“Combining immersive shoegaze with an explosive mass of distortions, dense layers of sound, and guitars on the verge of mechanical breakdown. It starts with Joy Division, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and ends with Alfred Schnittke and György Ligeti. Michal Sapir shouts quietly, wrapping cotton candy with steel wool.”
After almost two decades living abroad, I found myself writing some new songs in Hebrew and returned to my hometown of Tel Aviv to record a new album.
The record develops a unique sound, combining the prickly precision of post-punk, the dreamy and disorienting soundscapes of shoegaze, and post-rock experiments with structures and dynamics. Based on melodic songs, it extends into abstract, gritty and emotional adventures in sound and texture.
Lyrically, the album deals with the geographical and existential state of being away, while also tracing a renewed encounter with the realities of life in Israel/Palestine. The songs talk about identity, territory and borders, and about things that subvert and defy them: aeroplanes, emails, idiosyncrasies. “Mibifnim” engages with place and time and with the people who err or navigate in them. It resides uneasily between Hebrew and English, communication and difficulty, intimacy and distance; between a view from the outside and a feeling from the inside.
Michal Sapir: Vocals, guitar
Oded Shechter: Bass, baritone, glockenspiel
Shai Lowenstein: Guitar, piano
Aviv Barak: Drums