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Exclusive Premiere – SEIMS Announce New EP 3.1, Take You On A Journey Through Light On “Translucence”

Last we told you about Sydney post-math-rock behemoths SEIMS, it was in the wake of their most recent full-length, 3. That album was an absolute monster of classic math rock

5 years ago

Last we told you about Sydney post-math-rock behemoths SEIMS, it was in the wake of their most recent full-length, 3. That album was an absolute monster of classic math rock chunkiness and propulsion, jazzy technicality, beautiful atmosphere, and catchy-as-all-hell melodies and riffs. We completely loved it. It was easily one of my very favorite albums of 2017, and since then I’ve been waiting with baited breath to see what the fearsome four could pull out next.

It turns out that the band weren’t quite done with the world of 3 though as they’ve been hard at work on a follow-up EP appropriately titled 3.1. As the title suggests, it is very much a spiritual successor to 3, though with a bit of a conceptual twist. Where 3‘s four tracks were focused on the CMYK color spectrum, 3.1 tackles the worlds of light and luminance, beginning where the previous album left off in “Absolute Black” and winding up at “Clarity.” In between those two tracks is “Translucence,” the murky transitional zone in which things start to come into view but not without some fuzziness and ambiguity. That track, and the video for it (directed by SEIMS’s ringleader Simeon Bartholomew), can be found below as we are positively giddy to be premiering it today.

As the de-facto transitional track of the EP, “Translucence” offers the album’s only real moment to breathe, which you can catch in the front half of the string-laden piece as it pulses and swims around a deliciously-enticing groove. It’s the kind of gorgeously-constructed environment many bands would seek to milk for minutes on end (and would honestly earn that right given how good it is), but SEIMS always have the next move and the bigger picture in mind, and, like clockwork, right in the middle of the track it turns on a dime into a barrel-busting 11/4 pattern. Mind you, this is still the tamest track of the three and it still goes hog wild, a tension depicted well by the video featuring a dancer in barely-contained and frenetic movements while surrounded by a world of milky beige and muted colors.

Lest I spoil the rest of the EP for you, suffice it to say that you are 100% going to want to buy this one as soon as it comes out March 29. 3.1 is being handled and released through the incredible Bird’s Robe Records and Art As Catharsis (who are already having a characteristically-stacked 2019). And if for some reason you haven’t listened to any of SEIMS’s previous material before now, good god please get on that immediately.

Nick Cusworth

Published 5 years ago