“We noticed the boom of social media and online life, and how that was affecting real life. We’ve been creating these avatars online that aren’t really human. Maybe we’ve lost our connection with each other” ~ Dom Goldsmith

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Hailing from the UK, Hælos is an ambient, trip-hop group that has been on the scene since 2014. Blending moody vocals and inky tones, the four-piece released “Kyoto” as the lead single of their upcoming album, Any Random Kindness. Slated for release on May 10th, the follow-up to the 2016 album, Full Circle, addresses issues like climate change and wayward politicians through their unique sounds. I was able to chat with Lotti Benardout about their upcoming album, and the process behind creating it.

Sarah Thomas: You’ve all just finished the American leg of your tour. What were some of your favorite moments as a band?

Lotti Benardout: It’s always an amazing experience on the road.  Being so far away from home and feeling our fans reaction to the music is incredibly humbling. North America, in particular, has always been a welcoming territory for us. Some of those long scenic drives are beyond breathtaking. On this last tour, we made our first visit to Mexico City which was pretty epic. The food, weather, and vibes don’t get much better. We’re constantly reminding ourselves how lucky we are to be able to experience the world in this way.  

ST: How do you all find ways to recharge and relax?

LB: Being away from family and friends can be tough. It takes a minute to get back into the flow of home life after a long run. If we can, we’ll try and take a week or so off from any band commitments so we can fully reconnect and be present with our loved ones. The late nights, food on the run and inevitable partying also take its toll. I generally go on a major health kick soon as I’m back. Nutritious food, exercise and lots and lots of sleep!

ST: What are some of the ways you’ve all changed as a band since Full Circle?

LB: We’ve all become a lot more confident about who we are and the music we want to create. We hadn’t been a band for very long when we started writing Full Circle and only really just getting to know each other at the time. With Any Random Kindness, we had a much clearer idea about what we wanted the album to say as a whole and the themes we wanted to explore. Another big difference between albums is that Daniel has now joined the band full time. Having that fourth person in the room is a game changer. Not only is he incredibly talented, but he also brings a calming energy to our group dynamic that’s invaluable.

ST: With your new album, you recorded in several locations. How did that affect the creative process?

LB: Writing an album is an emotional journey. You go through spurts of creativity and quieter lulls that can be quite frustrating. For us, switching up our environment helped to keep things fresh and bring a new perspective to the music. We started writing between locations in London, where we all live. These sessions were about getting ideas on the table without too much pressure attached. We’d drop in and out and play by ear how long we’d stay each day. Nearer the end of the writing process, we decided to all move to Northampton into a space on a farm that Dom had access to. We needed to lock ourselves away and focus on finishing the record with minimal outside distractions. It was intense but exactly what we needed to get the album over the finish line.  

ST: Which track was the biggest challenge to work on and why? The most fun?

LB: All our songs have their own journey. There’s a lot constructing and deconstructing in our writing process and songs will often have multiple lives before they’re finished. The challenges that arise often just lead you in a new direction so we try not to get too bogged down by the process. “Boy/Girl” was a particularly fun one to write. It was one of the first songs we finished for the record and was sonically very different for us. When the conversational vocal chorus came out I think we all knew we’d touched on something fresh and exciting.

ST: Your new album addresses a couple of things such as climate change and social media. How does electronic music work with highlighting these issues versus other genres?

I don’t think electronic music, in particular, is any more potent than other genres in highlighting these issues. All art has the ability to spark emotion and provoke thought. We found an interesting dichotomy in the mix of electronic production and organic instrumentation which echoed the themes we were exploring lyrically; humans vs technology/nature vs industry. For us, combining the two felt powerful.

ST: The video for “Kyoto” has a cool vibe and that reveal is amazing. Can you talk about the process of creating this video and the inspiration behind it?

We were introduced to Oliver Prout who directed the video and came to us with the idea of the mermaid sushi. It immediately struck a chord in how potent the metaphor was in portraying the themes on the record. On an environmental level, the idea that we are consciously consuming and destroying our planet.  It was also an interesting comment on how we consume each other and celebrity culture via new technologies and social media. The process of creating the video was quite an experience. The restaurant was built as a set from scratch in incredible detail & the mermaid tail was a piece of art within itself.

ST: Lastly,  what are you all most looking forward to after your new album releases?

LB: Touring! We’ve had a taste of it this year and it’s been amazing to feel the reaction to the new music. Once the album is out and people know all the new songs it’s just going to step up another level.

photos by Jeff Hahn

The post Finding the balance between the organic and electronic: An interview with Lotti Benardout of Hælos appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The London-born HÆLOS trio – composed of Mr. Dom Goldsmith, Mr. Arthur Delaney, and Ms. Lotti Benardout – has released Full Circle, an eleven-track LP that embodies the bleakest moments of existence in multi-track-layered harmony.

The torch song, a pop-dirge motif that celebrates and embraces the lowest pits of ontology, is alive and screaming for attention throughout Full Circle. It’s an album not composed of eleven tracks, but of eleven isolated cells in some dark and hollow catacomb, under one of those old European cities that probably had a plague at some point. It’s an album of betrayal, fear, greed, heartache, misery, loneliness… pick your despondency, Full Circle has it, Full Circle welcomes it.

Ask any poem written by an adolescent since the dawn of time, there is a satisfaction in the embrace of melodrama. Society tells us from a young age to stiffen our upper lip, to look on the bright side, to ignore, squash, or smother our most honest feelings of depression. We take pills, we go to therapy, we buy pets and dress them in sweaters, all to avoid feeling bleak. HÆLOS says forget all that. Be your inner teenager, alone in your room with the Morrissey poster on the wall and the Sylvia Plath book with the worn-out spine.

The vocal work on Full Circle comes in five variations: mournful drawl, dispassionate yell, desperate moan, spiteful whisper, and moody banshee wail – with both male and female renditions. Lotti Benardout is the lyrical backbone to the group, but the male backup lends depth and timbre to an already broad soundscape. The instrumentation is, surprisingly, fast and in some parts sounds upbeat, almost dance-able. It’s an example of that Postal Service style of high-metabolism sadness. The juxtaposition of longing and jumping works well on this album because it keeps the songs from leaving the world of pop and entering the underworld of eulogy. Had HÆLOS wholly embraced the remorseful lyrical themes and embodied them in the instruments, then instead of being a celebration of melodrama, it’d be an anthem for self-destruction, which isn’t really very much fun.

Though the entire album symbolizes and parallels the expression of a mental or physical breakdown, it can get tiring. It’s hard to maintain the emotional climax HÆLOS insists upon for every single song in Full Circle for the full forty-five minutes of the album. For one or two songs, sure, but for the whole thing? Yikes. That’s not to say a person can’t drown in sadness for upwards of an hour, which everybody is almost too easily capable of doing, but holding that high-pitched scream or maintaining that look of exquisite anguish for more than a few minutes is pushing the limits of human endurance. After a certain point, the overwrought becomes just wrought, and then just background. Full Circle doesn’t quite come full circle, in terms of emotional complexity, but finds a corner and reinforces it so it can stay in for the duration. The album is consistently heavy-handed, without the kind of subtle pause for nuance that would enable the casual listener to make it from beginning to end.

The average human might not be able to hold onto their bleakest moment for long, but HÆLOS isn’t an average band. They aim for the extreme, and that’s a respectable artistic choice that shows maturity and bravery. Full Circle is an album for somebody who looks forward to cloudy days, who isn’t afraid to swim in the deep end of human emotions.

Full Circle is out now on Matador Records. Check back for touring dates and live-show reviews.

The post HÆLOS spits off the edge with “Full Circle” appeared first on Quip Magazine.