Incarnation, reincarnation…or a bit of both?
We all like to levitate, to wander in our thoughts, to imagine ourselves in the shoes of another person or animal.
We live in pursuit of our dreams and our achievements. To achieve them, we have to grow up, look back and imagine the future we wanted so much.
And how beautiful it is when we are reborn: when that feeling of presence is back, that life makes sense – that we have been reincarnated in that goal we wanted so much.
Music is a bit like that: with each listen, we’re in another world, another dimension – and it’s the artists who create it.
Yes, let’s elevate the artist to a creator of Worlds, almost as if he were a God: because while we are listening to his imagination, we are teleported to wherever the artist takes us.
And that’s the motto for The Number Red. Check out their first album, The Purple Light.
The Purple Light
England, Germany, Spain. Yes, these are European countries, but what connection do they have to the band from London?
The answer seems simple, but it’s a base of inspiration, confidence, culture and irreverence: we’re talking about the key points where the band was created (London, UK), where ideas came out of improvisation during the night (Berlin, Germany) and also the place where other songs, ideas and analogue sessions were developed (Madrid, Spain).
All this makes up The Number Red: an indie-rock band that mixes rock with indie, indie with punk, funk, whatever you want to call it.
From Europe to endless space, we are eloquently projected to clear inspirations such as Nick Drake, Young Fathers, Big Thief, Massive Attack, HIDE, Dry Cleaning, Franz Ferdinand and so many other successful bands.
And today we fly to The Purple Light, the British band’s first album. This journey is made up of 9 songs of pure pleasure, separated by 43 minutes.
Between spirituality and our transformation to a complete and full state, we raise our pedestal to the comfort of “Siddharta”, reminiscent of the novel by the German writer Hermann Hesse of the same name, which inspired the British group Yes to write Closer to the Edge. Between a calm, almost acoustic instrumental and a melancholic voice, we feel free, loose and carefree with our lives: if tranquillity can be described with a melody, this is a firm proposal for such a statement.
From the fullness, an enormous warmth grows inside us that we can’t escape – and that’s when we move on to “Can’t Hide From The Heat” and “Ever Look Back”, two rich melodies that make Alex Kapranos and his iconic voice blush. We can’t stop listening. Everything is just right in these musical excerpts.
Permission to launch: and off we fly into space. “Up In The Space” denotes the disc’s transition between love, peace, tranquillity and happiness. We’re changing our lives – and The Number Red are there to soundtrack our feelings. Between dreamy guitar riffs and eloquent drums in the background, we fly to another dimension, as if closing a chapter.
As we fly away, we grow in time to the guitars and the instrumental phase, where rebellion, madness and irreverence take hold of the band. We’re talking about “Your Love Is A Gateway Drug” and “The Sixteenth Day” – and it’s this kind of drug that we want to hear as if we were listening to a way of staying alive.
In record time we’ve closed our eyes to this journey, but it’s still important to mention “The Loner”, “When I Had Eyes” and “Beautiful Human”, an epic culmination of this trip where jazz, words and pure, hard instrumental (as if we were in a film) come to the surface.
This epic journey doesn’t end here. We spoke to the band for a while and they revealed some of their secrets:
[WtMM] Who is The Number Red and how did the project come along?
[The Number Red] The Number Red are an ever evolving incarnation and independent music collective. Their sound comprises of elements from the alternative genre. However, they also draw upon influences from 60s folk, 80s indie, soul, psychedelic and dream/synth pop.
The Purple Light is a very different album from what we are used to listen. What secrets can you tell us about the creation of it?
Thank you! The secrets are all connected to an old 70s drum machine, as pretty much every song started its life via this machine. The spirits living in the drum machine seemed to inform the direction of the songs 🙂 Especially due to the machine being old, it was actually out of time and all of the tempos were a little bit ”off” and out of sync. Therefore, it creates slightly disturbed backing tracks, which we then used to paint over like a canvas, hopefully bringing some light to its darkness.
What are your biggest inspirations?
Soul music. Literally, soul music itself (even though our music doesn’t sound like it at all) but also anything that has the essence of real soul in it, regardless of the genre.
With whom would you love to collaborate and why?
It would have been Mazzy Star. With Mazzy Star, Hope Sandoval and the late David Roback were literally able to create new human emotions and transmit them via sound. It’s the band we always come back to.
What are you listening to nowadays?
In no particular order: Robbie Basho, Aldous Harding, Nick Drake, Young Fathers, Jungle, Sleaford Mods, Portishead, Big Thief, Galaxie 500, Indian Ocean, Massive Attack, Marvin Gaye, Dry Cleaning, Sun Ra.
In one word, how would you describe the project?
Discovery.
The purple light is real – and it’s painted with a red number: the British band is fresh, irreverent and beautiful. We feel they have everything it takes to shine in the near future – and we’ll be here to applaud them. A WtMM recommendation.
More on The Number Red:
Instagram – Twitter – Bandcamp – Youtube – Spotify
Listen to the full album: