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For Immediate Release: Revered synth quartet Ladytron recently premiered the lead single ‘City Of Angels’ from their upcoming Time’s Arrow LP, earning praise from Flood for its “rich, industrial textures and utopian, shoegaze melodies”, Brooklyn Vegan on its “motorik rhythms” and Spin for its “icy synth-powered sound”. Today, they unveil the track’s haunting video thriller, directed by Manuel Nogueira, just in time for Halloween.
As the band have often said: “Where we are from it is always Halloween.” While the song inverts sensuous imagery into a vision of the future collapse of cultural memory, the visual infuses these themes into a beautifully chilling setting. It’s a choreographed musical thriller inspired by cult favourites Roeg and Argento, shot in the brutalist mansion of architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The band haunts the set that surrounds lead actress Bianca Comparato, the star of the Netflix science fiction drama 3%, who brings her supernatural acting skills to the forefront as she plays a photographer entranced and drawn in by a mysterious force – the next A24 horror hit waiting to happen! Bianca comments, “I’m such a fan of Ladytron – I was lucky enough to be in the music video…the whole experience was a dream come true”.
This is not the first time Ladytron has released a video around Halloween. Reminiscent of J.G. Ballard and video artist Chris Cunningham, 2019’s Deadzone, directed by regular collaborator Bryan M. Ferguson, depicts two survivors of a car crash interlocked in a morbid post-modern dance. The scene opens on two vehicles that have collided head-on. Wired Mag said, “Really working the Ballardian in this one.” Additionally, the concept for 2008’s Ghosts was inspired by Stephen King’s Christine, while Mirage was heavily influenced by 1970s occult thrillers like the Wicker Man.
“City of Angels” is the first single from Ladytron’s upcoming album, Time’s Arrow, returning to their themes/motifs of beauty, disposability and fragility of the culture that surrounds us, and the exhilaration of freeing yourself from those structures. Listeners can expect crystalline melodies enveloped in icy textures and rippling arpeggios, shoegaze, disco, and industrial sounds that combine in their signature electro-pop style.
ABOUT LADYTRON
Ladytron are:
Helen Marnie
Mira Aroyo
Daniel Hunt
Reuben Wu
Forming in Liverpool in the late 90s and taking their name from the gloriously blank Roxy Music track, Ladytron’s debut album 604 was released a year ahead of 2002’s Light&Magic with Witching Hour in 2005 – “a quantum leap record” said Pitchfork. The group were lauded as leaders of the new electro-pop and electroclash scenes then flourishing, and Light&Magic went on to be influential, for both independent and mainstream electronic-pop music which followed.
Next up, 2008’s Velocifero, before 2011’s more serene, dreamy Gravity the Seducer and the cue for a deserved break which lasted years longer than imagined. Along the way they wrote and produced for other artists, including Lush and Christina Aguilera. The group reconvened in 2019 for an album that Q Magazine called “near perfection”, with Mojo insisting that in “Dark times, Ladytron soundtrack them beautifully”. GQ described it as “Formidable machine music, full of urgency and menace.” While NPR posited that “Ladytron seems enraptured at the idea of change, and of new beginnings in the face of a possible fiery end”.
Full Tracklist for Time’s Arrow
City of Angels
Faces
Misery Remember Me
Flight From Angkor
We Never Went Away
The Night
The Dreamers
Sargasso Sea
California
Time’s Arrow
Ladytron UK Dates
March 10th, 2023 – Glasgow, SWG3
March 11th, 2023 – Liverpool, Camp & Furnace
March 12th, 2023 – London, Koko
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