Songwriter/producer from Stockholm🇸🇪 
Indie pop and bedroom pop enthusiast

We're on Spotify! https://open.spotify.com/artist/4bjkXh2Qs3rQK8VCemYDIj

Emo indie folk

Photography: Pontus Maina

Symbol is the solo effort of producer and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Royal King. Best known as a founding member and lead guitarist of the massive orchestral-rock ensemble This Will Destroy You, King has also composed and recorded scores for a host of prominent feature-films and documentaries, established Light Lodge Records, and moonlights in Austin’s amorphous ambient collective AMASA•GANA. Now on his first solitary odyssey apart from TWDY, King’s masterful ear for signal processing and affinity for corroded elegance takes free reign over a vastly expanded inventory of instrumentation. Throughout Symbol’s debut Online Architecture, organic sound-sources are meticulously transmuted through chains of modules and magnetic tape, each successive stage creating a compounded quantity of detail and decay. After four studio albums with TWDY, King has crafted an arresting solo debut that is both gorgeously tranquil and devastatingly heavy, offering a direct-line into his psyche which had not existed until now.

SELECTED PRESS:

“King lulls the listener into thinking that they’re zoning to background music before grabbing them by the throats and reminding them that they’re listening to something murky and formless, but full of icy beauty nonetheless.” – Pitchfork

“Symbol claims the next peg up on the “post-” trajectory, carrying any inklings of “rock” to their deepest point of ambient departure and bidding them good luck on their journey through the waves.” – Tiny Mix Tapes

“Complex, moody, and fascinating, it is the use of analog decay and damage that give this album its distinct identity, and help it to stand out brilliantly amongst so many other synth heavy records.” – Brainwashed

“‘Clear Passage,’ the first single, begins quietly, with a soothing ambient hum that slowly builds into a cavernous well of desiccated noises scratching and clawing their way into your ears.” – Decoder

“With its six-and-a-half-minute runtime, “Clear Passage” is quite the immersive experience in and of itself. To simply label the track “ambient” or “drone” would be cutting its nuance short. It sounds both organic and alien, as if King has tapped into some lost frequency floating listlessly in the vast expanses of outer space.” – PORTALS

“If TWDY toes a line between melody and white noise, Symbol takes a deeper dive into chaos…King is obviously enjoying the opportunity to push his limits and challenge his audience. The result is cinematic and unnerving.” – Suburban Decay

⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ 

"ONLINE ARCHITECTURE" LP/C̶S̶ available now at 
http://holodeckrecords.bandcamp.com/album/online-architecture-hd022

"Rail Cables: Spring Selection" LP available now at
http://railcables.bandcamp.com/album/springselection2015

⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ ⬚ 


Official SoundCloud channel of ESA - the European Space Agency. Most (not all) audio content here is licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0. Please check individual credits to be certain. Can't find a track? Our channel used to be http://www.soundcloud.com/esaops - but not anymore. Try searching here for the track name or using keywords instead.

Marcus Östlund is following