Artist: The Waves & Us
Title: With Any Future / Missing Us
Label: Wolf + Lamb
Cat. No.: WLM038

Marking the start of an exciting new collaborative project, Wolf + Lamb proudly share the debut release of The Waves & Us. Formed out of a creative meeting of minds between Maayan Nidam, Markus Nikolaus and Louis McGuire, theirs is a sound that strengthens the storied approach of a live band with the experimental thrust of analogue electronics. Pop and rock fundamentals lend an earthly hook to the tracks, but these are anything but straight-forward songs.

Maayan has already forged a formidable career in electronic music, both under her own name and as part of Mara Trax, scoring releases on such celebrated labels as Perlon. Markus performs his own solo project Cunt Cunt Chanel, while Louis is part of Ballet School, a band releasing on noted indie label Bella Union. The whirlwind of creativity that has whipped up around the trio has yielded an album which will follow this single, made up of one-take recordings that capture the energy and adventure that powers The Waves & Us. 

Maayan’s electronics provide the atmospheric backdrop to the songs, running modular synthesisers and drum machines through detailed chains of processing and effects with an emphasis on a warm, charmingly rough finish. Markus’ guitar undergoes a similar fuzzy treatment while his voice calls out introspective, abstract lyrics to set the mind racing. Louis’ bass underpins the music with a dubby sensibility, bringing a necessary balance to the frequency range. 

Making the most of their in-the-room recording approach, the singles will feature alternative takes of the songs that will appear on the album, providing a little insight into the flutters and fluctuations that shape the development of this project. With their eyes fixed on live performances and an arresting sound already formed, this is a vital time for all three artists and the people that listen to them. 


B. Missing Us

A. With Any Future

recorded at Cameo in NYC on the 28.6.2014


Live At Cameo NYC

Things happen fast when the chemistry is just right. It took mere months for Maayan, Markus and Louis to leap from studio strangers to the shared parents of a glorious noise, captured on cassette and barreling out into the world beyond. The energy surges out of their creations, in every strained guitar string, every troubled synth drone, every cracked blues call; it feels like they’ve been doing this for a long time. 

In their individual ways they were at this before they ever got together, carrying far and wide psychedelic yearnings and an addiction to the dirty underbelly of sound. Maayan’s years of electronic research guide her hand as she channels rhythm and tone through a glorious chain of boxes, no link a link too far to get the sound just right. The stories fall out of Markus like an upended journal of human experience, his guitar following the pattern through a life spent cranking distortion pedals and octave shifters. Louis’ searching bass contorts and mutates under the heat of improvisation, but never straying from the groove. 

It took long nights staring sleeplessness in the face to reach these songs, and even then not one definitive version remains. In the rush of a take, as the reels spin round, a beat skipped here, a knob twisted there, at midday or midnight, it’s different every time. While squalls of guitar and yelps of synths can be finally captured in a finished product, the energy will simply move outside. This is a sound for tacky floors and stickered walls, where the music will reanimate once again in the rare prism that is The Waves & Us. 


The Waves & Us

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