There Is No Elsewhere is Haiku Salut’s third album and sees the acclaimed trio from Derbyshire continue their distinctive re-imagining of dreampop and rural electronica. Influenced by the evocative film soundtracks of Yann Tiersen and Benoît Charest, the genre-melting electronica of early Múm, and the impressionistic writing of Haruki Murakami, the band have previously released two critically acclaimed albums whilst last year they collaborated with Public Service Broadcasting on the track “They Gave Me A Lamp”, which featured on the PSB’s top five album, Every Valley. Yet it is this release that sees the band finally find their place, both musically and politically.

“It is an album about occupying your space, being proud of what you believe in and who you are,” says Sophie Barkerwood from the band. “It’s about making small life changes, making better decisions, writing better songs, having better conversations, knowing that these can lay foundations for change. It’s about finding who you are and not being dictated to about what you should be. It’s about celebrating others. It’s about making changes for a better future.”

This sense of solidarity and community prompted Haiku Salut to work with Glastonbury Brass on “Cold To Crack The Stones” and “The More And Moreness”, both of which marry the band’s ambitious interweaving of electronic and organic, natural and unnatural with the triumphant warmth of a brass band in full flow (with the former featuring a manipulation of a NASA recording of pulses emitted by lightning). It also provided the emotional core of the hypnotic electronic attack of “Occupy”, the genre-melting joy of “We Are All Matter”, and the startling “I Am Who I Remind You Of”, a seven minute pastoral symphony that sees treated vocals and glitched electronica blur into tradition, history and a sense of belonging, like waking up to sunshine after a long and dazzling dream.
credits
released September 7, 2018