The Veldt
Hot on the heels of this past summer’s The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur: The Drake Equation, shoegaze shamans The Veldt brought the new EP Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose (courtesy of sonaBLAST! Records) to the harvest season holiday table. Siblings Danny and Daniel Chavis alongside Hayato Nakao, Marvin Levi, with a production assist from Robin Guthrie & remix cameos from A.R.Kane, New Kingdom’s Jason Furlow & Carlos Bess of Wutang production pierce through the blinds of distortion for elevated expressions of enlightened consciousness.
Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose dives deep behind the surface for a savage survey of ecstasy, agony that exhibits human nature in a sequence of mesmerizing & devastating portraits. The stage is set with “The Color of Love is Blue” that finds The Veldt (with an assist from Cocteau Twins’ own Robin Guthrie) bringing their sneaker-staring sound full circle from vintage visions to the present day urgency of inner awakenings. The azure motif arrives in an array of ethereal painted flowers that offers both uplifting & melancholy musical motifs that proceeds to the harsh attachments of “Black and Blue” that observes abusive relationships that investigates the reasons why people remain devoted & suppressed under oppressive conditions. The cinematic scope expands outward on the sad movies always make me cry memorable refrain that punctuates the chorus of “Fit to be Tied”, to the intense emotions that inform the jagged arrangement of “Camus” (no doubt a reference to absurdest Albert Camus). Buddhist priestess figures carry the track “Dakini” upwards towards towards celestial realms, followed by the A.R.Kane mix of “I Like the Way You Talk” that mixes moods & modes of dream-dance past with the present, as the Carlos Bess / Jason Furlow mix of “Dakini” where the reiterations of getting higher are exalted toward the outer dimensions of collaborative creativity.
The Veldt’s own Danny Chavis shared the following candid, exclusive reflections about the new EP:
Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose opens with “The Colour of Love is Blue”, which original title was “Blue is the Colour of Love”, written after reading the book The Bell Jar from a description of a drawing the character did very sad. A very elementary lyrical content but nonetheless effective using olde English word phrasing to get the point of desperation across.
The song “Black and Blue” is a description of the girls eye after being beat. He beat me but we were in love….
We have alluded before to our sound being one of growth in terms. But how deep can one go to the true essence to lyrical content? Dissonance aside…
This collection of songs, half produced in Paris and half in NY, explore deception and “La Marriage Blanche” and self-hate and how one cannot find salvation in any faith/person on a personal level if one hasn’t done the work to improve oneself. In short, like in the song “Black and Blue”, this explores a naive person romanticizing living in a trap from a privileged point of view as, He beat me but we were in love and me going WTF?
The cover work in itself a despairing testament of the coldness of love in the 21st century and the aloofness and the quick gratification of the “Pret-a-porter” love mode made possible in the 21st century.
How often have we heard the It’s me it’s not you diatribe for a quick fix on the non-committal a true statement to love in a void of the 21st century.
The Veldt’s new EP Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose is available now.
