Tuesday, October 05, 2021

Watch: Rodney Cromwell Airs New Single/Video "Memory Box"

British indietronica/synthpop/robotpop artist Rodney Cromwell (aka Adam Cresswell) has aired the video for his brand new single "Memory Box", his first since 2018.

The song serves as the title track of the forthcoming album 'Memory Box', a mixture of electronic hauntological excursions, dreampop and European coldwave that is scheduled for release in early 2022.  Using analogue synths, drum machines with parts played almost entirely live (with minimal computer sequencing) and vocals recorded without autotune, this record conjures up an organic, albeit dream-like, world that is inspired as much by Alice in Wonderland, Franz Kafka and Anna Kavan as it is by its sonic influences such as Kraftwerk, The Cure and Stereolab. The sonic pallet of 'Memory Box' is both reassuringly familiar and completely distinctive.scheduled for release in early 2022. Get it here.

'Memory Box' is a song about perceptions of reality and the certainty of our memories. How do we believe anything in a world where truth and honesty are of so little worth?  

Speaking about it, Cromwell says: “I wanted the song to have the feel of a marching clockwork toy, so the beat is really simple and metronomic with the synths doing the talking by enveloping the song. At the time I was still disorientated from illness. I turned on the TV and there was Boris Johnson’s lackey, Dominic Cummings, spinning some yarn. In my post-fever state he came across like Wormtongue from Tolkein, talking about riverbanks, woods and castles while literally sat in a perfumed rose garden like in Alice in Wonderland. I wouldn’t say that influenced me directly, but certainly my own state of brain-fog sent my writing off in a more heady and fantastical direction.”

Watch/listen below.