick Cave’s poetic approach, as if sung in Bjork’s angelic, glassy style.
The song has had a long gestation period, touched by serendipity -as Circe details:“I wrote ‘Riot Of Sunlight’ when I was a teenager, now 10 years later I’m finally releasing it in its final form -all because of some magic I was blessed enough to encounter twice…When I was 15, completely by chance, I watched Jez Butterworth’s + Mark Rylance’s critically acclaimed play Jerusalem [now hailed as the greatest play of the century]. A week prior to this, I was disregarded by a frustrated science teacher as an ‘ungrateful fantasist obsessed with glamorising the occult’ —so when my wide eyed teenage self was witness to Jerusalem —a play and performance of such colossal, glorious, gigantic magic —my heart was completely derailed, and by the end of the play I existed on an entirely different plane to the one I walked in on. The next morning I wrote the first incarnation ‘Riot of Sunlight’ -a disciple-like sonic ode to Jerusalem.
“Skip forward 10 years I was feeling disillusioned, suffocating under a soulless corrupt government when Jerusalem —like the fucking marvel it is—unexpectedly returned to theatres and I watched again, as “a rainbow hit the earth + set fire to the ground” and in I finshed the song ‘Riot of Sunlight’.”
Sonically, the track was a co-produce between Circe and Steven Ansell of Blood Red Shoes. Often making the connection between the sonic and visual forms of art and culture – a trait which has seen her track ‘Ten Girls’appear in Netflix hit Elite – Circe also takes cues from the cinematic sounds of Labrinth’s soundtrack for HBO’s Euphoria, capturing teenage lust and angst at its most extreme.
