Beloved UK project, Saint Etienne return with an experimental ambient release to round-off [PIAS] releases for 2024. The Night is a calming body of work that brings a soothing, escapist energy to the table. Announced with the first single, “Half Light”, the new album was produced by Saint Etienne in collaboration with composer and producer Augustin Bousfield. Sonically, the new record delivers an ambient escape from the chaos of daily life, capturing the essence of the after-hours.
Pete Wiggs says: “It was great to all be in the same studio together again up at Gus’s in Bradford, we realized that it had been several years since we’d actually done that, sprawling out on the carpet, mugs of coffee in hand, sheets of lyrics and half ideas for titles lying around us.
“We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; Songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed.
“Half Light is about the edge of night, the last rays of the sun flickering through the branches of trees, communing with nature and seeing things that might not be there.”
Sarah Cracknell says: “It was so good to be back in the studio together after recording the last album remotely. One of my favorite songs on the record is Preflyte, it made me cry when I sang it for the first time.”
Bob Stanley says: “We wanted The Night to be a calming album, warm and serene, but at the same time we wanted to create something gorgeous and dense.
“We were trying to find the state that’s between being awake and asleep, that dream space, with half forgotten thoughts drifting in, bits of TV dialogue, place names, streets, or football grounds you’ve never even been to. You feel very receptive to sound and half-covered memories when you’re in that state.
“Rain noise runs right through it. It was designed to gently wash away the stuff in your head that keeps you awake at 2am.
“I think The Night sounds really three-dimensional. A lot of that is down to Gus Bousfield who played the guitars and did a wonderful production job. Recording it in his studio, with so much light and space, has helped to shape it too. The three of us brought in our own songs, but lyrically we were all in tune with each other without having to swap notes first.
“You could think of it as one continuous, single track. It’s definitely a headphone album.”
The album’s sleeve notes are penned by award-winning author Benjamin Myers who says:
“Saint Etienne take us gently by the hand, to sink deep down through the layers of the after-hours and pull tired minds back from the brink of despair. With The Night all anxieties abate, the wickedness of a quickening mind is slowed to a soft-focus smear, and everything takes on a lofty and agreeable appeal of utter tranquility.
The Night belongs to a long tradition that begins in the pre-times with one man finding solace in the sound of the wind in the grass or water running over rock, then strolls on through centuries of softening sounds, passing through collage and the music of the new age.
It takes in contemporary somnambulist masterpieces such as Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, the KLF’s Chill Out and Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden. Its architecture is ambient, its lighting low, its surfaces gleaming with infinite possibility. All nocturnal life is to be found here, but though in the basement of the night the dimensions are different. Words take on new meaning, shadows lean ever longer and a lone fox pauses beneath a solitary streetlight on a nameless street, something snatched and held between its beautiful, bladed teeth. Out here anything is possible.
Hectic times breed hectic minds but here there is no such thing as a lonely hour, just the many laminated layers of The Night and all the soothing secrets that lie within.
So easy does it. Slip on in. And breathe.”
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