Burning House - Anthropocene (2019) [Hi-Res]

Alt-rock outfit Burning House have shared their new single Mirror Song, providing a psychedelic power-gaze preview of their long-awaited album ‘Anthropocene‘, due out in early 2019. They’ve also shared Peach as a second track for this single, offered exclusively via Bandcamp. These are the first nibbles of the debut album, arriving hot on the trail of the band’s ‘Tracer’ EP, which was released on October 7.

Recalling the unruly feedback of Jesus & Mary Chain and Big Black, Mirror Song is otherwise a melodic rollercoaster – a tour de force of Elliott Smith-inspired chord changes, backed by an orchestra performing on shards of glass. The accompanying video was produced and directed by Callum Scott-Dyson CSD Videography.

Hailing from Southampton, Burning House formed in 2013 after many incarnations – today, they’re a trio comprised of frontman and guitarist Aaron Mills, drummer Dominic Taylor and bassist Patrick White. Mills, the band’s sole songwriter has refined the art of recording music over the past decade, in parallel with his technical skill as a guitar player. Their music rides the soft/loud dynamic well, producing music ranging from beautiful melancholy to loud feedback-driven post rock.

Fusing elements of shoegaze and decade-spanning American Indie (Elliott Smith, Swans, Deerhunter, Teenage Fanclub, Slint, Pixies), Burning House’s sound is defined by multi-layered piercing guitar rhyhtms, sophisticated melodic arrangements, and tempos spanning introspective, stripped down pieces through to distinctly upbeat, frenetic songs.

“Lyrically I was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, in particular ‘labyrinths”, The Mirror stage in Psychology and the poetic cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. All these components served as a scaffold to the final product, both aesthetically and lyrically,” says Aaron Mills.

“Mirror Song is about reflections, the reflections we make and ones we actively seek. Our secret and emergent energies that dictate motives realised only posthumously.”