POLARIS are primed to return to Australian stages, today announcing a massive regional tour this June …
Straight off the back of their appearances at Good Things Festival, While She Sleeps wrap the year up with one more single off of their forthcoming LP, Self Hell due out on March 29th.
MORE: NOFX: Fat Mike and his Eternal Footwaer Gratitude REVIEWS: CLOWNS: ENDLESS // BLINK-182: One More Time… // POPPY: Zig // MAGNOLIA PARK: Halloween Mixtape II // LUNE: The Change Around Us & The Change In You // PINCER+: Hunting God Tapes, Vol. 2: Romance
Down also features an insane guest vocal from fellow Sheffield musician, Alex Taylor from Malevolence.
The new single is an embodiment of the whole While She Sleeps DIY ethos, having been curated, edited and self-directed by band members Mat Welsh and Aaran McKenzie. In a recent catch up with Lawrence ‘Loz’ Taylor and Aaran Mckenzie, Mckenzie opened up about his hobby when he isn’t fronting bass for Sleeps. The man is quite the fiend and dynamo behind the camera, having worked on the recent Self Hell video and Eye to Eye as well:
“We don’t make things easy for ourselves. We could hand things off and get the video shot by somebody else. But I think we always try and give ourselves the opportunity to grow and get better at better at our craft. We’re all a bit of a hodgepodge of different skill sets and we like to utilize that within Sleeps. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. I’m always very involved with our videos in some aspect, whether it’s full on filming them or editing certain bits, or maybe just being second unit camera. But yeah, I’ll probably always have my finger firmly in that pie.”
As highlighted in the opening clips of Down that are visually portrayed by flipping the pages of a book, much of While She Sleeps is self-funded and for a band of their stature, it is highly appraised. Keeping things close to home for the upcoming record, the boys have also swayed back to music producer Carl Bown:
“It’s like, if it’s not broken, you don’t fix it. Carl’s a great guy. He understands the band, and all our little quirks and strangeness. We love working with Carl and he is pretty close to Sheffield, so not too far. It just works really well. He’s worked on a lot of amazing records recently. He’s worked on the new Sleep Token stuff as well.” Loz Taylor
It’s gotta be an exciting time in the studio for Bown, who did the last few Sleeps albums (Sleeps Society and SO WHAT?), and we wonder if he had any challenges in getting the band to think outside the box. According to Loz, it was quite the opposite:
“I think in terms of, pushing fresh ideas, we kind of keep him on his toes. Every time we turn up with a new bunch of material to record it never sounds too similar to stuff that we’ve done in the past. We always want to push our limits and try new things, and I think that’s the same with this record. He’s always kind of surprised to hear what’s next in While She Sleeps and like, he’s into it. He gets involved, he sees that natural progression taking hold and he’s just like, a great guy to work with. I don’t necessarily think he has to bring us out of our comfort zone as such, because we’re always pushing to get outside of our own sort of genres and stuff like that. So it’s a good relationship.”
Following Down’s release, While She Sleeps will reveal their next full-length, Self Hell on March 29th, 2024.
Pre-order here
