Legendary Australian psychedelic alt-rock greats The Church toured the US this spring surrounding their appearance at Pasadena’s Cruel World festival, and their set often included a tantalizing new song “The Hypnogogue” That is now released as the band’s first new single in five years, a nearly seven-minute epic with a dark, futuristic theme. “I don’t think this song has any predecessor in our history at all,” frontman Steve Kilbey says.
“The Hypnogogue” is set in 2054,” Kilbey continues. “A dystopian and broken down future. Invented by Sun Kim Jong, a North Korean scientist and occult dabbler. It is a machine and a process that pulls music straight of the dreams.”
“The song is about Eros Zeta, the biggest rock star of 2054 who has travelled from his home in Antarctica (against his manager’s advice) to use “the Hypnogogue” to help him revive his flagging fortunes,” he continues, noting, “he also falls in love with Sun Kim and it all ends tragically (of course…as these thing often do).”
With a song this cinematic, it had to have dazzling, distopian video and that comes courtesy Australian filmmaker Clint Lewis. “I gave the director a lot of input into this video but he took my ideas and ran with them and came up with a fair bit of stuff I never envisaged,” says Kilbey. The Church appear on screens in “the Hypnogogue” as workers in the system translating the dreams of users into real time music.”
The Fat Angel Sings 