| Format: | 12" |
| Availability: | In stock |
SD058VL
2021
Glows is the audio visual project of duo GG Skips and Felix Bayley Higgins. The pair met and formed a strong friendship aged 17 at the creative-lead Marylebone School (whos alumni includes Sorry’s Asha Lorenz, Rina Sawayama, Khazali). At the time Glows was a solo project of Skips. Skitting between emotive songwriting to pulsing electronic soundscapes that sat firmly in the midground between the South London Post-punk scene and the personal influences of psychedelic tinged electronics the likes of Fuck Buttons, Teebs, Liars and Animal Collective. Skips had founded the collective and label Slow Dance when the two were at school together. Felix was an active member, organising impromptu gallery shows including some of the first shows for Sorry, Martha Skye Murphy, Suzy Wu and Saint Jude.
The duo collaborated on various audio and visual projects together throughout art school, sharing a love for a certain kind of intensity they found in music with an orchestral, cinematic quality from bands such as WU LYF, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai and Fuck Buttons.
Over this time Skips mental health took a turn for the worse, dropping out of art school and then university, his musical output became more private, hidden away. Through his recovery the duo would have lengthy discussions about creative outputs in relation to mental health, and the pressures of solo artistry, a form of therapy through creative collaboration.
Through these long conversations Felix took on a more curatorial role in Slow Dance and the fluid and collaborative nature of their approach developed.
The duo formed the a/v improvisation group EMU in which Felix performed a visual score to an unfolding soundscape improvised by members of black midi, Sorry, Young Turks, Martha Skye, Aga Ujma). The group was a testing ground for their experimental and improvised approach to audio visual performance.
Felix began helping to organise and develop the idea’s which had emerged from Skip’s solo writing; a web of connections between modern blues, freight train networks, and the experience of the city. It was through the discussion of these ideas that the project began to bloom as a full collaborative duo, with Felix applying the techniques for creating improvised visual scores he developed through EMU as a way to respond to Skip’s soundscapes. This world eventually took shape as 2019’s debut EP J.L. HOOKER LOVE PLEASURE FOREVER. With lead single Afterthought becoming one of Loud and Quiet's best tracks of the year. They toured the tracks around the UK with friends Squid and PVA, who also occasionally performed in the live show. Skips also joined Sorry as a live member, performing keys and electronics. Around this time, aged 22, the duo’s joint creative output led them to a commission for a one off installation from the Royal Academy of Arts. Within the same month they performed their newly developed live show to a sold out show, also taking place at the prestigious and historic gallery. In the spring of 2020 they were about to leave on tour of shows around Japan when Covid happened.
After an initial pause from their momentum, lockdown spurred a massive creative period, resampling old works, assembling the web of their practice and moving into a new phase. Throughout they’ve been mostly anonymous, incubating behind closed doors. The previously separate roles for the creation of sound and image blurred after Felix’s experimental studies at the renowned RCA led him into sound arrangement and production. Building on the set of shared conceptual interests and feelings they had been working with, and as part of a more outward facing shift, Felix began writing and producing alongside Skips. There’s been occasional windows into this process; snippets of their work played out over radio by artists like black midi and Mount Kimbie, a remix series of their tracks by PVA, a one off 30 minute live session for Brainchild festival and a reworking of already released track Molina by Saint Jude.
New track Tropics marks the beginning of a phase in which the duo roll out the database of material they developed in this period of incubation. It’s the first track from a collection of material spanning different phases over the last 6 years, resampled, looped and fused together. Engaging conceptually with the idea of timelines, looping, resampling and the conventions of music releases themselves. Beginning with the Tropics, featuring Asha Lorenz deals with the scattered and overwhelming heat of city life. ‘Tropic is the climate of this city. The tropical heat in your bedroom, waking up in a sweat to my nightly fever dreams. Stumbling around the streets in the humid air, dancing and sleeping and waking up. When the euphoria turns sickly.’ The track draws influence from late noughties pop music and it’s overmaxxed commercialised electronic production. The electronic sounds from Dizzee Rascal’s Bonkers and Little Boots’ New in Town appear skewed through the ambient glaze of artists like Andy Stott and clouddead. The track balances this glowing calm with a propulsive darkness that explodes into ecstatic noise.
