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Feb 26, 2019 By Stephen Axeman Idlewild

Scottish indie rockers Idlewild have returned with a disorienting and strangely pacifying new video for “Dream Variations,” the lead single off of their forthcoming album, Interview Music, and we are pleased to premiere it. The track is a slowly mutating anthem full of cosmic ambience that blends a chiming symphonic hook with spacey atmospherics. The video mirrors the sound as a tour through arcane religious and naturalistic symbolism that features an interesting collage of cut out images and digital graphics. Interview Music is due out April 5 via Empty Words and “Dream Variations” was previously our #2 Song of the Week. Check out the video and their upcoming tour dates below.

On the making of the video, the band collectively had this to say: “We asked a video artist friend of ours, Nicholas Munro, if he would put us together a video for ‘Dream Variations.’ We gave him free reign to interpret the song any way he wanted and this is the result.”

Munro had this to say: “The video was led by the lyrics which are interestingly very clean and clear but equally almost impenetrable in meaning which to me really well illustrated the in between place you experience in dreams. I was aiming to try and reach that feeling of uncertainty in the familiar and the tears in the seams. I wanted to work on the band’s everyday but extract the abnormal from it…so we decided to use their phone pics and videos and just see what happened.”

This February, Idlewild unexpectedly reappeared by quietly sending out notification of a new album to mailing list recipients. Interview Music marks the bands’ first output since their seventh studio album, Everything Ever Written, from 2015. The writing for this latest album started almost immediately after the release of Everything Ever Written and found the band split between Los Angeles and the Scottish Highlands.

Idlewild made their mark with their second and third albums, 2000’s 100 Broken Windows and 2002’s The Remote Part (which debuted at #3 on the UK album charts). The band went on to release three more albums before taking a break in 2010. In 2015 Idlewild returned with some fresh members and Everything Ever Written. Founding members Roddy Woomble (vocals), Rod Jones (guitar), and Colin Newton (drums) were joined by Luciano Rossi (keyboards) and Andrew Mitchell (bass) in 2014 and that’s also the lineup that made Interview Music.

“A lot of the songs are about dreams and dreaming and the thoughts and ideas that come from this state,” said Woomble in a previous press release announcing Interview Music. “I live in the Scottish Highlands, and between there and California you’ve got two locations that can put you in a dream like state - driving down Sunset Boulevard as the sun sets or driving over the remote Ardnamurchan peninsula as the sun rises. The world seems unreal, magical. You’re dreaming through a landscape.”

Dave Eringa, who produced 100 Broken Windows and The Remote Part, later reunited with the band to finish up the album. “Dave produced five songs on the album, but also brought a focus back to the band, and actually made us finish it!” said Woomble in the press release. “He made it sound like us.”

At the end of the previous press release, Woomble summed up where the band is at now: “What’s really important about Idlewild is that we are basically punk rock kids. No one ever taught us how to play anything. We formed a band and we learned. In our own way. We were inspired by the bands we saw just getting up on stage, making a noise and exchanging ideas, and trying to change your ideas. That’s principally what the band still do. I’m not a kid rolling around screaming into a microphone on the floor anymore, but that ideal is still at our core.”

Idlewild Tour Dates:

19th April - Grand Central Hall - Liverpool
20th April - Anson Rooms - Bristol
22nd April - Phoenix - Exeter
23rd April - Engine Rooms - Southampton
25th April - Beckett Uni - Leeds
26th April - o2 Forum - London
28th April - o2 Institute - Birmingham
29th April - o2 Ritz - Manchester
30th April - Waterfront - Norwich
1st May - Junction - Cambridge
2nd May - Riverside - Newcastle
4th May - Barrowland Ballrom - Glasgow
5th May - Music Hall - Aberdeen

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