By Keith Walsh
One of the best new albums I’ve heard this year is Spray’s Ambiguous Poems About Death. Recorded in Lancashire, England (electronics by Ricardo Autobahn) and Liverpool (vocals by Jenny McLaren), the sounds from this brother-sister duo are lyrically and sonically exciting, with witty riffs on social issues and beats designed to make you dance.
“The Big Idea” is the new video from Ambiguous Poems About Death and it conveys the excitement of the million dollar idea, in the context of the late-capitalist environment we find ourselves in.
“Down in the depths of your soul/there’s a thought and you know that it’s gold/
It’s the idea of an age/now they take it from you, run to the stage”
From ‘The Big Idea’
As Autobahn explained: “The Big Idea is our tribute to creatives, idealists and visionaries who pioneer concepts and ideas against backlash and resistance. The people who are then lauded and celebrated but only up until the point where big business works out how to monetize the idea. The line in the song ‘everybody loves you when they don’t understand what you’re doing – then you’re expendable’ is our nod to those corporations who will mine the well of talent, but only until the alchemy from art to commerce is completed.”
Sweet Cynicism
There’s a bit of cynicism about Spray, and mixed with the sweet synths and beats, it makes for a delightful combination. I asked Autobahn if that’s calculated, or if that’s just how the songs come out? “That’s just how they come out,” he said. “Jenny’s the nice one out of us. She’s the one who likes people and she’s very friendly and personable. Whereas I just I’m a bit of a miser…I don’t don’t like people, I sit home all day and grumble — but the idea is the thing about Spray. We’ve said that we love and hate pop music in equal measures. We love pop music, but we hate that people aren’t particular ambitious about it. So a lot of our songs are sort of Mickey-taking about pop music in a sense. It’s almost sarcasm about pop music.”’
Autobahn’s love for hardware synthesizers is no secret; on display in the vid is his beloved Korg Wavestate, the iconic Arp Odyssey, and a coveted Fairlight CMI. McLaren’s siren-like voice is both energetic and seductive. One of the studio secrets I teased out of Autobahn was their trick of layering vocal harmonies and synthesizers to the extreme, things made possible by digital technology.
Assuming that the Omicron variant fades and things get back to normal, Autobahn said he looks forward to putting on live shows in the near future. I asked him what his live setup looks like: “Basically, it’s a mixture of a laptop and at the sequences, everything sort of runs automatically. The focal point of the show is Jennifer — people, come to see, Jenny, and second seeing me doing keyboard solos. So I sort of just tend to stand on the back and operate everything but Jenny does the performances.”
I suggested to Autobahn that with all of the current technology available, making music remotely, as Ambiguous Poems About Death was created, is easier than ever. He said: “It’s a great time to be alive! Really!” I pointed out that this statement is contrary to his lyrical stance on the album. With much laughter, Autobahn corrected himself: “It’s a terrible time to be alive — what an awful world it is!”
Spray On Bandcamp
Spray On Spotify
Spray YouTube
Analogue Trash
Spray On Synthbeat
(Featured Photo By Phil Fletcher.)
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