Following the release of Low Island’s first single in over a year, featured on the FIFA 2021 soundtrack, and supported by Lauren Laverne, Jack Saunders, Phil Taggart, Huw Stephens and NME, the band release ‘Don’t Let The Light In (faded)’.
An intimate version of their latest single, it contrasts to the Tame Impala-inspired grooves of the original, presenting the song in a new light; introspective and stark. Just solo voice and piano, the recording is accompanied by a filmed performance of the track.
Creating a bubble in rural France, the band rented a barn and locked down together, allowing them to continue writing and recording music over the course of this year. This recording is born out of those sessions, filmed and produced entirely by the band themselves.
This version, Posada describes, ‘shows how the song was written originally; just voice and piano, and we then built the production around it. We wanted to have a version that shone a light on the more intimate side of the lyrics, all about trying to capture the initial moment of falling in love and preserving it, but being unable to.’
As well as working on new material, the band have spent their time in France learning everything they could about the music industry and, like so many artists, working out how to survive in the post-Covid landscape. Out of this was born their own label, Emotional Interference, allowing them to fully take the reins over their own destiny. Accruing a “small-scale production company’s worth of stuff,” from across their career, and with the ability to create their own light show, produce and conceptualise their own videos, and record and produce their own music – as well as having the music industry know-how to handle their affairs – Low Island have become a DIY machine. “It was almost seen as a sign of failure before, that you didn’t have a label,” Posada reckons of the band’s time entrenched in the music industry machine. “We had meetings where people would say: ‘Come back when you have a label and a manager’, and self-releasing became a really dirty word.” In 2020, though, it’s becoming all the clearer that self-reliance is key, and Low Island now have the pieces in place to continue doing things firmly on their own terms.
Recent recipients of PPL’s Momentum Grant, Low Island is made up of singer and multi-instrumentalist Carlos Posada, producer Jamie Jay, bass player Jacob Lively and jazz drummer Felix Higginbottom. Their off-kilter electronics have been lauded by NME, Wonderland, The Independent, The Times, The Line of Best Fit and more. Their last EP featured in 6music’s Lauren Laverne and Tom Robinson’s highlights of 2019, and was accompanied by a critically acclaimed UK tour in collaboration with Arts Council England. A full live performance from the tour is available here
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