London-based musician/composer Ian Williams has released a new single entitled ‘The Light At The End Of The World’ today. An intoxicating mixture of bubbling sequencers, tribal beats and soaring synths, it has a gorgeous ethereal vocal melody and sounds like a Tangerine Vangelis, while it is accompanied by an interdimensional video shot somewhere between the Orion Nebula and Margate.
The track is taken from ‘Slow-Motion Apocalypse’, a full-length album out in October and details of which will be made available shortly.
Ian Williams began his music career in Edinburgh in the mid 1980’s as a founder of Beautiful Pea Green Boat, whose ethereal, atmospheric sound pre-dated the vogue for dream pop by at least twenty years. Several collaborations with Lebanese choreographer Joumana Mourad and her contemporary dance company Ijad saw him fuse Arabic/classical/techno/ambient styles, following which he changed tack to work with singer Claudia Barton as Gamine, releasing two albums of dark, piano-led torch songs and lullabies.
Recent discography:
2019: THE DREAM EXTORTIONISTS – debut solo album of dark piano and electronics which balanced melancholia with melody.
2020: LES BLESSURES INVISIBLES (Invisible Wounds) – an eclectic electronic soundtrack to a documentary film by French director Eric Michel that took an unsettling look at the after-effects of the withdrawal of the uranium mining operation in Gabon (which supplied the French nuclear industry) on the local population. Williams has also recently completed the soundtrack to Michel’s new WW2 spy documentary, ‘Le Mystère Lucie’ (Code Name Lucy), due for imminent release.
2021: ALL BECOMES DESERT – an album of minimalist ambiences and warm analogue soundscapes evoking the wide-open, empty spaces of the great deserts. It consists of a series of electronic improvisations made by Williams three decades earlier processed through the wonders of modern technology.
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE WORLD
new single
out 10.08.23
(Slaughterback)
