Virginia Wing – Forward Constant Motion

Anyone who picked up Virginia Wing’s springtime EP Rhonda won’t be surprised to learn that the duo’s full-length return offers a complete re-thinking of the approaches to structure they took on 2014’s more motorik-driven debut LP, Measures of Joy. Shearing themselves of a live drummer has played its part, but even before then there’d been a restlessness bubbling away that's fully set free on Forward Constant Motion.

Shorthand checkpoints Trish Keenan and Laetitia Sadier still apply to Alice Merida Richards' vocals, particularly on lead single Grapefruit and the skittering tropicalia-meets-icy-synthscape of ESP Offline, but – alongside co-songwriter Sam Pillay – the pair have moved their sound down a more twisted labyrinth, pulling in everything from musique concrète to squelchy deconstructed techno, refracted pop hooks and seismic drone. Such atom splitting could come across as frustrating, yet Virginia Wing’s gift is the ability to get these elements to sit so comfortably alongside each other, within one immersive sonic world.

Listen to:  Local Loop, Miserable World