Music / Premieres
Premiere:
Beyond These Fields - Dragon's Lair
Beyond These Fields - Dragon's Lair
Combining an 80s synth-laden, instrumental adventure and arcade game video clip, Beyond These Fields’ debut 7" release, Dragon’s Lair / Light Cycle is ready to squeeze every drop of nostalgia you didn’t know you had.
Damn, it’s odd to feel nostalgic for something you never experienced or grew up with. You can see it’s something popular to explore though - the Y2K fashion trends for people born after the millennium, the 70s-style macrame and indoor plant styling, and so on. For music and media, it’s the faithful analogue synth that’s getting multiple pats on the head at the moment. Beyond These Fields, a power duo of Dan West (Cookin' On Three Burners) and Rory McDougall (The Putbacks), have taken this exploration to the next level.
Originally beginning as a collaboration for Melbourne Fringe Festival, the duo is now on track to release their 7" debut via West’s new label, Audible Artefacts. It’s a Preston-based record label sprung from a desire to curate adventurous releases in electronic production and performance.
What’s unfamiliar and unique is welcomed at Audible Artefacts, and what better way to showcase that ethos than through the founder’s own project? As co-creator West says, the Beyond These Fields concept allows them to “create dark and beat-driven synthscapes that draw on our love of live interplay between musicians and the subtle parameter morphing of old analogue machines.” Beyond These Fields utilises the love for a time past (and for some listeners, unexperienced) by invoking vintage synth soundtracks and the 80s arcade games they most often accompanied. In particular, the duo’s debut ‘Dragon’s Lair’ is paired alongside a video clip repurposing scenes from the 1983 arcade classic, Dragon’s Lair.
Originally beginning as a collaboration for Melbourne Fringe Festival, the duo is now on track to release their 7" debut via West’s new label, Audible Artefacts. It’s a Preston-based record label sprung from a desire to curate adventurous releases in electronic production and performance.
What’s unfamiliar and unique is welcomed at Audible Artefacts, and what better way to showcase that ethos than through the founder’s own project? As co-creator West says, the Beyond These Fields concept allows them to “create dark and beat-driven synthscapes that draw on our love of live interplay between musicians and the subtle parameter morphing of old analogue machines.” Beyond These Fields utilises the love for a time past (and for some listeners, unexperienced) by invoking vintage synth soundtracks and the 80s arcade games they most often accompanied. In particular, the duo’s debut ‘Dragon’s Lair’ is paired alongside a video clip repurposing scenes from the 1983 arcade classic, Dragon’s Lair.
‘Dragon’s Lair’ is the A-side to their 7" release and encompasses all the power and glory of the video game’s main character, Dirk the Daring. It’s a track balanced on McDougall’s four-on-the-floor rhythm, driving a pulsing synth melody to excitement by the open crashing drums. Making good use of an arpeggiator, the track builds consistently to a euphoric crescendo not unlike levelling up in a game.
As for the debut’s B-side? The duo’s written quite the trailer for it -
“The B side ‘Light Cycle’ opens with a crackling electronic pulse that gives way to snappy drums and waves of arpeggiated synth that create a dark and dirty world of electronic mayhem before one by one the layers fall away and the track retreats into the darkness from which it came.”
Where some artists have only dipped their toes into the pool of 80s nostalgia, Beyond These Fields seem entirely prepped to make this debut a full splash. It’s a credit to their talent that they’re keeping it fresh.
As for the debut’s B-side? The duo’s written quite the trailer for it -
“The B side ‘Light Cycle’ opens with a crackling electronic pulse that gives way to snappy drums and waves of arpeggiated synth that create a dark and dirty world of electronic mayhem before one by one the layers fall away and the track retreats into the darkness from which it came.”
Where some artists have only dipped their toes into the pool of 80s nostalgia, Beyond These Fields seem entirely prepped to make this debut a full splash. It’s a credit to their talent that they’re keeping it fresh.
Dragon’s Lair / Light Cycle is out on November 26th through Audible Artefacts - head to beyondthesefields.bandcamp.com to pre-order a limited edition 7".
