Watch Liars pay tribute to ‘2001’ and ‘Alien’ in the video for their new single, ‘From What The Never Was’
Liars have shared a new single, ‘From What The Never Was’, alongside a cinematic film clip celebrating yesteryear’s iconic sci-fi movies.
The third and final single to be lifted from new album ‘The Apple Drop’ ahead of its release next Friday August 6 via Mute, ‘From What The Never Was’ follows the electronica-styled ‘Sekwar’ and grungy, guitar-driven ‘Big Appetite’. The track wields a pensive, slow-burning soundscape defined by its understated lead guitars and deep bassline.
Like those for ‘Sekwar’ and ‘Big Appetite’, the film clip for ‘From What The Never Was’ was directed by filmmaker Clemens Habicht.
Take a look at it below:
In a press release, Liars frontman Angus Andrew said: “‘From What the Never Was’ is intended as a moment of recollection within the journey of ‘The Apple Drop’; a point that our traveller has reached which is far from the starting place, but also right back there in memory.
“The drum sound was appropriated from an old song called ‘We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones of Our Own.’ In that track, the protagonist is drunk on delusions of grandeur, relishing the power of destruction. Now far removed, that character is weary, remorseful.”
On the concept behind its film clip, Andrew adds: “In preparation for the video, I went back to the ‘Sekwar’ cave to map it three-dimensionally. Instructed by a digital artist in NYC (Dan Moore), I strapped a 360-degree camera to my head and paced the lengths of the cave’s interior.
“The resulting data was transformed into a wireframe model and featured as a hologram in [‘From What The Never Was’]. The cave’s positioning right beneath another location manifests the premise of the song. You’re in the ‘same spot’ but understanding it from a completely new perspective.
“My experience in revisiting that space alone was both psychologically informative and disturbing. The slow, methodical steps required to document the dark depths of the cave’s interior invited the company of bats and of fear.”
Habicht said the video was inspired by sci-fi movies he was “probably way too young to have seen as a kid” – among those 2001 and Alien – adding that “only Liars would entertain and embrace my trepanning fantasies.”
Habicht also gave special thanks to the video’s director of photography, Tyson Perkins, and “to [executive producer and creative director Beau Neilson] and her team for their absolute generosity and excitement.”
‘The Drop’ sees Andrews working closely with drummer Laurence Pike, multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell and lyricist Mary Pearson Andrew.
“For the first time I embraced collaboration from an early stage,” Andrew said in a press statement, “allowing the work of others to influence the work of my own.”
Earlier this year, Andrew teamed up with Xiu Xiu for the latter’s single ‘Rumpus Room’.