Amongster relaese new single and album

After their debut ‘Trust Yourself To The Water’ (2016), recorded by producer Jasper Maekelberg, Thomas Oosterlynck focuses his vision on the second chapter of his dreamy alias Amongster. The 2014 winner of Studio Brussel’s contest ‘De Nieuwe Lichting’ presents 10 intuitive new songs with his second album ‘A New Arrival’. The smooth haunting voice remains up front in the mix but ‘there’s’ less synths and more guitars on the new album. Oosterlynck also has fallen in love with horns. The indie pop by Amongster sounds less rational in 2019, but more organic and more timeless. His sources of inspiration? Iron & Wine (basic influence), Andy Shauf, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, the refined approach of Sufjan Stevens and -noblesse oblige- "the nice tinkering" (of the band) of a lad called Thom Yorke.

The first single is also the titel track of the album. It explains a feeling, or a state of mind that he sometimes gets thrown into. It’s a place of peak creativity, of endless optimism, where ideas just flow out of him, where he seems to have energy to take on the world. Every now and then he falls into this state for a short while, mostly it's unannounced and you can't look for it.

'A New Arrival' is a dynamically layered, tasteful, balanced record with hopeful, thoughtful, light and warm-hearted aspects. The same melancholic predilection for pure aesthetics is also seen in the cover, a creation by visual artist Sammy Slabbinck (Leonard Cohen, Nordmann).

Thomas writes his songs at home while recording them. The lofi approach and a detailed ear for (programmed) bleeps, layers and clicks unmistakably define the DNA of Amongster's music. To add extra dynamics to the album, producer Reinhard Vanbergen (Das Pop, The Happy) was involved in the mixing of the original takes.

Thanks to 'A New Arrival', Oosterlynck has become a better lyricist. The human psyche is his thing and the lyrics of the new album are situated on the crossroads of philosophy and psychology. Abstract ideas (self-determination, the death, self-deception, marvel, the limits of knowledge) and inspring ideas of writers/philosophes/psychotherapists (Nietzsche, Kant, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Yuval Noah Harari) find their way to ‘A New Arrival’.