“176” boasts five new tracks written and recorded over a fruitful five days at PRAH Studios, Margate. The band took a more expansive approach to the composition process, taking inspiration from the spatial and rhythmic sonics of electronic music and blending it with their existing unique sonic palette of drums, bass, violin, vocals…and no guitars.Taking its title from the eponymous London bus route that runs from Penge to Tottenham Court Road, 176 contains themes of paranoia, social anxiety, jealousy and the accompanying nightmares these can create.
The band explain: “All five songs have quite grim, dark subject matter. Once we’d started exploring that paranoid, angsty kind of path, the floodgates seemed to open and we ran with it”Title track “176” finds the narrator sat on the top deck of the 176, feeling alienated from their surroundings and shell-shocked at the public’s decision to vote in favour of Brexit, whilst “While You Wait” is written from the perspective of a dog recalling happier times rolling in fields, as it waits to be put down at the veterinary surgery – penned while the UK waited to leave the EU, the metaphor couldn’t be clearer.Elsewhere, “40 Faces” builds on a Morricone-esque bass riff to depict a jealous human waiting at home, tormenting themselves with images of what their partner might be up to without them.
“The Nightmare” employs jarring call and response-style vocals to construct a sonically disorientating sound, creating a feeling similar to how you might feel after waking from a panic stricken bad dream or the anxiety you feel when trapped in an unnerving social situation.
Whitewashing is taken from Pozi’s forthcoming new 176 EP on PRAH Recordings: http://smarturl.it/Pozi. The band share their self-animated video that brings to life the theme of the song: being cornered on a motorway journey with an old friend, feeling trapped and uncomfortable in the passenger seat as they unexpectedly try to impose their bigoted views upon you. “We wanted to start fully utilising Rosa’s voice as, adjacent to the other vocals, it really adds another layer to our music. Much of the jamming sessions were spent working around a way to weave this into the sound we’d already created,” explains vocalist / drummer Toby Burroughs. “As we’re all singers and writers, if someone has something that they want to say in a song, it’s great for us to be able to share the lead vocal around.”
The Fat Angel Sings 