Having explored the present moment of existential crisis in their last album Pink Air, for their newest work Elysian Fields looks centuries into the past, and towards faraway foreign lands. Transience of Life, a concept album drawn from the venerable Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, places the listener in an unreal dreamscape of electroacoustic atmospheres, punctuated by passages of their own patented brand of melodic noir rock, painting haunted scenes from a fairy tale of destiny and loss which is also a keen-eyed social document whose themes of dislocation and disempowerment still resonate in the urgent problems of today.
Master producer, and longtime Elysian Fields collaborator Thomas Bartlett (St. Vincent, Yoko Ono, Bebel Gilberto) steered the sessions, playing, programming and incorporating performances from drummer Sam Levin.[info sheet from distr.]