The band shares a track-by-track breakdown of their new EP, a short-form ambient album designed for winter reflection and anticipation of something new (and maybe beautiful) ahead
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Milk.Blue.Kisses.And.Whalebone.Wishes—it sounds like a spell, fantasy or fairytale, a mystical metaphor or maybe Maria reciting A Few of Her Favorite Things.
Instead, it’s magic of a different kind (music, obviously), the title of the new EP from BK-based music/design collective Dead Leaf Echo. And while it’s not witchcraft or literature that the band of creatives have spun up, the enchanting atmosphere they’ve cultivated throughout the album and the ideas they’ve drawn from would be at home in any myth or odyssey, with the 25-minute record taking you, the listener, on a journey, serving as a lush sonic storybook full of adventure and emotion.
And, best of all, it’s out for your listening pleasure and traveling-via-your-ears enjoyment now.
“This is a short-form album to be listened to as the snow is falling simultaneously while your heart is leaning upon the precipice of something new,” LG Galleon of Dead Leaf Echo, which has been around since 2013, told me in perfectly poetic form over email.
While nearly entirely instrumental (the exception is the first track), the record allows one to enjoy, absorb and infer their own meaning, leaning on sound without reliance on or regard for lyrics. However, endless room for interpretation aside, to know artists’ intentions is a perk and a privilege, allowing for another level of listening, and shortly after the album’s release, LG sent over some insights on the EP’s six songs, which are laced with rich themes of passion, politics and possibility, sex, searching and survival.
MILK.BLUE.KISSES.AND.WHALEBONE.WISHES’—TRACK BY TRACK:
“Milk.Blue.Kisses. (Foil in Motion)”
“‘Excess of your body is a perfect foil in motion’ (lyric from the song). Overloading your body with sex is both a physical act and a drug that can simultaneously stimulate and depredate your physical and mental well being. The over sexualization of America can often be an unconscious struggle in the dream of everlasting beauty that is sold to the youth in this world. This is a call to realization of our role as consumers (‘Milk.Blue.Kisses used as bait’) and how it could possible ruin our place in society (‘The Road to Ruin all our roles’).”
“Blue.Unto.You”
“This is for the untold lovers to find themselves deep in a trance, rise to the surface and repeat onto another, love, love love. But they have none left for each other, only the sorrow they carry in their heart.”
“Kisses.Silence”
“The moment after the first unabated kisses between new lovers and the unresolved silence that they find within that space between them. What will happen next?”
“And.Projecting.Window.of.Ice.And.Misconduct:
“How influential the weather can be on our behavior and our hearts and in our city lives. In living in cities we need diversity and that diversity needs support mutually. Whether that comes from public or private institutions, it’s our behavior in it that can form a mental wave of positive or negative emotions. This song can take you on a train ride thru that and see what happens when bad behavior has an impact on our societal roles. Self-Destruction can happen in the streets, not just at home alone.”
“Whalebone”
“A short narrative unto itself. A drowned sailor has washed upon the shore after a long battle that was lost with a nor’easter. Blind from scurvy and lame from the sea’s thrashings he stumbles along the sand until his hands feel ice. Ice and then bone…..his ship has sailed far too south of Tierra Del Fuego. Now only a dead whale’s femur may help keep this man alive once the tide rolls in……”
“Wishes.Of.Another.Forever”
“It is searching. Searching for something that you may never find. But will always yearn for. Searching with your eyes, your heart and your moral taste in a person. The journey thru the frost begins here.”
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While the trio has most recently been touring Central America, they’re back in Brooklyn and are finally ready to celebrate their record stateside. Catch the band and experience the album live TOMORROW NIGHT at Saint Vitus with The Veldt, JWC and Spirits of Leo (tix here!).
Trust me: on both the performance and the ambiance front, the show will be absolutely unparalleled~
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Follow Dead Leaf Echo at @deadleafecho, buy music on Bandcamp and add their songs to your Spotify playlists!
Feature image provided by the band.