Tag: Total Fucking Darkness Beaten to Write

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Yearning, Pop Gem “This Is The Last Time”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Over the past 18 months or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” “Horizontal Rain” and “Beaten to Write.” Their latest single “This Is The Last Time” is glistening sophistipop-meets-80s New Wave-meets New Order-like tune anchored around what may arguably be the most melodic and the most earnest and achingly oversized yearning song of the trio’s growing catalog.

Sonically, “This Is The Last Time” sees the JOVM mainstays looking backward to move forward. Campbell, Ramsey and McFall have had a long-held obsession with late 1980s and early 1990s electronic music, and the new single pushes that fixation towards its biggest pop-leaning instincts. There aren’t software shortcuts hiding beneath the surface either. “No plug-ins, anywhere. This track is all analog, baby.”

When asked what inspired it, Total Fucking Darkness’ Stephen Ramsey offers a characteristically economic answer, “New Order.”

“This Is The Last Time” arrived with similarly little ceremony. Ramsay had barely made it through the instrumental once before Torquil Campbell had the lyrics ready. “It may as well be called ‘Real Time’ because Torq wrote this in real time,” Ramsay explains. “By the time I played him the instrumental once, he had written the lyrics.”

“‘This Is The Last Time” is about the point where letting go becomes forward motion, following whatever dream remains, committing to it completely, and accepting that the only sensible response to uncertainty is to set your heart on fire — and see what survives.

“Every band says their latest music is the best thing they’ve ever done,”the band’s Stephen Ramsay says. “It’s obviously cliché at this point and therefore categorically untrue in almost all cases, but I’m telling you, this is the best song we’ve written.”

The accompanying video features edited footage from some movie that follows two dogs, who are in love. It’s adorable.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Deceptively Upbeat “Beaten to Write”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Over the past year or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including four that I’ve written about, “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” and “Horizontal Rain.”  

The trio’s latest single, “Beaten to Write” is a world weary tune paired with a deceptively bright, playful and hook-driven production that seemingly channels mid 80s New Order. Anchored around a relentless motorik pulse, the song is perfectly designed for getting your energy up for another day of drudgery at a soul-sucking day job. And its core, the song seems to suggest that as adults, we have to find ways to accept and deal with drudgery and bullshit, and then push past it — as much as possible.

Continuing the visual approach of its immediate predecessor, the accompanying visualizer/video for “Beaten to Write” features a masked man in a hoodie dancing and shadow boxing an abandoned factory space, with glitchy imagery projected around him.