November 5, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

Alternative rock duo SUBMOTILE releases their debut album ‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’

Dublin-based dream-gaze noiseniks Submotile present their debut album ‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’. Released digitally on April 16, the Midsummer Madness label will also be issuing the album in a limited edition run this summer.

On this 9-track offering, the duo blurs the lines between shoegaze, pop, noise-rock, ambient and post-rock, Submotile delivers a unique brand of layered, atmospheric and immersive indie rock.

Submotile are Michael Farren and Daniela Angione, an Italian-Irish couple who call the Irish capital their home. Now full-on hybrid in their sounds, defying genre pigeonholing, Submotile were initially conceived as an ambient, experimental project.

The duo evolved its sound considerably once Daniela began to add vocals to Michael’s guitar experiments, yielding their first proper collaborative track ‘Signs of My Melody’. The well-received debut EP ‘We’re Losing The Light’ followed, gaining the band significant interest in the shoegaze community. This encouraged them to pursue their dream of recording a proper album. ‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’ is the culmination of nine months of recording – from August 2018 to March 2019.

“We wanted an album that ebbed and flowed, with nine diverse songs that complimented each other without being too different from each other. The idea behind the music is to express the dualism of warmth over hostility, passion over frustration, all these dynamics projected onto a sense of hope and renaissance. I’m not sure if we succeeded, but hopefully it works,” says Daniela Angione.

Recorded and produced by Submotile in their home studio, this album was mastered by Brian Lucey from Magic Garden Mastering, well known for his work with Ringo Deathstarr, Sigur Ros, Liam Gallager, Marilyn Manson, Neko Case and The Black Keys,among others.

“Having quit music in 2009 due to the frustration of never having been able to translate the sounds in my head to tape, ‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’ was recorded during a wonderful period of rebirth and rejuvenation, a period where I was discovering all the great new music that was out there, whilst simultaneously finding out just how far music production technology had evolved,” explains Michael Farren.

“This evolution allowed us to come that bit closer to the sound in our heads, enabling us to labor over songs, adding hundreds of tracks and experimenting with samples, guitar pedals and tones – many a happy hour was whiled away tracking this music. If someone out there enjoys listening to it a fraction as much as we enjoyed making it, then to me it’ll be a success.”

Submotile’s music is influenced by numerous artists, including My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Warpaint, Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack, Swans, Spiritualized, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Stars of the Lid.

Michael Farren adds: “It’s not an understatement to say that we obsessively labored over this album, with most songs having well in excess of 120 tracks (with ‘Winter Storm Sequence’ having 167). The vocal mixing alone on some songs took over six days. We wanted something that lent itself well to headphone listening, creating an immersive experience that reveals new layers on repeat listens, yet hopefully without sounding like an overblown, excessive mess.”

‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’ is available now for streaming via Spotify and from stores such as iTunes, as well as the duo’s own Bandcamp.

TRACK LIST
1. Alba 03:58
2. Amped and Faded 03:01
3. Tramonto 03:47
4. Eastern Sky Sundown 02:57
5. Winter Storm Sequence 07:55
6. Terra Lontana 03:42
7. 3am Reveries 04:30
8. For a Moment I Forget You Are Gone 05:28
9. White Lights Ascending 06:10

Bandcamp https://submotile.com/album/ghosts-fade-on-skylines-lp
Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/album/0IBPDx7ObVwB6J5TKemnJe
iTuneshttps://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ghosts-fade-on-skylines/1457676662
‘Ghosts Fade on Skylines’ (Full Album)https://youtu.be/m-WLimbMX-Y
‘Eastern Sky Sundown’https://youtu.be/RuKfFHvin3E
‘Alba’https://youtu.be/ChaEHdsvuRs

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