ORBURY COMMON exists as a place in the musical imagination of Emlyn Bainbridge and Josh Day-Jones: an opalescent, dream-like otherworld of fogged memory and refracted mythology.
Having explored the frenzied nightlife of this place with The Traditional Dance of Orbury Common EP (PRAH Recordings, 2022), the Bristol / Stroud duo now announce details of their debut album: Sylvan Chute will be released 7th June on PRAH, a panoramic overview of the world they have envisioned, a series of individual yet interwoven vignettes, a musical map of abstract melodramas.
Departing from the distorted club pulses of Traditional Dance…, we now hear subverted pop songs and surreal ballads, wherein earthy (and unearthly) synths, deformed samples and mangled drum beats coalesce with and ensemble of zithers, flutes, organs and guitars.
Orbury Common’s shift in sound is most notably emphasised by the introduction of the pair’s vocals, placed at the heart of arrangements; bringing a new, animate and intimate life to their dreamscape. The songs’ subject matters stretch from chrome-coated medieval fables through to depraved landscapes and even to technologically ill-fated romance. There are moments of light, darkness, grandeur and tenderness, tethered together by an iridescent thread of yearning for something, someone or someplace.