(WARNING: If you have epilepsy, this video employs the use of constant and repetitive flashes that could be dangerous to watch. )
Lisbon-based electro pop duo Camila Fuchs — Camila De Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini — formed in London back in 2012. With the release of their first two, critically applauded albums, 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung and 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones, the Lisbon-based electro pop duo quickly established their sound and approach: experimental electro pop with spectral vocals and avant-garde sensibilities. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Camila Fuchs have opened for the likes of Plaid, Actress, Aleksi Perälä, Starcrawler, Charles Hayward, William Basinski, BRAIDS and The Orb — and they’ve played sets at festivals like Mutek Mexico, Primavera Sound and All Tomorrow’s Parties.
Last year’s Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom)-produced Kids Talk Sun was recorded near the sea, wilderness and misty, castle-peaked hills of Sintra, just outside of Lisbon. During the recording sessions, the members of the acclaimed Lisbon-based duo shifted back and forth between the wilderness and the studio. And as a result, the album’s nine songs thematically is an abstract meditation on childhood that touches upon the exchanges between humans and humans and nature. Imbued with a youthful sense of light and wonder, Kids Talk Sun sonically finds the duo sonically reimagining natural phenomena in sonic form.
Kids Talk Sun’s latest single “Mess” is a mesmerizing yet uneasy track, centered around brooding and atmospheric electronics, crunchy and skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically the song may draw some comparisons to Bjork, it manages to evoke the sensation of something creeping from out the shadows, of a slow-burning anxious dread that you can’t quite put a finger on.
“‘Mess’ brings the shadows. It’s the lonely place from where to watch. A social heartbreak where one doesn’t fit in and is always shifting trying to find connections,” the Lisbon-based electro pop duo explain in press notes. “It’s about the lack of communication and the possible void that it can create. It’s about language as the way to get to know each other. It’s such a precise tool. If we don’t use it, are we truly getting to know each other? ‘Love is where we go first with the word but it’s not just about something light and happy and pleasurable. The word calls us deep, deep responsibilities,’ said Elizabeth Alexander. This song is about a place where we’ve all been. It welcomes the sharing, the questioning, the urge and nature of talking, it’s about being open to actively get to know each other.”
Directed by Camia Fuchs’ Camila De Laborde and her sister Manueal De Laborde is an equally brooding and uneasy visual, featuring the duo holding weirdly shaped cut outs in rapidly flashing strobe light, split with footage of the duo standing in front of a plain brick wall. Of course, as the duo move through the flashing strobes, they move about it in a slow motion.