Borderless four-piece HAAL have returned with a new single titled Plate 43 (…Or Standing on the Toes of Giants). The single comes on the heels of an incendiary year for the band which saw them release their Thurston Moore-approved EP Back To Shilmarine to widespread plaudits, leading to remixes by JUICE (Ollie Judge of Squid) and Water From Your Eyes, as well as UK tour dates and festival appearances such as ArcTanGent, Outer Town, Wanderlust, and more.
HAAL
This latest offering takes the Bristolian experimental outfit’s signature psychotropic blend of samples, DIY pedals, and monolithic instrumentation, and opens it up into a widescreen seven-minute genre-hopping opus. Plate 43 (…Or Standing on the Toes of Giants) also sees the band bring new instrumentation in to the fold, featuring a host of estimable guest musicians including Tom Connolly (of AD 93 signees Quade) on violin, as well as Evo Ethel and Otto Wild on saxophone – both of which are members in the Geoff Barrow-approved no wave ensemble Ex-Agent, alongside HAAL’s vocalist Alfie Hay.
Taking inspiration from a piece of art by Francisco Goya from which the track takes part of it’s title (Plate 43) and ruminations on existentialism, the track sees HAAL expand their dynamic interplay, marrying complex new sounds with their underlying 90s influences (think Dischord and Touch & Go) and the sound of Bristol’s burgeoning avant-garde scene. From dark labyrinthine guitar lines to uncanny sampling (some of which is taken from their namesake – 2001: A Space Odyssey), the track winds and builds into an epiphanic climax of crushing yet uplifting post-rock infused riffing. The final section reduces and concentrates this power down into a rhythmic breakout which sees sax, bass, and guitars dance around industrial rhythms.
Speaking on the single, Hay says: “This song began way back in 2019 with a couple of chords when I first began writing music. I let my subconscious drift into an unwitting state with the intention of utilising a creative flow to try and create something that felt fresh and new and the words “Pressure on the Wall” spilled out of my mouth, which then became the mantra that permeates the entire breadth of the tune.
I believe this song could be an ode to creativity itself, an exploration into why humans do things ultimately inconsequential to fill the time, such as creating music or painting a picture or whatever. Trying to compel meaning into something can be a futile endeavour, when the meaning could’ve been the act of simply doing the thing (whatever that might be!) in of itself.”
As with all their releases to date, the band worked with their tight knit collaborative creative circle when developing the imagery and visuals around the single. Returning to the team who they worked on Back To Shilmarine with, the band gave them all creative agency, rather than forming a concrete idea together. With this, visual artist Will Newcombe drew material from a hard-drive he had been sent by a dumpster diver in America that contained over 100 GB of photos that they had developed from film negatives which had been discarded, containing decades of photos, seemingly dating to at least the 1950s.
Speaking on the collaboration, Hay goes on to say: “It was utterly incredible to witness. All these lost moments, all these lived, lucid and three-dimensional lives and memories, awoken from a coma thanks to the initiative of one random person. I just knew that we had to incorporate this into the artwork and visualiser. The picture of the rust red train in the corner of the single artwork is a photo from that batch, and the visualiser by Sam Chilton uses only photos from this dumpster diving discovery. The video almost feels like you’re being shown a family slideshow by relatives who never existed. It’s incredibly poignant, especially as you’re staring into the eyes of all these people; some babies, some elderly, all who were very real and are most likely not with us anymore. I just hope that they all led meaningful lives!”
The new single also lands as the band come to the end of an intimate UK tour with Knives and Outlander, with a hometown show at Thekla in Bristol to take place on the 10th May. Having already firmly cemented themselves as live favourites in the UK scene playing and touring alongside the likes of Butch Kassidy, WEB, Deliluh, Treeboy & Arc, Katy J Pearson, and Gurriers, the band will announce further live dates across the EU and UK in the coming weeks.
Upcoming UK Tour Dates:
APRIL
24th – Hope & Ruin, Brighton
25th – The George Tavern, London
MAY
3rd – Killgrew Inn, Falmouth
10th – Thekla, Bristol
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