FRIENDSHIPS Announce new album FISHTANK Releases new single & video ‘happyness’

by the partae
FRIENDSHIPS Announce new album FISHTANK Releases new single & video 'happyness'

Experimental audiovisual duo friendships have today announced their new album FISHTANK will be released September 30 via Dot Dash Recordings / Remote Control. The record will be released physically on USB via Anterograde.

Alongside the announcement, friendships have released their latest video and single ‘happyness.’ Premiered by FBi Radiohappyness acts as a false prophecy of hope. “It’s a mantra with no guide or strategy to get you to your destination.” explains Nic Brown. “It comes at a time when you are so disconnected from yourself that you repeat the propaganda so you and others don’t realise that your cogs have stopped moving. Your shell is in power saving mode with limited repetitive social cues, but inside you’ve transformed into a horse that’s infinitely falling in a vortex. Imagine that!”

Of the forthcoming album Brown continues, “FISHTANK is a concept set on a non-linear timeline between the blurring of two worlds. The physical present (your world) and an alternative present reimagined and interpreted in fantasy known as FISHTANK. The narrative follows the descent of an individual through loss of self. A cold decline of skin shedding, emptiness and despair to come full circle at rebirth. Each track and video is a movement or scene cataloging each movement on the descent.”

friendships‘ combines Misha Grace’s visual art and Nic Brown’s songwriting in their respective mediums together.  Their 2016 debut album Nullarbor 1988-1989 was named Album of the Week on Triple R, PBS, RTR, and FBi, winning Best Independent Dance/Electronica Album at the 2017 AIR Awards, leading to tours with Erykah Badu, Thundercat, a boundless festival run including SXSW, CMJ, Meredith Music Festival, Melbourne Music Week and a tour of China. But ultimately, things didn’t last.

After a show at the end of 2017, they quietly went their own ways. Having spent the previous few years talking every day, they’d suddenly gone eight months without talking at all.

They came back together by chance at a mutual friend’s house. Suddenly they were talking again, telling each other about what they’d been working on for the past eight months. Where in the past they might’ve created for each other, to complement the other’s work, their time in isolation had them seeking catharsis only for themselves. And yet when Grace showed Brown a video she’d composed, he put a track he’d written underneath it. They complemented each other perfectly.

Given their individual interrogations of self, the concept for FISHTANK came together naturally. Charting the descent into what it’s like to lose one’s self, each track invokes a different aspect drawing the listener through a journey of loss, confusion, and doubt. The actual process both mirrored and contradicted that theme: although Grace and Brown were working through it together again, they were more cut off from the broader community than ever. Nullarbor was conceived over years of performing, intertwining themselves with local and international influences and scenes. But during FISHTANK’s making, from the outside, they were virtually invisible. Rarely performing, FISHTANK developed over countless late nights talking, playing with each other’s ideas and pushing each other into new territory. Where Nullarbor was a coming together of their respective halves of the audio-visual dichotomy, now they were feeding into each other.

With structural and thematic elements that loop back and in on each other, sounds and visuals that play off and with each other, FISHTANK is an ambitious project. It asks as much from the audience as it has to give, a bold step for the newly reaffirmed friendships.

friendships – ‘happyness’ (Official Video)
Stream / Download: friendships.lnk.to/happyness

PRAISE FOR FRIENDSHIPS – NULLABOR 1988-1989

Winner AIR Independent Music Awards – Best Independent Dance/Electronica Album

Triple R Album of the Week
FBi Click Feature Album
PBS Feature Album
Edge Radio Feature Album

“Amid the fury of beats, breaks and fastidious production they find space to inject great helpings of heart, art, beauty and risk. And when the bass hits, it hits hard.” – The Guardian

“Misha’s projections and paintings combined with Nic’s productions to form intricate installations and hyperkinetic live shows. Expressionism and rave, internet art and drum n bass, regional dance music styles and Australian gothic ideas all intersect. The results are personal, universal, beautiful, brutal, expansive and immersive” – Triple R

“Chaotic future sounds” – Herald Sun, 4 Stars

“One of the most vital tracks of the year” – Song Of The Year, Tone Deaf

friendships – FISHTANK

1    come on in precious
2    enjoy your memories
3    how i used to paint
4    wasp
5    smokers area 19
6    take no prisoners
7    meat sack
8    was i good
9    duet for a crying chihuahua dancing for a ring of wealthy crows
10    happyness
11    MLG_recovery patch

friendships – FISHTANK is out Wednesday 30 September
via Dot Dash / Remote Control & Anterograde

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