quête:glass candy

The wheels rattle into the thrilling unknown on The Coral’s first new music since 2018, finding the unsurpassed, metamorphic gonzo-pop five-piece in the company of crooks, sell-by-date candyfloss and plastic skeletons as they release Faceless Angel. Of misplaced memories from a place and time that might never have been, the track precedes a new and vividly evocative body of work from the legendary Merseyside band in the form of their TENTH and first, ever double-album: Coral Island.

Squinting into the neon-lit penny arcades and draining an after hours glass with the displaced and dispossessed once the power is pulled, The Coral’s latest caper concerns listeners with the light, shade, thrills and profound melancholy of coastal palaces packed with fun and fright. Both now and then, or perhaps never as fiction encroaches on reality, the feverous anticipation of a night amongst the screams, fights and romance of the fair become part of life on the newly-built Coral Island.

Welcoming travellers one trepidous step at a time, Faceless Angel sits amongst a series of promised audio visual portraits of and inspired by the Island’s inhabitants. Conceived and created by artist, Edwin Burdis, the single’s video was filmed ‘on’ Coral Island itself, a sprawling diorama purpose-built inside a deserted Chinese restaurant in Cardiff. It’s the band and fans’ first venture onto the surreal land mass, populated by surreal sculptural forms, charity shop-finds, looming mountains and gathering storm clouds. Filmed in debt to the traditional model-based filmmaking methods of greats like George Lucas or Ray Harryhausen, Burdis navigated Coral Island at waist-height and via camera-friendly pathways to gather 360 degree footage from inside and outside his and The Coral’s fascinating, fabricated world. The expansive and ambitious installation also provides the album artwork for Coral Island as well as designs for Faceless Angel and future singles.

Indebted in part to the classic pre-Beatles rock and roll era of Duane Eddy and Chuck Berry alongside the clattering of a weary ghost train’s rusted wheels on worn steel, Faceless Angel’s title evokes DC Comics ominous occult detective series, Hellblazer and the broken character of the strip’s protagonist, John Constantine.

The wheels rattle into the thrilling unknown on The Coral’s first new music since 2018, finding the unsurpassed, metamorphic gonzo-pop five-piece in the company of crooks, sell-by-date candyfloss and plastic skeletons as they release Faceless Angel. Of misplaced memories from a place and time that might never have been, the track precedes a new and vividly evocative body of work from the legendary Merseyside band in the form of their TENTH and first, ever double-album: Coral Island.

Squinting into the neon-lit penny arcades and draining an after hours glass with the displaced and dispossessed once the power is pulled, The Coral’s latest caper concerns listeners with the light, shade, thrills and profound melancholy of coastal palaces packed with fun and fright. Both now and then, or perhaps never as fiction encroaches on reality, the feverous anticipation of a night amongst the screams, fights and romance of the fair become part of life on the newly-built Coral Island.

Welcoming travellers one trepidous step at a time, Faceless Angel sits amongst a series of promised audio visual portraits of and inspired by the Island’s inhabitants. Conceived and created by artist, Edwin Burdis, the single’s video was filmed ‘on’ Coral Island itself, a sprawling diorama purpose-built inside a deserted Chinese restaurant in Cardiff. It’s the band and fans’ first venture onto the surreal land mass, populated by surreal sculptural forms, charity shop-finds, looming mountains and gathering storm clouds. Filmed in debt to the traditional model-based filmmaking methods of greats like George Lucas or Ray Harryhausen, Burdis navigated Coral Island at waist-height and via camera-friendly pathways to gather 360 degree footage from inside and outside his and The Coral’s fascinating, fabricated world. The expansive and ambitious installation also provides the album artwork for Coral Island as well as designs for Faceless Angel and future singles.

Indebted in part to the classic pre-Beatles rock and roll era of Duane Eddy and Chuck Berry alongside the clattering of a weary ghost train’s rusted wheels on worn steel, Faceless Angel’s title evokes DC Comics ominous occult detective series, Hellblazer and the broken character of the strip’s protagonist, John Constantine.

Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. The music of Johnny Jewel, Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, & Symmetry all articulate different visions for different moments — the pure ecstasy of a Saturday night out; unrestrained romantic devotion between vulnerable people; walks on wet streets on foggy nights; isolated twilight meditations. They make music for all moments, all feelings, all stories — in films & in life. Theirs is natural soundtrack music. Bruce Thierry Cheung brings their cinematic music to celluloid to tell the story of a family’s struggles in Don’t Come Back from the Moon, starring James Franco, Rashida Jones, & Jeffrey Wahlberg. The soundtrack mixes new & beloved work from the Italians family. Classic cuts such as Chromatics’ revered “Cherry” & “The River” (alongside the newer “Magazine”) & the disco-bliss of Mirage’s “Lady Operator” are alongside cues from Johnny’s instrumental solo album Digital Rain, all remastered to articulate the resonance of the visuals. Joining them is new music from Johnny & Symmetry. “Bicycle” finds Symmetry taking their Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter vibes into a haunting modern R&B space. Cues like “Street Lights” & “Dusk” use twinkling piano keys & glassy, minimal synthesizers to craft ambient electronic bliss. “Death Valley” is a foreboding & atmosphere track, laced with spectres of fading memories. Once you go to the moon with these songs, you’ll never want to come back.

Produced & Mixed By Johnny Jewel
Mastered By Mike Bozzi At Bernie Grundman Mastering
Cut By Bernie Grundman In Hollywood

The neon lights that decorate a dive bar's window cast a vivid reflection in rainwater on the pavement outside, as steam rises from deep beneath the ground. A slow pan across the scene, past alleys cast in shadow, twilit corners & glass doorways streaked with the mist of humid bodies fuming inside: the camera catches the denizens of an unnamed city, studying faces heavy with secrets too sad to bear. Cut to the motorway. Sleek cars barrel through the night. Sirens moan. Engines rev. You're behind the wheel, over the edge as the credits roll.

This film does not exist — but the soundtrack does. Symmetry is Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker, & Themes For an Imaginary Film is their two-hour cinematic opus pokus, a sprawling score for a movie that screens only in your mind. A 'conceptual tangent between Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, & Desire's more abstract sides,' as Jewel himself describes the project, Symmetry is a vigorous, electric, restless exploration of ideas on the bleeding edge of instrumental sound. Analog synthesizers roll and crest, drums collide, keys cascade clear & crystalline. These themes evoke the phantasmic images that inspired them: urgent and ethereal, sinister & romantic. It's a neo-noir epic of pink fog & femme fatales hidden behind rain drenched windshields after dark.

Produced By Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker

Solipsism is an archival release of music from Mike Simonetti's
tenure as owner of Italians Do It Better Records, spanning from
2006-2013. During that time Mike wrote a lot of music. Some of it
was used for films, some for TV commercials, some for fashion
shows and he even released a record or two.
Influenced by the intersection of 80's arena rock bands like AC/DC and Judas Priest, glam rock/dance bands like Rockets and Supermax, and especially the underground Italian producer Piero Umiliani - the album is chock-full of atmospheric rock-inspired arpeggiated riffs. The mixture of metal and chugging dance music makes for a unique listening experience. Every song has a riff, every song is heavy and dense. Only one song goes above 118 BPM. These are heavy chuggers that make for a tense emotional experience that exceeds your standard, easy-to-write-off 'soundtrack' fare, mainly because it was never written with that in mind. It was meant to be a fist-pumping arena rock inspired thumper! You can hear that in the one two punch of 'A Prayer For War' into 'Illusions", which is an outtake from his "The Magician"
sessions. Other songs like 'Solipsism' showcase the airy melodies
of that were to come with his other project Pale Blue, but that is
not typical on this album. If you listen closely, you can hear how
Simonetti's music and dark vibes inspired his then label partner
Johnny Jewel to take his own bands Chromatics and Glass Candy in a different, more cinematic direction.
This was written and recorded years before the Drive soundtrack and all the hoopla around the sudden soundtrack resurgence. In
2011 Mike was asked to submit some songs for a soon to be
released Hollywood remake. He submitted most of the songs from this album, and they were slated for release on the soundtrack,
but the project fell apart, and the film went in a different direction
and changed producers. Soon after, because of all the drama and foolishness, he left Italians Do It Better to start over with 2MR and Pale Blue. This is the nail in the coffin. Godspeed.

Solipsism is an archival release of music from Mike Simonetti's
tenure as owner of Italians Do It Better Records, spanning from
2006-2013. During that time Mike wrote a lot of music. Some of it
was used for films, some for TV commercials, some for fashion
shows and he even released a record or two.
Influenced by the intersection of 80's arena rock bands like AC/DC and Judas Priest, glam rock/dance bands like Rockets and Supermax, and especially the underground Italian producer Piero Umiliani - the album is chock-full of atmospheric rock-inspired arpeggiated riffs. The mixture of metal and chugging dance music makes for a unique listening experience. Every song has a riff, every song is heavy and dense. Only one song goes above 118 BPM. These are heavy chuggers that make for a tense emotional experience that exceeds your standard, easy-to-write-off 'soundtrack' fare, mainly because it was never written with that in mind. It was meant to be a fist-pumping arena rock inspired thumper! You can hear that in the one two punch of 'A Prayer For War' into 'Illusions", which is an outtake from his "The Magician"
sessions. Other songs like 'Solipsism' showcase the airy melodies
of that were to come with his other project Pale Blue, but that is
not typical on this album. If you listen closely, you can hear how
Simonetti's music and dark vibes inspired his then label partner
Johnny Jewel to take his own bands Chromatics and Glass Candy in a different, more cinematic direction.
This was written and recorded years before the Drive soundtrack and all the hoopla around the sudden soundtrack resurgence. In
2011 Mike was asked to submit some songs for a soon to be
released Hollywood remake. He submitted most of the songs from this album, and they were slated for release on the soundtrack,
but the project fell apart, and the film went in a different direction
and changed producers. Soon after, because of all the drama and foolishness, he left Italians Do It Better to start over with 2MR and Pale Blue. This is the nail in the coffin. Godspeed.

Hot on the heels of the critically acclaimed 2017 LP Windswept - which soundtracked David Lynch's Twin Peaks, Digital Rain is Johnny Jewel's latest album. Jewel is known for his extensive collaborations with film makers David Lynch, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Ryan Gosling, as well as for his work with groundbreaking musical groups such as Chromatics, Glass Candy, and Desire.

The 19 movements of Digital Rain are three dimensional beds of analogue warmth encompassed in raw electronic moisture. The result is an expansive pallet of soft color amid canyons of jagged oscillations. According to Jewel, "Digital Rain is a mirror image of itself designed to play as a singular liquid movement."

"After living a few years in a desert climate, I realized I was nostalgic for the constant presence of precipitation from every city I once called home. The sound of hail ricocheting off my roof in Houston...The floods crashing in from the Gulf of Mexico that would destroy my mother's house three times...The constant kiss of drizzle on the streets of Portland, and the morning rain against the windshield of Trimet city bus number 15 that I would ride home after recording all night...The snow buried row houses of Montreal where my daughter was born, and the rhythmic feel of ice cracking under my boots for six months straight."

"The desert is constant, and I love this repetitious ritual of Los Angeles so much. As moisture and humid weather seem more and more like a dream I once had or a fading memory of the places I fell in love with...I wanted to make a record without drums, without lyrics, vague in form. Each track morphing and eclipsing the next like the ever-changing movement of clouds obscuring the moon."

Cut By The Legendary Bernie Grundman In Hollywood. Recorded in Joshua Tree / Mixed in Los Angeles.