Copenhagen’s Sleep Party People are sharing the new video for ‘Fainting Spell’, the latest track to be lifted from their acclaimed new album Lingering, out now through Joyful Noise Recordings.
The clip arrives ahead of a 15 date European headline tour through November and December, including London’s The Lexington on November 27, 2017. Founding member Brian Batz created the visuals for ‘Fainting Spell’ in collaboration with hundreds of Sleep Party People fans, who submitted videos & photos of handmade versions of the band’s de facto rabbit masks, which were then assimilated into the Ryan Valdez-directed clip. Watch here.
Though Batz & his 5-piece live band have become synonymous with the masks they wear during all Sleep Party People live performances, Lingering finds him shedding his guard to create some of the most personal and accessible material of his career. Whilst lead single ‘The Missing Steps’ and other moments on Lingering engage demonstrably with bliss (also the woozy, unhurried not-quite title track, ‘Lingering Eyes’), it is nonetheless a record also concerned with anxiety and doubt, and the ways in which we cope with those insecurities that can persist through adulthood.
A personal high-water mark for Batz from Lingering is the appearance of Air-collaborator Beth Hirsch, who guests on ‘We Are There Together’.
A longstanding fan of classic album Moon Safari, he was left tongue-tied when Hirsch contacted him out of the blue, seeking out a collaboration.
Whilst Lingering is enriched by several such artistic collaborations – with The Antlers’ Peter Silberman also providing choir arrangements on ‘Dissensions’ – it is equally shaped by Batz’s famously eccentric collection of instruments. ‘Salix And His Soil’ came about when Batz bought an old organ; “When I turned the organ on for the first time, it started playing this crazy fast Super Mario Brothers-ish beat and loop by itself. I got hooked straight away and started jamming along”. Elsewhere, ‘Fainting Spell’ rests entirely on a piano loop played out on the snapped wires of his battered old studio piano.
On Lingering’s album-closer ‘Vivid Dream’, Batz sings of ‘Beating down my own door. Aiming to be flawless and without any mistakes’. Flawed or otherwise, in Lingering, he has unmistakably created a thing of stark beauty.
LIVE DATES
21 November BERLIN Musik & Frieden
22 November JENA Trafo
23 November HEIDELBERG Pret A Ecouter @ Karlstorbarnhof
24 November DUDINGEN Bad Bonn http://bit.ly/2rocVOE
25 November SION Le Port Franc http://bit.ly/2sASvGp
26 November PARIS Supersonic
27 November LONDON The Lexington http://bit.ly/2sjyJfI
28 November ROTTERDAM Rotown http://bit.ly/2sxRfmy
30 November COPENHAGEN DR Koncerthuset
1 December AARHUS Atlas
2 December ALLBORG Studenterhuset
9 December GDANSK Teatr Szekspirowski http://bit.ly/2sH2xpr
10 December WARSCHAU Niebo http://bit.ly/2sHfkIb
11 December BRNO Fleda
15 December BUCHAREST Control Club