Jessica Moss has shared a new visual: her video for “Distortion Harbour” is suitably pagan and aflame, a Nordic tribute to outdoor winter fires and pandemic rituals and a fitting accompaniment to the harrowing ambient-metal/dark-industrial drone of the album’s noisiest song (feat. grinding distorted contrebasse from Godspeed You! Black Emperor‘s Thierry Amar). The song is taken from her new album, Phosphenes, out this Friday November 19th via Constellation.
Listen to “Distortion Harbour” and watch the video for it below:
Artist Notes: “Distortion Harbour”
“During the months of Québec winter lockdown last year, when we were prohibited from gathering and had a curfew of 8pm, some dear friends started searching out hidden spots around our neighbourhood to build outdoor fires (also prohibited). We had a group thread calling for gatherings and it was the only way most of us ever saw each other for many months. Those were some life-saving encounters; spending the early evening hours sitting in the snow by the train tracks, or behind shipping containers in a parking lot. We’d make individual couches out of the snow, dragging pallets from behind buildings to make beautiful fires, just appreciating the nearness of friends during that darkest of seasons, in these darkest of times.
It became a beloved ritual, which has continued into this next pandemic stage. Our once-upon-a-time regular haunts and meeting places are slowly and shakily reopening, strict rules we’ve lived under for more than a year now slowly loosening, but many of us continue to gather outdoors, mostly preferring these hidden and free spots over trying to rejoin or rebuild much of the shape of the life we left behind.
This song took shape during those dark months. It’s based around a sample I made a few years ago of my voice all fucked-with in ways I had never done before and could never repeat again; that sample had been waiting for its moment, stored on one of my loop pedals ever since. I rediscovered it one a lonely jam space day, and found it to be exactly the sentiment to fit the words I had been singing to myself; plugged in my guitar and allowed myself to just belt it the fuck out. Recorded those unfettered experiments and used them as the bones, added violins and then a hundred hunched-over hours of careful worrying over until it was ready for Thierry’s growling bass and Radwan’s mixing genius.”
– Jessica Moss, Montréal, October 2021 –
Moss now enters the second half of her European tour with a run of dates through Scandinavia. See all dates below:
18.11.2021 • Oslo NO • Blå Link
19.11.2021 • Moss NO • House Of Foundation Link
20.11.2021 • Stockholm SE • Sofiakyrka Link
21.11.2021 • Malmö SE • Plan B Link
22.11.2021 • Copenhagen DK • Alice Link
23.11.2021 • Aarhus DK • Radar Link
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23.11.2021 • Montréal QC • Sala Rossa Link
with Kee Avil and Alexei Perry Cox