Advance Base, the long-term project fronted by Owen Ashworth, have announced a new album. A frightening event Arrived on December 6th Run and hide. First single, “A Year in Richmond”is out now and can be listened to below.
Ashworth explains the new single: “I never lived in a place called Richmond. ‘The Year I Lived in Richmond’ is my memory of a series of violent crimes that occurred in the city where I lived briefly in the early 2000s. (Hint: it rhymes with Richmond.) No internet searches or conversations with old friends from that period could corroborate the events. Maybe I dreamed it all up. I really don’t know. Over time, the events became a kind of personal mystery, and that mystery became the song. The song took on a life of its own, a fiction more vivid than my hazy memories, with its own specific details and fictitious names. I’ve been living with some version of this song in my head for over 20 years, and I feel like the time is finally right to share it with you all.”
Commenting on the accompanying video, Ashworth said:
I became friends with the painter Aaron Seward about 15 years ago when his old band (I Know I Have No Collar) and my old band (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) played the first of several shows together in Aaron’s hometown of Bristol, England. Aaron painted a beautiful watercolor poster for our show. Fast forward a few years, Aaron has moved to Japan and I’ve moved to the suburbs, but thanks to Instagram, I continue to admire Aaron’s watercolors from afar. A few years ago, I asked Aaron to paint the Little Sable Point Lighthouse, a lighthouse in Michigan that I wrote about in a song for Advance Base (on the new album). Along with the lighthouse painting, Aaron sent me a short animation of the painting in progress, which looked magical to me. I asked Aaron to make a full animated landscape music video for “The Year I Lived in Richmond.” I loved the nostalgic feel of his landscape paintings and how they evoke fond yet dreamy memories. Aaron, like me, was fascinated with the Midwest. His landscape paintings seemed the perfect fit for a song about a middle-American town that only exists in our imagination. Aaron and I discussed each scene depicted in the lyrics and sent him reference photos I had taken around my home in Oak Park, Illinois. Through the filter of Aaron’s watercolors, each image becomes a concrete location in the vague nowhereness of Richmond, the fictional American town I describe in my lyrics. The paintings become the narrator’s memories, coming into focus for a moment before fading again.
A frightening event In 2018 Interacting with animals Ashworth’s 2021 cover album Wall of Tears & other songs I didn’t write.
A frightening event Cover artwork:
A frightening event Track listing:
1. A Year in Richmond
2. The Tooth Fairy
3. Big Chris Electric
4. How to hang pictures on the wall
5. Rene Goodnight
6. The Story of the Rabbit in the Snow
7. Brian’s Golden Hour
8. Little Sable Point Lighthouse
9. Andrew and Megan
10. Premonition
11. Richmond
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
