Kwoon is the musical project of a mysterious French musician, producer and composer, only known as Sandy. With his full-length debut, 2006’s Tales & Dreams, Sandy quickly established his project’s sound and aesthetic — a dreamy take on post-rock and prog rock, that seemed inspired by Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, and Pink Floyd.
Sandy followed that up with two more albums — 2009’s When the flowers were singing and 2011’s The Guillotine Show, which was released through Fin de Siécle.
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of last year, you may recall that Sandy released a series of live performances filmed in some mesmerizing locations including a cliff on the island of Lanzarote, the Tévennec Lighthouse, on the stormy Breton sea, where he performed an early version of his latest single “King of Sea,” and Quiberon Airport, in Quiberon, France for the slow-burning and shoegazey “Stratofear.”
Kwoon’s latest single “King of Sea” continues a run of slow-burning and gorgeously, cinematic material. Featuring an orchestral arrangement consisting of twinkling and looping piano, dramatic drumming and percussion, soaring backing vocals and textured layers of guitars drenched in delay and reverb pedal paired with Sandy’s David Gilmour-like vocals, “King of the Sea” sounds as though it could be drawing from The Wall-era Pink Floyd (think of “The Trial”) or A Momentary Lapse of Reason-era Pink Floyd.
Written while staying in the Tévennec Lighthouse in Finistere, France on the Breton Sea, the song is inspired by the lighthouse, which has a lengthy and terrifying reputation among sailors for strange and terrible phenomena that have happened around the site. In fact, many sailors have referred to the lighthouse and island as “the gateway to hell.”
Directed by Stéphane Berla, the hauntingly gorgeous, stop-motion animated visual for “King of the Sea” is set in Brittany in the 1800s and follows the life of a Breton sailor, who leaves his young family and drowns in the stormy sea. Once drowned, the man comes across strange, otherworldly phenomena.
