slacker kings/ beautiful losers/ daydream dropouts.



The Fauns released sophomore album Lights through Invada Records on December 2nd 2013. Lead single ‘In Flames’ released late November had been playlisted by BBC Radio 6Music, receiving air play from the likes of Lauren Laverne. The video for Seven Hours which is a prelude to the album has been directed by John Minton, (the man behind Portishead’s live visuals and recent Savages’ clip for Husbands) has also been featured as a recent ‘Song Of The Week’ by Q Magazine.

Lights is the successor to The Fauns‘ self-titled debut album released through their own Laser Ghost Recordings label in 2009. With no promotional muscle, they went on to pick up radio support from BBC 6Music’s Steve Lamacq and shift over five thousand copies purely by word of mouth. The organic success of The Fauns also garnered a valuable champion of the band in the form of Hollywood soundtrack composer Clint Mansell, (Moon, Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream) who remixed the album cut ‘Fragile’ for a limited edition Record Store Day 12”, all 1000 copies of which sold out in under a day.

Co-produced by well-respected Bristol figures Jim Barr and Tim Allen along-side the band’s own Michael Savage, Lights pits the barely-there vocals of front-woman Alison Garner against guitar work which is by alternate turns both all-consuming and intimate. Whilst the shoegaze-indebted elements of the band’s sound still shimmer as brightly as they did on The Fauns, Lights finds them imbued with new purpose-see the instrumental squalls which punctuate album stand-out ‘Seven Hours’, or the interlocking guitar figures of ‘4AM’, resonating with the atmospheric tendencies of the XX.

Michael Savage’s exhaustive knowledge of film & sound-tracking permeates Lights; ‘Point Zero’ and ‘Rise’ are sequenced as ambient episodes in homage to the astral soundtracks of Moon and Solaris (created by band heroes Mansell and Cliff Martinez), whilst elsewhere a rather more overt nod is made to film scoring with the motor engine-sampling crescendo of the Tron-esque ‘Let’s Go’.

The band have previously supported legendary ex- Creation shoegazers The Telescopes on two European tours and have played alongside the likes of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Duruitti Column and Savages. With an extensive major city European tour alongside French post-rockers Alcest (at the band’s personal invitation) already under their belt in 2014, further headline dates and festival appearances will be announced later this year. Lights may well see the full realisation of the burgeoning success of The Fauns.

Prints of ‘Lights’ album artwork are now available! To order one or any of Sarah Jeffs other outstanding artwork visit her website. http://sarahjeffs.com/

hanamble is following