Tag: Elisabeth Elektra

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Silver Moth Shares Gorgeously Cinematic Visual for “The Eternal”

Silver Moth is new collective featuring a celebrated cast of musicians and artists, including Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, singer/songwriter and electro pop artist Elisabeth Elektra, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Evi Vine, Abrasive Trees‘ Matthew Rochford, Burning House‘s Ash Babb, Steven Hill and Prosthetic Head’s Ben Roberts, who has also worked with Abrasive Trees and Evi Vine. The collective can trace its origins back to a Twitter exchange between Matthew Rochford and Elisabeth Elektra about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, Babb and Roberts visiting Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, a dramatic and awe-inspiring location, where they recorded the collective’s full-length debut, Black Bay. 

Slated for an April 21, 2023 release through Bella Union, Black Bay reportedly is a testament to connectivity and receptivity and captures a union of disparate minds committing to something to something greater than the sum of its individual parts. Capturing the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals, the album ranges between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise rock epics and healing psalms. 

Last month, I wrote about Black Bay‘s first single, “Mother Tongue,” a slow-burning and sprawling song centered around swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures, twinkling reverb-drenched keys, ethereal and plaintive vocals paired with jazz-like drumming. While sounding like a synthesis of A Storm in Heaven and Dark Side of the Moon, the band explains that  “Mother Tongue is a song about women and other marginalized people rising up in the face of oppression.”

Black Bay‘s second and latest single “The Eternal,” is a slow-burning, breathtakingly gorgeous hymn featuring shimmering and looping guitars, twinkling synths, military-like drumming, Elisabeth Elektra’s ethereal and yearning vocal paired with a soaring chorus that arches heavenward. Written by Silver Moth’s Elektra and Vine, the song is simultaneously a tribute to Elektra’s late friend Alanna, an invitation to listen deeply and carefully and a paean to female equality that’s fueled by “the need to reclaim and remember and give voice to those who are silenced,” Evi Vine explains.

Directed by Stuart Alexander, the accompanying video for “The Eternal” is a stunningly cinematic black and white visual, shot on the coast. The video tells an aching and surrealistic tale of life, death and rebirth — seen through its protagonist.

“When director Stuart Alexander and I were discussing the video for The Eternal we kept coming back to idea of the cyclical nature of life,” Silver Moth’s Elisabeth Elektra says in press notes. “When I was writing ‘The Eternal’ it was very soon after my dear friend Alanna had died. Stuart Alexander asked me a lot about Alanna, and felt he really got to know her through our conversations. He then came up with the beautiful idea of a surrealistic interpretation of someone’s life flashing before their eyes, culminating in rebirth. We were really honoured that Kate Dickie was up for playing the lead role in the video as we are all big fans of her work. Kate did an incredible job alongside several other fantastically talented Scottish actors. The weather on shoot day was typically Scottish, wild and unpleasant, but everyone was so up for it, accommodating and positive about the project and the meaning behind it. Which we are all very grateful for. Alanna loved wild and stormy beach weather so I’m certain she was there, amused by the chaos of the shoot. I hope she would have loved the resulting video as much as we do.”

Stuart Alexander adds: “It’s always hard memorializing someone in a video, especially someone as unique as I’m told Alanna was. Wherever she is, I hope she got a laugh watching us trying to film during a storm. Kate Dickie signed herself up for a gruelling shoot with heaps of curiosity and compassion for the subject matter. She’s one of the finest actors alive and a wonderful human being.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Silver Moth Shares Gorgeous “The Eternal”

This week will be extraordinarily as I’ll be covering the fourth edition of The New Colossus Festival this week. Look for various portions of my coverage to be coming within the upcoming weeks — including some potential interviews, live concert photography and other thoughts. But I’ll be trying my best to squeeze in my regular coverage of all things within my world — musically and otherwise.

So let’s get to the business at hand . . .

Silver Moth is new collective featuring a celebrated cast of musicians and artists, including Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite singer/songwriter and electro pop artist Elisabeth Elektra, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Evi Vine, Abrasive Trees‘ Matthew Rochford, Burning House‘s Ash Babb, Steven Hill and Prosthetic Head’s Ben Roberts, who has also worked with Abrasive Trees and Evi Vine. The collective can trace its origins back to a Twitter exchange between Matthew Rochford and Elisabeth Elektra about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, Babb and Roberts visiting Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, a dramatic location, where they recorded the collective’s full-length debut, Black Bay. 

Slated for an April 21, 2023 release through Bella Union, Black Bay reportedly is a testament to connectivity and receptivity and captures a union of disparate minds committing to something to something greater than the sum of its individual parts. Capturing the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals, the album ranges between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise rock epics and healing psalms. 

Last month, I wrote about Black Bay‘s first single, “Mother Tongue,” a slow-burning and sprawling song centered around swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures, twinkling reverb-drenched keys, ethereal and plaintive vocals paired with jazz-like drumming. While sounding like a synthesis of A Storm in Heaven and Dark Side of the Moon, the band explains that  “Mother Tongue is a song about women and other marginalized people rising up in the face of oppression.”

Black Bay‘s second and latest single “Eternal,” is a slow-burning, breathtakingly gorgeous hymn featuring shimmering and looping guitars, twinkling synths, military-like drumming, Elisabeth Elektra’s ethereal and yearning vocal paired with a soaring chorus that arches heavenward. Written by Silver Moth’s Elektra and Vine, the song is simultaneously a tribute to Elektra’s late friend Alanna, an invitation to listen deeply and carefully and a paean to female equality that’s fueled by “the need to reclaim and remember and give voice to those who are silenced,” Evi Vine explains.