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Apr 25, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Simian Mobile Disco

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British electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco (James Ford and Jas Shaw) are releasing a new album, Murmurations, on May 11 via Wichita. Previously they shared videos for its first two singles, “Caught In a Wave” (which was one of our Songs of the Week) and “Hey Sister” (which was also one of our Songs of the Week). Now they have shared a video for a third single from the album, “Defender.” Kiani Del Valle directed and choreographed the video, which is the third of three interconnected videos for the album. Watch it below.

Del Valle had this to say about the “Defender” video in a press release: “For ‘Defender’ I was particularly moved by the voices of the Deep Throat Choir and how they merged with the production and composition of SMD. The words and melodies of the choir really conduct the imagery for this video. Our female character survives and overcomes obstacles in both previous chapters; by overcoming personal battles she achieves growth. In Chapter 3 she is greeted by a group of female warriors that to me are singing her own story as if she could both see herself in the warriors and the warriors see themselves in her…”

Of the three-part video Del Valle added: “I dreamt of a female character that moves through different emotional stages while she travels across environments between real life and the subconscious. This female character becomes the umbilical cord of the 3 chapters, spiraling in and out of first-person narratives. Each chapter explores 3 different forms of movement so as to reflect the various states of the psyche. Playing with the idea of murmurations, and communal frequencies leading us to psychological discoveries of oneself, these cycles ultimately remind us that endings are hidden beginnings taking us elsewhere.”

Murmurations features London’s The Deep Throat Choir. A previous press release described the album as such: “Murmurations is as perfectly pitched for headphones as it is for clubs, named after giant cloud formations of starlings and themed around the stunning emergent behaviors that appear within them.”

The Deep Throat Choir’s director Luisa Gerstein had this to say in the previous press release: “Working with James and Jas has been a total pleasure. It’s been exciting to combine our use of raw female voices with the electronic sensibilities of SMD - the conversation between the two, how they have informed and responded to one another. The result feels like something warm, rippling and kaleidoscopic!”

Simian Mobile Disco previously cancelled their June U.S. tour dates when Shaw was diagnosed with AL amyloidosis.

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