Phoria smash through their uneasy post-album inertia with singles ‘When Everything Was Mine/Rrotor’
Phoria smash through their uneasy post-album inertia and set the bar higher with their ‘When Everything Was Mine/Rrotor’
Photo Credit: Thom Undrell
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The idea of taking some time out is often taken the wrong way, but Brighton experimentalists Phoria haven’t exactly rested on their laurels. After releasing their critically acclaimed debut LP Volition in 2016, the group took what they describe as “a much needed but somewhat uneasy quiet” before summoning the collective will to start afresh. The problem wasn’t that they grew complacent, but that they’d expended so much of themselves in making Volition that retreading old ground would have gone against the impulses that guided them there in the first place.
Their new single ‘When Everything Was Mine/Rrotor’ is the second piece of new material to come from the enigmatic group this year, following on from the classically indebted ‘Mass (Re-Imagined)’. Together, this new material forms an exciting prelude to the release of their second album early next year.
With Volition they had achieved something groups usually achieve only once in their career, if ever. They instantly outgrew any preconceived notions of what Phoria was through their dizzying and lawless artistry. From the shuffling electro pop delights of ‘Melatonin’ to the intimate acoustics of ‘Saving Us A Riot’ ‘Volition’ remains anything but predictable.
Phoria are headed up by the master of electronics and composition Trewin Howard, a deeply sensitive character in tune with his surroundings, empowered with synaesthesia and once afflicted with a mysterious – still undiagnosed – illness that left his senses frayed and mind on edge. Ironically, when this illness ebbed, it left behind an even more heightened auditory perception.
On ‘When Everything Was Mine’ Howard rejects the idea that lyrics have to have conventional narratives. To him, a lyric can be a small self-contained unit of feeling, or a musical texture in the fabric of the song itself. In the song he takes that idea to its logical extremity, creating a complex emotive musical and thematic idea from a song title alone. In ‘Rrotor’ his aptitude for stacking and mixing vocals like instruments makes for an intriguing and impossible to pin down electronic performances.
Phoria’s unique and beguiling musical style has garnered impressive support inside and out of the industry. Every single has charted in Hype Machine’s Top 10, and radio support has been heaped on them from Phil Taggart and Huw Stephens at Radio 1, and Lauren Laverne and Tom Ravenscroft at 6Music. With over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify and a grand total of 41 million Spotify streams they’ve established a firm foothold in the streaming world. Their live achievements include support slots with James Vincent McMorrow, Little Dragon, Polica, and Active Child, with festival appearances including Latitude, Soundwave, Blue Dot, Dot To Dot, The Great Escape. In 2017 Phoria were selected by NPR as one of their highlights ‘Hot 100’ of SXSW Festival.
‘When Everything Was Mine/Rrotor’ is an effortless return to the freewheeling whims that made Phoria so magnetising. It will be released via X Novo/Akira Records on 31st of June.
