Bonsound Promo

Montreal-based Seoul will release their debut album, I Become A Shade, on June 9th via Last Gang Records in Canada. The band is excited to share the first video from the record for The Line. Originally premiered via FLOOD Magazine, they call it hypnotic, visionary and write, moody and evocative, like its soundtrack, the song’s visual counterpart experiments with reactions to light and dark, as well as emotional connection and physical detachment, and vice versa.

Watch The Line Video on YouTube.

The video was filmed in the trio’s home base of Montreal and the band explains, one of the hardest parts in moving past a loss or a disappointment is how we must move our bodies away from our emotional space. The video depicts this transition from melancholy to acceptance through contrasting urban spaces, complimentary characters and the projection of self onto others and screens.

Director Derek Branscombe elaborates, the characters are framed against inescapable screens, bringing out the unattainable desire of connection through technology.

The trio has separated the album into three distinct suites, equal parts gauzy dream-pop, reverberant R&B, and speculative ambiant, making for an impressive and intoxicating debut. The album includes their previously self-released tracks for Stay With Us and White Morning which have garnered over one million soundcloud plays between them.

Comprised of kindergarten classmates Nigel Ward and Julian Flavin, and art school transplant Dexter Garcia, the three pieced the album together in a sort of collage or trial and error process over the course of a year, revealing the slow sculptural nature of studio work. Ward calls it a process of organizing our intuitions into cohesive moments and seeing where it takes us. The three of them work equally on all tracks, as Garcia notes, it’s rare that a song doesn’t change hands quite a few times prior to us finishing it. And most of this elaboration on an idea is done rotating through a computer and reacting to each other’s contributions in relation to the direction things are going in.

From the lush ache and bouyance of Stay With Us to the sculpted synths and angular sincerity of The Line, I Become A Shade is the sort of record whose every detail, whether panoramic or microscopic, is on glorious, deliberate display. The propulsive Real June and Silencer both hurtle through space like rain-drenched athletes, while I Negate and White Morning shimmer with a hushed honesty, growing and pirouetting with dreamy eventuality into a thick focus.

Seoul is currently on tour in the US. Fans can pre-order I Become A Shade on iTunes and via Last Gang Records for physical release.