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A four-piece experimental noise band that formed out of the fertile Manchester scene, the group initially came to fruition after vocalist Valentine Caulfield and Scott Fair met sharing a bill with their former projects. Joined by Simon Catling (synth) and Alex MacDougall (drums), they have together generated a sound that is at once chaotic and precision engineered, where chance operations are manipulated into percussive geometries, and gnarled guitars sit in thickets of distortion around which vocals spin knots of lyrical repetitions. Their first recordings emerged around 2019, with a smattering of early singles released not long after, culminating in 2021’s critically acclaimed ‘…’ EP which saw the band draw early cosigns including a remix from Daniel Avery and support slots from the Horrors, Squid, and Gilla Band. The latter’s Daniel Fox mixed several of the tracks on debut album ‘i’ve seen a way’ alongside Robin Stewart (Giant Swan) and the album was mastered by Heba Kedry (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bjork).
Crucial to the album are effects wrought upon the sound by a clutch of unlikely off-site recording locations with novel acoustics, including screaming vocals emitted in a Bristol shopping mall and live drums recorded in a cave in the West Country – the latter session interrupted by literal spelunkers. Other sessions happened in Gothic crypts, where the band's physical bass frequencies and experiments with volume competed with underground roadworks and upset a yoga class above. i've seen a way is a manifesto for these moments of openness and disruption, with sessions in more controlled studio environments spliced with spontaneously captured lo-fi phone recordings, including a field of Swiss cows captured by McDougall while hiking: Fair elaborates that "these locations offered something acoustically, but would traditionally be thought of as having the 'wrong' characteristics for producing a 'good' recording. These spaces imprint on the sound: It's not about a lack of access to more traditional recording spaces – it's about us capturing things happening in a specific place at that moment."
Crucial to the album are effects wrought upon the sound by a clutch of unlikely off-site recording locations with novel acoustics, including screaming vocals emitted in a Bristol shopping mall and live drums recorded in a cave in the West Country – the latter session interrupted by literal spelunkers. Other sessions happened in Gothic crypts, where the band's physical bass frequencies and experiments with volume competed with underground roadworks and upset a yoga class above. i've seen a way is a manifesto for these moments of openness and disruption, with sessions in more controlled studio environments spliced with spontaneously captured lo-fi phone recordings, including a field of Swiss cows captured by McDougall while hiking: Fair elaborates that "these locations offered something acoustically, but would traditionally be thought of as having the 'wrong' characteristics for producing a 'good' recording. These spaces imprint on the sound: It's not about a lack of access to more traditional recording spaces – it's about us capturing things happening in a specific place at that moment."