Helicon & Al Lover release ‘Backbreaker’ from incoming collab album, ‘Arise’ Due out February 13th, it finds Helicon’s psych-rock infused with Lover’s genre-bending electronics – resulting in a maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse.
“Backbreaker came from a desire to fuse sounds we’d never really heard living side by side”, says Helicon frontman John-Paul Hughes: “Middle Eastern guitars paired with a melodic bassline that sits somewhere between Motown and indie rock; eastern strings and percussion rubbing up against sub-basses and breakbeats; chanting harmonies woven through Helicon’s psychedelia, Al’s sampler work, and Tony Doogan’s production. It’s a track you can listen to thirty times and still find something new; some independent melody, texture, or rhythm hiding in the layers. It’s a beautiful melting pot of moving, colliding sounds.”
Lover says: “This one was especially fun for me. I grew up going to drum & bass parties in my late teens and early twenties. It was never a huge part of my identity, but I always loved the music. As I dug deeper into the genre, the importance of the Amen break and how entire branches of electronic music were built around that single drum pattern. It all became endlessly fascinating. Blending that world with rock has been done before, but not quite in the way we approached ‘Backbreaker’. The aggression and intensity of both genres fit naturally together, and the psychedelic edge that emerges when they collide feels like its own new space.”
The Fat Angel Sings 