Velvet Mist’s second EP arrives today on hand-numbered vinyl, and its shape depends on something the listener has to physically do halfway through. “Down” closes Side A. To hear what happens next, the record has to be flipped. That gesture is the narrative pivot the EP is built around.
The Shape Of Losing Light follows a single protagonist through five tracks, charting a process of self-erasure that stops just short of disappearance. Side A is the descent. “Midnight Fire” opens with desire as a force demanding total attention, dissolving the boundary between the narrator and everything around him.
By the time the record reaches “Down“, structure and direction have collapsed. The river imagery the band lean on through the song works as the steady, indifferent current that carries the narrator with it. Everything has fallen apart by this point.
Then the record gets flipped. Side B is one composition split into three chapters: “Sway“, “In Liminal“, and “Valley Of Dreams“. “Sway” introduces a figure presented as guidance, though the band don’t resolve whether the figure is real or projected.
They describe the choice directly: “Is this genuine support, or merely another projection? Is the narrator being guided, or is he being blinded? The song intentionally leaves these questions unanswered. What matters is not the answer itself, but the tension between both possibilities.”
“In Liminal” carries no lyrics. It functions as the passage between the question and the answer Side B never fully delivers. The wordlessness is the point. Language recedes and the song holds the threshold rather than crossing it.
“Valley Of Dreams” closes the record. The external world has fallen away, replaced by what the band describe as an internal terrain where memory, longing, and imagination merge. The narrator does not return to who he was. He finds another direction. “The dreamscape is not an escape from reality, but a place of reconciliation.”
This is where the title earns its meaning. The Shape Of Losing Light is not about darkness or about the complete loss of hope. It is about the moment of almost losing the light: the point where direction and identity have begun to fade but have not vanished. “The light never fully goes out.”
The band point to Sisters Of Mercy, Lebanon Hanover, and Twin Tribes as their reference points. Darkwave and post-punk built to unfold patiently rather than peak.
Velvet Mist began as a lockdown project in 2020.
Their first release, “Visitation”, was made with no expectations. When that record found an audience, the band decided the follow-up should be more than a few tracks pressed to vinyl, which is how they ended up making a concept EP instead of a second collection of songs.
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Today’s release lands alongside a live video for “Valley Of Dreams“, filmed with the visual treatment the band use for the song on stage: mirror ball, expanded lighting, the room turned into the “light” the lyrics refer to.
The full Side B sequence is performed as one piece live, the way it was written, but Valley Of Dreams was chosen for the standalone video because it is the most energetic part.
Ideally, they say, they would have captured the entire sequence: “we weren’t sure whether today’s audiences would stay engaged with such a long performance in a single video format.” A lyric video for “Down” is also out.
On whether each chapter survives outside the bigger story, the band were direct: “We kept this in mind during the recording process. We intentionally made the transitions between the chapters in a way that allows each song to stand on its own. Of course, listeners will miss part of the overarching concept when hearing a single track in isolation, but none of the songs feel disconnected or ripped away from the bigger story.”
The EP comes out today in a limited hand-numbered vinyl edition through the band’s webshop. Mixed by Bob Briessinck at Breeze Inc., mastered by Yarne Heylen at Project Zero Studio, with graphic design by Kevin Liekens based on a concept by the band.
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