Brooklyn quartet Lathe of Heaven felt like a natural fit for the Sacred Bones roster when their debut album of post-punk and coldwave filtered through a gothic-rock aesthetic neatly aligned with the label’s back catalog of vintage-y recordings by artists like Lust for Youth, Molchat Doma, and Iceage offshoot Vår. Today they’re back with news of a follow-up to 2023’s Bound by Naked Skies, with Aurora landing August 29. The lead single and title track maintains the band’s sonic allegiance to various ’80s subgenres between rock and electronic music in spite of basing its lyrical subject matter on Arthur C. Clarke’s 1951 post-apocalyptic short story “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth” (the band title, for that matter, comes from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel from 1971)
“In the story, a man and his son take a trip from their colony on the moon to a lookout point where Earth (long abandoned due to nuclear war) can be seen rising across the vast gulf of space,” shares band leader Gage Allison of the shimmering, deceptively upbeat tune. “Playing with this concept, I took a more personal and romantic approach, exploring similar themes of loss, love, and devotion at the end of the world.”
The video for the track is equally split between two eras of Cold War tensions, invoking as it does the eerie sci-fi of Chris Marker and that weird helmet from Videodrome that James Woods was famously too scared to wear. “I set out to create a visual that could expand upon the song, and extend beyond it into a cinematic experience for the whole record,” filmmaker Devan Davies explains. “The aesthetics of Blade Runner, THX-1138, and Tarkovsky were mutual inspirations between the band and myself. I specifically latched onto La Jetée by Chris Marker as guidance in many ways. The passion and sense of longing I felt upon first listen carved the path for me. I wanted to stay grounded in that emotional core, and not worry about a complicated narrative.”
Check out the video below, and pre-order Aurora here.
