VNV Nation has always merged poetic, thoughtful lyrics with a vast repertoire of melodic dance beats, anthemic electronic haunting ballads and post-classical soundtrack pieces. Now, this legendary act returns with the brilliant new album Electric Sun, combining the intimate and anthemic as only VNV Nation can.
Today, Metropolis Records releases Electric Sun on a very limited edition 2 LP clear vinyl edition along with a 16-page booklet digipak compact disc as well as through all digital and streaming platforms.
Words on the new album from the VNV Nation website.
Making this album was a different affair from the usual. I’d been building a new studio from the end of 2019, which the “Lost Years” turned into a frustratingly slow process. I focused instead on everything close to home. Starting work on another album had to wait until the right time, when the feeling was there. VNV Nation and the label are a solo endeavour so I used the time to change a lot about the label and how I work, which was time well spent. I moved distributors for physical and digital and was incredibly lucky to meet some great new people to work with. But.. If you’ve been paying attention these last years to how I write, you will know that ideas for songs, melodies, designs and more always appear in my head when I’m doing anything and everything except thinking about writing music, coordinating and cleaning up a never-ending building site, cabling, discussing contracts or doing accounting are particularly productive. Whenever I had an idea, I’d make voice notes, record the screen on my phone while playing a synth app, add to a pile of paper scribbles or, if I was in the office, sketch out a very basic demo in some music software. Demos started to evolve in 2021, as well as the ideas for impossible orchestrations.
When I got around to sitting down and thinking of Electric Sun as a concept, I found myself living in a different world from the one I’d left in 2019. The album is the product of change and reflection, love, loss, toil, not-toil, learning and a pinch of soul-searching. I described it to my friend as the impressions left on me, these last years, left by what is right in front of everyone’s face but always seem to be missed. What’s truly important and how superficial everything had been were there in technicolor.
Electric Sun resonates deeply with me. There have been revelations and epiphanies in its making. There are sides to it where I’ve expressed things in ways I hadn’t until now. It’s allowed me to explore and reach new levels in the kind of music I make. I said on stage a few times that the next one would be darker. It was more a feeling than a conscious choice. Now, I don’t mean darker in an “alone in a concrete cellar at 2am on a Saturday” or my hunchback brother fell down a well and now I’m sad” kind of way. You don’t plan creativity but you can curate and guide it. You are a vessel for it and, if you’re like me, you let it do its thing. It’s not the tools themselves but what they enable you to do I find this album to be more emotive than usual, at times reaching some intensity. A lot was waiting to come out, I guess. I think you’ll understand what I mean once you’ve heard it. From the title track “Electric Sun” to songs like “Prophet”, “Run”, “Sunflare” and “At Horizon’s End”, there’s a cinematic-size scale to what I’ve made here. If you want, the album will make you dance, or ask you to think or make you smile and, at times, it might well put dust in your eye. I find it hard to grasp what I’ve achieved on this and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Sincerely,
Ronan Harris
Photo by Arne Beschorner
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