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Brighton four-piece Wild Cat Strike are pleased to announce that they will release their forthcoming new EP, ‘Red Brake Light Sky Sessions’, on 26th March 2021 via Small Pond.
Like for many other bands 2020 had completely ruined Wild Cat Strikes plans, and changed their planned trajectory.
With their UK & EU tours gone, and with them unable to continue working towards their sophomore full length release due to nationwide lockdowns, the band set their efforts on reworking their last release; re-imagining its arrangements and instrumentation to create the Red Brake Light Sky Sessions EP.
The band previously released the The Blood Orange Sessions EP (2019), featuring exclusive live sessions, reimaginings, and alternate versions of tracks from their full-length debut ‘Rhubarb Nostalgia’. The ‘Red Brake Light Sky Sessions’ is a comparable counterpart to the band’s last EP ‘Mustard Coloured Years’, the Ying to this Yang, a response to the challenges to creativity in current times:
“We were working out a few acoustic arrangements for a pop up shop to play alongside our friends in Delta Sleep and Orchards, and when lockdown hit and it cancelled, we didn’t stop and just followed this path further”
Featuring the reworked single ‘Toothcutter’—a track about self-fulfilling prophecies, the notion of destiny, and accepting your struggles as just being part of the bigger picture – Red Brake Lights Sky Sessions EP is another accomplished step in the right direction for this slow-burning, soulful Brighton quartet.
“I like to find unique analogies that haven’t been found, but once heard they seem like they have always existed; the loud wallpaper in a quiet room, traffic jams bringing in a red brake-light-coloured sunset, the night disguising the roads as strips of liquorice, wondering who tamed the carousel horses, a cherry branch in at random signifying good luck, the easiest thing to do being to learn the hard way, trying not to worry where you are going to sleep at the end of the day knowing that heaven’s always got a spare room; just in case...”
Recorded in their individual houses in isolation, and mixed and mastered by their old drummer Joe Caple, the band traded in distortion pedals, driven bass amps, and the full potency of their usual live sound for instruments like banjos, marimbas, melodicas and violins, to look for their own melancholic connection with their listeners in a new and exciting way.
What started as a search for sanity, connection, and new forms of expression has unexpectedly built up into a release that the band and label are hugely proud to share with you - Red Brake Light Sky Sessions, out on 26th March 2021-01-27 via Small Pond.