Soft Metals / Soft Metals

Captured Tracks

formats available

CD
$13.50
CT 116 CD
Street Date:
August 2nd, 2011
Ship Date:
August 8th, 2011
LP
$15.50
CT 116
8471080197218
Street Date:
August 2nd, 2011
Ship Date:
August 1st, 2011

PATRICIA HALL and her boyfriend IAN HICKS have been enchanting one another with song since the spring of 2009. Their first meeting was an audition. Ian was looking for a voice to compliment his moody, cinematic synthesizer sketches and Patricia hoped to meet the right partner to help put her day dreamy poems and keyboard melodies to music. Their mutual love of early ‘80s synth pop, the nascent incarnations of house and techno, ebm, krautrock, post punk, and the first wave of industrial music set the course. After a few sessions together the partnership proved to be exactly what they had both been searching for and SOFT METALS was born. What began as a collaboration between songwriters soon budded into a passionate love affair. Song lyrics became secret messages, with which Patricia confessed her developing affection for Ian. The Portland-based duo's first five original works together, which became the EP The Cold World Melts, released on Captured Tracks, is a time capsule of this courtship. This summer marks the release of their first full-length, a self-titled release with Captured Tracks. The album is a further expression of their romance, but now two years into their relationship, the two are looking a bit more outward. They explore fantastical soundscapes which conjure the dramatic cinematic worlds of Dario Argento, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and the Czech New Wave. Ultra-saturated colors with a touch of noir, opulent architecture, and mysterious femmes all spring to mind. From the deep examinations of the human psyche found in Adam Curtis documentaries to the controversial bridge between science and the soul via Carl Sagan and Ray Kurzweil, the duo revels in the trans-formative power of love, knowledge, and imagination. The outcome of all this is a collection of bittersweet electronic pop songs balanced by a delicate surrealism, a patient sense of experimentation that leaves you floating in your subconscious and moving to the beat . The sonic landscapes are sleek, but never icy.