Grasscut :: Overwinter (Lo Recordings)

Grasscut, the Brighton-based duo release their first new music in over five years. “Return Of The Sun,” available digitally via all major outlets, is the lead single from a new album, Overwinter, due in February 2021 on Lo Recordings. As of February 12, the new video for “The Branches of the Tree” is also available to view.

Emerged from daytime & nocturnal walks around the city

[Press Release] Grasscut, the Brighton-based duo release their first new music in over five years. “Return Of The Sun,” available digitally via all major outlets, is the lead single from a new album, Overwinter, due in February 2021 on Lo Recordings.

Video update :: “The Branches of the Tree” — Notes from the artist: “This was a bit of a guerilla lockdown video, made very quickly: I was taking a tape machine for repair on a remote farm in the South Downs, and on the way out spotted a huge dilapidated greenhouse full of overgrown plants and branches growing out through the broken glass. I snuck in with my Go Pro, and slipped away before anyone yelled at me. The underwater plant footage was in the Rhinog mountains last summer. The night time and dawn footage was in the freezing cold in Brighton. Staggering to see people were still sleeping rough on the seafront. I edited it with a heavy dreamlike grade.” ~ Andrew Phillips

Like the other songs that make up the long player, “Return of the Sun” emerged from daytime and nocturnal walks around the city last winter. It was inspired by conversations with people sleeping rough on the seafront, in parks and around new luxury apartment developments. Everyone was trying to get through a bleak period: overwintering. Yet, in the slowly unfolding melody and hypnotic bass clarinet, coupled with intense strings courtesy of the Moscow Bow Tie Orchestra, there is hope in the dark.

The single is accompanied by a video (available Dec 19) that expresses the song’s sense of confinement and keeping going through dark times—but also the possibility of release. Shot and edited at home mostly during lockdown, the film tracks over a pianola roll, dissolving into sequences of sunlight through the windows, light piercing the darkness in tunnels, and 16mm film of birds and insects.

Grasscut is Emmy winning and BAFTA nominated composer/producer Andrew Phillips, and manager/musician Marcus O’Dair. Their set-up is unusual, but works due to an enduring friendship and shared worldview. Phillips writes words and music, sings, records and produces. O’Dair is manager-from-within, also wielding a Juno 60 and occasionally a double bass.

Overwinter follows Everyone Was A Bird (2015), also on Lo Recordings, and two albums on Ninja Tune; 1 Inch: ½ Mile (2010) and Unearth (2012). All three releases have been critically acclaimed, with 6 Music’s Tom Robinson naming their debut one of his top 13 albums of all time. They’ve also picked up praise and airplay from BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 5Live, 6Music and XFM. Grasscut’s music has been used in dramas such as The New Pope and Continuum and across UK and international TV channels. Grasscut have collaborated with musicians including Robert Wyatt (O’Dair wrote Wyatt’s authorized biography in 2014), John Surman, Kronos Quartet, Gazelle Twin, Seb Rochford of Polar Bear, members of the Elysian Quartet, and BAFTA-winning film director Daniel Vernon. Since opening the main stage at the Big Chill in 2009, they have played extensively in Europe, at venues including the Pompidou Centre, as well as at the Royal Albert Hall, ICA, Koko and Tate Britain.

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