Emerging alt collective Silt. announce debut EP 'brain like a silent hill', share new single 'shadowhands'

Emerging alt collective silt. today announce their debut EP 'brain like a silent hill', out 13th November, and share the EP's second taste, new single 'shadowhands'.

Arriving last month, silt.'s debut track 'trauma porn' immediately drew praise from Stereogum - who called it "eerie and gripping and intriguing" - alongside further support from Rolling Stone UK, NME, The Line of Best Fit, So Young, BrooklynVegan and more.

Existing between London and the inherited landscapes of the Lake District and Norfolk, silt. is an evolving collective led by songwriter and vocalist Oliver Beardmore, alongside his sister Alice on bass and violin, with a shifting cast of musicians and collaborators drawn from different musical worlds. Neither traditional band nor solo alias, the project allows each song to dictate who - and what - occupies the foreground.

On 'shadowhands', silt. pushes into something darker and more visceral than debut single 'trauma porn'. Acoustic guitars thread through a low electronic thrum, with Oliver's vocal carrying an unnervingly clean melody through the instrumental which darkens and distorts around it. That experimental instinct sees silt. pull from electronic music, witch-house and pop production as readily as alternative guitar music.

Lyrically, 'shadowhands' centres on what Oliver calls "nowhere time" - the space between emotional highs, when the search for the next moment of relief becomes a cycle of its own.

On 'shadowhands', Oliver said:

"'shadowhands’ is about surrender into destructive internal states. Nothing can be taken if there’s nothing to take. Emotionally immobilised states, so separate from life and from yourself, observing but not participating in living. To the point you’re looking for signs from God in your cereal, and this pursuit of meaning is an act of further hiding from yourself - the obsessive and paranoid pursuit of dead ends. It's a result of living like a character rather than a human - chasing the action sequences and supercuts without acknowledging the reality that exists between those moments."

Treating songs as "open systems", silt. uses recurring imagery, shifting perspectives and radically different textures across forthcoming EP 'brain like a silent hill' to revisit the same questions from different angles - with producer Matt Glasbey (Sorry, Bloc Party) integral to shaping the project's sonic palette from its earliest stages.

Named after the sediment from which landscapes are formed - what silt. describes as "what everything is built on" and "what remains after everything is gone" - the music explores the realities people build to escape themselves, the traces they leave behind, and the collision between natural imagery and synthetic modern life.

silt.'s debut EP 'brain like a silent hill' is out 13th November via Forge: Music / LAB Records. New single 'shadowhands' is out now.

'brain like a silent hill' EP artwork & track list

1. brain like a silent hill

2. wisp

3. trauma porn

4. shadowhands

5. frozen over fountain