Funeral Party Records is excited to share the first single from TOPOGRAPHIES forthcoming debut album, Ideal Form. “Rose of Sharon” opens with a driving drum machine before erupting into a reverb soaked guitar lead and infectiously melodic bass line. It’s the perfect introduction to the bands 80’s indebted blend of goth, post-punk and euphoric dreampop. The groups debut is expected this November on Funeral Party Records, the blossoming Kentucky label responsible for releases by True Body, Fearing, Soft Kill, Nothing, Death Bells and more.
Bandleader Gray Tolhurst is the son of former Cure drummer/keyboardist Laurence Tolhurst, so it’s no wonder the group have a fascination with chorus soaked guitars and deceptively catchy hooks, though they undoubtedly deliver a refreshingly modern take on the classic sound, placing them alongside other breakout groups like Choir Boy, Black Marble, etc.
“a lush tempestuous deluge of shoegaze and dreampop” – POST-PUNK
Topographies is a post-punk/ shoegaze band formed in 2018 in San Francisco by Justin Oronos, Jeremie Ruest, and Gray Tolhurst. The band merges the lockstep rhythms and pulsing synths of 80s coldwave and post-punk (taking cues from bands like Asylum Party and The Chameleons) with the lush guitar work and hazy textures of shoegaze. Topographies has shared stages throughout the US with contemporaries Soft Kill, Tennis System, Fearing, and Be Forest, and has released two 7” records (including one on venerable British label Sonic Cathedral) as well as a cassette EP, Difference and Repetition with San Diego’s DREAM Recordings .
The band’s debut LP Ideal Form, set to be released on Funeral Party Records in autumn 2020, synthesizes and clarifies the band’s aesthetic in eight drum-machine and synth heavy tracks, accompanied by Ruest’s ethereal guitar work, the nimble basslines of Oronos, and Tolhurst’s poetic lyrics. The album was engineered and produced by Chris King (also a member of LA-based band, Cold Showers) and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios in New York. Tolhurst (whose early exposure to music came from his father Laurence Tolhurst, drummer/keyboardist of The Cure) draws on his dual fascinations of independent music and 20th century poetry to craft songs and lyrics that seek to explore the complex map of occurrences that situate and shape a life. Ideal Form is concerned with the projections human beings place upon experience and the impossibility of a perfectly realized existence.
Pre-orders for the album are available through Funeral Party Records.
