Bob Moses (Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance) have announced their next release: a concept record for the club. Presented over six continuously mixed tracks, Desire—due out August 28, 2020 on Domino—is a love tale for the digital age: all about the positives and pitfalls of humanity’s driving wants, especially in these technology-driven times.
The title track, a hypnotic late-night collaboration with Grammy-nominated electronic musician ZHU, is out now with an interactive video directed by Owen Brown (creative agency CTRL5) and animation by Airplan Studio. The video is hosted on interactive streaming company Eko's platform, with interactive production help from Particle3, and uses anaglyph imagery to display two different sides of desire. With the press of a button, viewers can switch between worlds of ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’, manipulating a beating heart into a burning fire, lipstick into a bullet, joy into despair. It’s a deft and delicate dive into the ups and downs of desire.
Check the interactive version of the video HERE.
After making their second album 2018’s Battle Lines, which focused on a tighter, more traditional song structure and touring that around the world in their full band format, Bob Moses set off on a European club tour as their original two piece setup, which served as an inspiration for their next musical offering. “It was great being back in that environment and feeling the communal energy,” Vallance says. Feeling inspired, studio time was booked while still on tour. “We wanted to make something that was continuously mixed, something that would take the listener on a journey and replicate that feeling we try to create when we’re playing our sets in a club,” says Howie.
As the ideas coalesced, they realized there was a thematic through line: desire, and the ways it presents itself in our current world. “Desire can become quite destructive if you're not self-aware. With this record, we’re trying to be self-aware by looking at our own desires and reckoning with them,” says Vallance. “Stories about desire are timeless: Icarus flying too close to the sun and ending up falling to his death…that idea inspired the falling man on the album cover. That symbolized to us how desire can lead to a downfall.”
Howie adds, “We’ve appreciated the worlds created in concept records from bands like Pink Floyd and Nine Inch Nails. We thought it would be interesting to combine that kind of songwriting with the flow of modern electronic music.”
Track Listing for Desire:
01. “Love We Found”
02. “The Blame”
03. “Desire” with Zhu
04. “Hold Me Up”
05. “Outlier”
06. “Ordinary Day”
