Revered synth quartet Ladytron recently premiered the lead single “City Of Angels” from their upcoming Time’s Arrow LP. 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 future collapse of cultural memory, the visual infuses these themes into a beautifully chilling setting. It’s a choreographed musical thriller inspired by cult favorites 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.”
“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.
Watch the video for “City of Angels” below:
Last month Ladytron celebrated the 20th anniversary of their formative 2002 LP Light&Magic (Nettwerk). In mid-2021, the album’s single Seventeen went viral on TikTok: a new disaffected generation was introduced to Ladytron’s music…a twenty-year-old song by a group whose very existence predated social media itself.
Forming in Liverpool in the late 90s and taking their name from the Roxy Music track, Ladytron’s debut album 604 was released a year ahead of 2002’s Light&Magic with Witching Hour in 2005. 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.
2008’s Velocifero, before 2011’s more serene, dreamy Gravity the Seducer, and the cue for a deserved break that 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.
Time’s Arrow is set for release via Cooking Vinyl on January 20, 2023, with a UK tour to follow in March. US live shows will be announced soon.
Ladytron UK Dates
- March 10th, 2023 – Glasgow, SWG3
- March 11th, 2023 – Liverpool, Camp & Furnace
- March 12th, 2023 – London, Koko
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