Nightshift release their new album ‘Zoe’ – their first for Chicago’s Trouble In Mind label.
Including single ‘Make Kin‘, the album’s 10 tracks follow a self-released full-length cassette on CUSP Recordings in early 2020.
The band that became Nightshift formed in 2019 in Glasgow. Now featuring members from Spinning Coin, 2 Ply and Robert Sotelo, it was initially formed by guitarist David Campbell & bassist Andrew Doig as a “No Wave/No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat-esque” group.
The pair added Eothen Stern (keyboards/vocals) and Chris White (drums), before (guitarist/vocalist/clarinetist Georgia Harris joined as the band was writing ‘Zöe’.
Unlike the band’s previous album, which was conceived live in the band’s practice space, the songs on ‘Zoe’ were rather pieced together and recorded remotely during quarantine lockdown, with each member composing or improvising their parts in homes/home studios, layering ideas over loops someone made and passing it on.
Vocalist and primary lyricist Eothen Stern says: “The process of writing these songs separately during lockdown was a kind of exquisite corpse – I liked this gesticulation of reaching out to one another and responding. Building up the next layer and passing it on.”
“Poetic restraints” to writing, and Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategies’ concepts were also on the members’ minds, she adds, viewing the album as “…a kind of feminist re-claiming of communal public, anti-privatisation, looking to strive for social and environmental justice. Zöe kind of became a character of striving for me when writing”.
Drummer Chris White, also of Spinning Coin, mixed the album as well as producing the cover art, while it was mastered by Mikey Young. Rachel Aggs of Sacred Paws provides backing vocals.
‘Zoe’ is available on 12″ vinyl, CD or cassette or download, now.
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