ERAAS Share Haunting Video For ‘Crescent’, Announce Debut May UK + European Tour

Debut album released last year via Felte

Brooklyn-based darkwave act ERAAS have created a distinct identity with the audio and visual tone of their self-titled debut album, released late last year on Felte. The new video for album track ‘Crescent’ explores the band’s macabre aesthetic further, reflecting the song’s dark, brooding atmosphere and Fever Ray undertones.

Watch the creepy, slow-moving animated video for ‘Crescent’, as directed by Nick Criscuolo and premiered by Fake DIY yesterday:

ERAAS – a quartet led by its two founding members Robert Toher and Austin Stawiarz– have also announced their debut UK and European shows in May. The band are currently on the road with Trust on an extensive North American tour which runs right throughout March. Live, the band elicit foreboding cautionary themes, mixing driving percussion, insistent basslines tangled with hypnotic guitars and ethereal vocals. The full UK/EU tour info is below, including a London Birthday’s show on the 8th May with The KVB.

In regards to the making of the ‘Crescent video, the director Nick Criscuolo says, “I am interested in how the brain fills in details where there is really only noise. I first experimented with the overall effect of this piece before even having the project in mind. I noticed how blurring and adding film grain in a certain way seemed to add a look of specificity, when in fact detail was being lost. It also let me combine very different kinds of images in a somewhat seamless way. There are a lot of different techniques employed here. It lets me do mash up without it looking like mash up. I love the organic look of hand drawn animation and the mysterious quality of analogue artifacts, but given the right treatment, digital artifacts can be just as mysterious. The black, white, and red color scheme is just something I have always been drawn to. It’s just a way to add another level of focus. Color becomes very special when much of everything else is black and white.”

Stream languid album track ‘Briar Path’ here

Stream the poppier cut, ‘Fang’, here.

ERAAS gradually rose from the ashes of New England-based ATP-signed project Apse in 2011. Whilst still in the band, Robert Toher and Austin Stawiarz were gravitating more towards ritualistic and darker themes not fully explored in their previous incarnation. In searching for a place to translate this new mood to record, the newly-formed duo of ERAAS settled on a rambling, atmospheric mansion in Western Massachusetts outside of Northampton. The band decided to retreat to an area steeped in history and its own distinct atmosphere — all deserted hill towns and melancholy beauty — to make this record. The decision paid rich creative dividends — this is an album that’s heavy with both an ominous mood and a certain orchestral grandeur.

When you listen to the songs on ‘ERAAS’, the ambience of the house itself in is palpable, its creaking boards and tenebrous hallways reflected in the claustrophobic, echo-laden production — from the mournful strings that introduce the opening ‘Black House’ until the flurry of tribal percussion that brings final track ‘Trinity’ to a conclusion, there’s a real sense of mood that never relents. The album plays out more like a single coherent entity than a simple collection of songs, the tracks emerging ghost-like from the shadows and then receding into interludes of whispers and strange, abstract samples.

The songs are built around insistent basslines and driving percussion, along with a distinctive, evocative vocal sound created with deft utilization of delays and reverbs. Tracks like ‘Briar Path’ and ‘A Presence’ sound like stumbling across secret rituals, all haunted vocal melodies and spidery guitar figures. Other songs see subtle elements drifting in and out of the mix— ‘Crescent’ is adorned by a delicate piano melody that sounds like it was recorded from an old Victrola, strange whisperings lurk deep in the mix of ‘Ghost’, while ‘Trinity’ strips things back to percussion and an insistent, rasping vocal.

Like a dream (or a nightmare), this is a record that invites you into its own world, a world that’s strange and unfamiliar, but also fascinating and compelling, with subtleties and intricacies that reveal themselves with repeated listens. ‘ERAAS’ is an album with its own distinct sense of place — a place that’s worth visiting again and again.

ERAAS UK/EU live dates:

May 08 London, UK @ Birthdays with The KVB – get tickets
May 09 Bucharest, RO @ Panic! Club
May 10 Bristol, UK @ Exchange – get tickets
May 11 Luxembourg, LU @ EXIT07
May 13 Paris, FR @ L‘Espace B
May 14 Leuven, BE @ STUK
May 16 Amsterdam, NL @ OT301
May 17 Athens, GR @ Plissken Festival
May 18 Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who?
May 19 Kortrijk, BE @ Sinxen Festival

Order ‘ERAAS’ direct from Felte here.

Stream ‘ERAAS’ in full:

www.facebook.com/eraasgroup
www.feltesounds.com

“… a dark, bass-driven throb that’s got a whole lot of stark Factory Records undertow working for it.”
– Stereogum

“… exhibit a fuller, more percussive side of Eraas that blends seamlessly with its driving bass riffs, disquieting synthscapes, and quietly wailing vocals.” – Pitchfork

“… chilly mystique growing deeper and spookier. Here, there’s a floor tom assault, ghostly vocals in the mist and even a field recording of rain.” – RCRD LBL

“… spooky atmospheric tunes with earth-moving basslines…” – Flavorpill