Temples Share Video For New Single 'Afterlife'

03-14-2023

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(Big Hassle) Temples have shared a music video for their new single, "Afterlife". Produced by labelmate Sean Ono Lennon and mixed by GRAMMY Award-winner Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, MGMT), "Afterlife" heralds the British psychedelic rock quartet's long awaited new album, Exotico, arriving everywhere via ATO Records on Friday, April 14.

"As we were putting the tracklist together we envisioned a jet or spaceship arriving on the island and then some sort of journey across this imagined place," says Temples' Thomas Walmsley. "By the second half of the record we're moving into twilight, and 'Afterlife' is definitely one of the evening tracks."

"'Afterlife' reflects on long distance relationships and how love and isolation often can find themselves next to one another," says Temples' lead singer/guitarist James Bagshaw. "You might feel lonely but you're never alone. Seeing a light in the distance gives you the hope to know you'll meet again."

Temples' fourth studio album and first full-length recording since 2019's acclaimed Hot Motion, Exotico also include such ecstatic new songs as "Cicada" and the stratospheric first single, "Gamma Rays," the latter joined by an official music video, directed by filmmaker Molly Daniel (Nilüfer Yanya).

Exotico marks the band's most far-reaching collection thus far, a 16-track panoramic musical travelogue set beyond the horizon on an impossibly utopic island where every song serves as a different stop along the atoll, from beaches with azure blue waters to forest canopies enveloped in rare birdsong. Recorded in studios in London, Brighton, and Worcestershire, songs like "Afterlife" and "Oval Stones" see Temples - with additional multi-instrumental and vocal accompaniment from Lennon as well as extra vocals from Charlotte Kemp Muhl (The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger) - painting visionary new vistas with cascading melodic waterfalls, contemplative lyrical exploration, and an imaginative creative wanderlust unlike anything previously heard in the band's already ambitious body of work.

"This record is essentially something we made for ourselves to find joy in at the time we were making it," says James Bagshaw. "There are songs to dance to, songs to reflect with, and through that we ended up delving into every aspect of our musical vocabulary."