It feels a bit weird writing this review just after releasing my interview with Jan from Long Distance Calling and I hope I don’t just repeat what we said about their new album. But man is this new record just amazing. It is so vastly different from their last one, that it is almost like a completely different band.
Even though LDC released a new album in 2020, they didn’t really tour with it (for obvious reasons) and it came as a surprise, that they are gonna release another new album, especially after the release of an ep in 2021, these guys must be absolute workaholics and be filled to the brim with new musical ideas.
When you listen to Eraser and thank about the idea behind it, you just can’t think other, than this is the continuation of their last album, but in a completely different style. How Do We Want To Live? is a very slick album, with tons of samples and electronic sounds in it, kind of futuristic sounding. The concept behind the album will be pretty clear, after you have listened to it and even beforehand simply by looking at the title. The last track of HDWWTL opens with the iconic speech Mr. Smith gives to Neo at the end of the first Matrix movie. If you stop the record right there and put on Eraser it would make for the perfect vision of the future Mr. Smith has in his mind, when he compares humans to a virus. So what is Eraser all about and how does it sound? This new album is about the destruction of planet Earth via the extinction of species. Every song has an animal as the concept behind its composition. For some tracks the animal in question is pretty self-explanatory, but for others it is a bit more difficult to figure out. When you look at the animal reference though, the musical side of things makes so much more sense and you can almost hear the animal in there. In our interview Jan told me, that you can literally hear the animal in each track, albeit very hidden in most cases.
The whole album has this kind of raw, natural feel to it and LDC did that on purpose, obviously. When writing music about the erosion of species it is only natural to go back to the basics and produce the most handmade music you can. There are no samples, no electronic bits, all strings are played by real musicians and not the computer. All of this cumulates to a thick, gritty and heavy sound, that is just the complete opposite of their previous album. The range in their playing style is also as vast as ever. You have heavy and dark songs like ”Kamila” or ”500 Years”, but also airy and slow tracks like ”Sloth” or ”Giants Leaving”. Speaking of ”Sloth”, this one is my absolute favorite track on the album. I am a huge sucke for saxophone and the one LDC had Jørgen Munkeby play on this song is just breathtakingly beautiful.
Even after years in the business Long Distance Calling don’t seem to have reached the limit on what they can do with their music. They are constantly exploring and reinventing themselves with each new release. Eraser is another milestone in their incredible discography and already makes me look forward to what they have in stall for their next album. Will it be jazzy, heavy, airy, country? It doesn’t matter as long as LDC enjoy creating music as much as they do now, it will probably be amazing.
If you want to know even more about Eraser and LDC’s thoughts behind their music, go ahead and listen to my interview with Jan over here.
