As they continue on their journey to the release of new album Free Humans, Hen Ogledd have shared a brand new single, “Crimson Star”. Underpinned by the melodic tones of Davies’ electric harp (recorded in Atlantis studios where ABBA recorded in their early days), the kaleidoscopic track explores space and time travel.
As Dawson notes, “”Crimson Star” is a gentle, pungent pop song about a retired entertainer looking back on their adventures during the heyday of space tourism.”
Along with “Crimson Star” comes the video, directed by Deborah Bower featuring the full band.
Inspired as much by ABBA as the work of 12th century mystic-composer-naturalist-visionary Hildegard von Bingen, touched equally by the spirits of radical philosophical plumber Mary Midgley and PC Music star Hannah Diamond, as quiet as the paintings of Agnes Martin yet bombastic like a Werner Herzog documentary... it’s an album of seamless, glorious contradictions. Tackling themes of love, friendship, Gaia theory, sewers, the nature of time, human stench, and the thrills of wild swimming, it’s remarkable that, given the intense collision of influences and wide-ranging ideas at play, Free Humans somehow coheres into a marvelous whole.
Free Humans doesn’t shy away from the fact humans are killing the earth, but it does it with spiky wit. Hen Ogledd manages to hold both the tragedy of the wrongs happening in the world and also a sense of hope and liberation in their hands at the same time.
Free Humans track list
Farewell
Trouble
Earworm
Crimson Star
Kebran Gospel Gossip
Remains
Paul is 9ft Tall (Marsh Gas)
Space Golf
Time Party
The Loch Ness Monster’s Song
Flickering Lights
Bwganod
Feral
Skinny Dippers
