London alt-rock quartet Thumpermonkey return with their breathtaking full-length Make Me Young, Etc which will be released via Rockosmos on 26th October, and have unveiled their new single / video ‘Veldt’.
Guitarist and vocalist Michael Woodman commented: ‘When I originally came up with ‘Veldt’, I’d been listening to the inscrutable nightmare soundscapes of noughties Scott Walker, (particularly tracks where he would take something sweet and add uncomfortable drones – emotional resonances that were difficult to process in terms of words like ‘happy’ or ‘sad’). I wanted to do something like that. This is technically a love song.’
‘Veldt’ is taken from the new album Make Me Young, Etc, a concept record that counts down to the end of existence.
In 2012, following the release of Thumpermonkey’s Sleep Furiously album, singer Michael Woodman received a random email from a fan called Max whom, feeling an affinity with Woodman, felt obligated to share with him his revelation of the end of the world.
Woodman, initially wrote the email off as an artefact from an oddball, but in the following months he found himself beginning to think about Max’s message and the mysterious person behind it with increasing frequency. Woodman never attempted to reply to Max, and to this day, Max has never contacted Woodman again.
Make Me Young, Etc arks a clear evolution for Thumpermonkey. Guitarist and pianist Rael Jones’s day job as a screen composer infiltrates and inflates the music into an epic cinemascope fever-dream – a backdrop to Woodman’s unique stream of consciousness vocal style, perfectly suspended in a score to a film that doesn’t exist.
Make Me Young, Etc exists in homage to the unknown Max, and poses the question; if you knew tomorrow was the end of the world, would you be able to let go of all your regrets, and live differently for just one day?
Thumpermonkey have been slowly but surely building their reputation as a captivating live band, and 2018 has seen them perform at 8 Years of Chaos Festival, EppyFest and select shows including a support with Polymath.
The band will next headline The Victoria in Dalson, London on 11 October.