Wear your wreaths of funerary cypress and climb aboard the moon chariot. The new arcadia by Mothlite is upon us and it is a Dark Age indeed. A blood and milk soaked battleground where the only territory concerned is that of the heart. Clothed and coiled in Ian Johnstone's hospital of bone and capil lary inside lies a pop record of gargantuan proportions.
Recalling the deepest remnants of 80's sounds (YMO, Talk Talk, Japan, Cocteau Twins) and fusing it with an innovative, forward-thinking approach to programming and manipulation, Mothlite transcend any obvious reference point and follow a most novel path of paradoxes. Love, death, death of love, self-loathing, megalomania. All dipped in a thick treacly molasses of ecstatic melody.
Mothlite is the burden of Daniel O’Sullivan. The London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist known for subterranean exploits under various occult mediums (Ulver, Sunn O))), Guapo, Æthenor, Miracle, Grumbling Fur) has come out of the shadows to bask in light. O’Sullivan and his fellow moths create grandiose gothic-pop euphoria closer to the world at large whilst retaining a grasp on subliminally progressive musical depth. The follow-up to 2008’s ‘Flax of Reverie’ (Southern Records), ‘an album propelling listeners down the rabbit hole into a world of wilderness and weird that is at once English and entirely other’ is entitled ‘Dark Age’. An illustrious collection of future-music contrasting Flax’s outward looking homage to nature and focusing inwardly towards matters of the heart. Like the Jjohn Balance lyric that inspired it, this is the ‘Dark Age of Love’, documenting the physical and metaphysical aspects of secrecy and subterfuge. O’Sullivan’s voice has transgressed from an instrumental augmentation to a formidable lyrical presence, documenting the fetishes and paradoxes of love and loss.
Drawing on the cloistered, impressionistic "Englishness" of Talk Talk and Tears For Fears combined with the stately pop melancholy of Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush, Mothlite gaze into a future of epic proportions. Influences are accessed without contrivance and are reassembled in an incendiary mixture of authenticity. O’Sullivan’s songwriting collaborations with The Big Pink and Ulver are apparent in Mothlite’s keen sense of production and lush atmospheric arrangements.
