With the release of their self-titled full-length debut, the Copenhagen, Denmark-based duo Reptile Youth, comprised of Mads Damsgaard Kristiansen and Esben Valloe, received critical praise international from the likes of Spin Magazine and Nylon for a sound that critics favorably compared to The Rapture and Radio 4. 

After a rather intense period of touring to support their debut effort and its follow-up Rivers That Run For A Sea That Is Gone, Mads Damsgaard Kristiansen had the urge to escape for a few months of sun, leisure, and writing in Los Angeles  – and the result was the duo’s recently released Away EP.  “Away,” the EP’s first single and title single, may arguably be the Danish duo’s sunniest and breeziest to date, as the song consists of four-on-the-floor drumming, twinkling keyboards, swirling, ambient electronics, and subtly buzzing guitar and Kristiansen’s ethereal and plaintive falsetto. And although Kristiansen is singing lyrics that express the desire to get up and get away to someplace, anyplace better than where you are, just underneath the surface there’s an extremely subtle sense of menace, as though wherever the narrator wants to take you may well be the last place you’ll ever see again. 

The official video was shot on 35 mm film, which gives the video an incredibly cinematic quality, and is reportedly a tribute to Spike Jonze, although it channels French arthouse films as its primary subject talks about candidly on his ennui, dissociation but spliced with scenes of the video’s subject goofing off and hanging out in downtown L.A. and it’s surrounding areas. It captures and evokes the surreal and absurd quality of a place where you can run into a Batman impersonator, who takes himself way too seriously and follow that up with a Superman impersonator, who happily dances with you because he picks up on the joke, and someplace where you can drive to gloriously pristine nature or to a beach to soak up rays and surf. And in some way, it all makes a kind of sense.