Juno Premiere: Haiku Salut share video for new single, ‘We Need These Beams’, plus announce UK lamp show tour

Derbyshire electronica trio share video ahead of album number five

Derbyshire electronica trio Haiku Salut have released a video for their new track, ‘We Need These Beams’. The song is taken from the band’s forthcoming fifth album, The Hill, The Light, The Ghost, which is scheduled for release on Secret Name records later this year.

The video uses footage from the award-winning 1984 documentary film ‘Picture Of Light’, with the permission of director Peter Mettler. Described as “part science project, part journal, part hallucination” by The Washington Post, ‘Picture Of Light’ tells the story of Mettler’s journey to the Canadian arctic in search of the aurora borealis.

The band recorded their new album in their peak district studio, and wrote with ‘Picture Of Light’ playing in the background for inspiration, with ‘We Need These Beams’ being the immediate result.

Sophie says she was inspired by Peter Mettler’s commentary on Picture Of Light. “The opening line of the film says ‘We live in a time where things do not seem to exist if they are not captured as an image. But if you look into darkness you may see the lights of your own retina – not unlike the northern lights, not unlike the movements of thought. Like a shapeless accumulation of everything we have ever seen.’”

Barkerwood added: “It got me thinking about what can and can’t be captured. We had collected recordings with our field recorder to preserve memories but could those moments ever really be preserved? Without context they were just ghosts. We needed to give those ghosts a new lens to shine through, a new home, and a new way to affect the world.”

“We actively started experimenting with ways of writing that took our egos out of the equation, ways of writing that helped us teeter on the edge of what is comfortable. We learned about new concepts and forced ourselves to be vulnerable. We restricted the instruments that we would write with and sound banks we call upon. Instead of forcing the music to come out we started sifting through the sound archives we had collected over the years and shaping them into textures and atmospheres. Pairing old memories together. We were exploring again and these sounds that we had collected over the years started to paint a picture.”

“One technique we used was putting on non-linear films in the background while we were writing and arranging. Our experience writing for The General had felt so effortless and we wanted to capture some of that flow again. The film we kept going back to was ‘Picture of Light’ by Peter Mettler introduced to us by the Analog Sea periodical. ‘Picture of Light’ is a 1994 film which documents the journey to northern Canada to capture the Northern Lights on celluloid.”

With the help of publishers Analog Sea – “who publish a beautiful journal about art and ideas away from the online world,” says Sophie – Haiku Salut made contact with Peter Mettler, who gave permission for the band to release an extract from his film put to the music it inspired. 

“What is beautiful about this film is that the crew went all that way with all their equipment not knowing what they were going to capture. As you can see from the video they DID capture the Aurora Borealis and the images are stunning but they left Canada with the overall feeling that they could never truly capture it. So much of the experience is gone.”

‘We Need These Beams’ will be available for purchase, full streaming and download on July 30.

The Hill, The Light, The Ghost will be released on August 27 on CD and digital and vinyl on November 25

Haiku Salut have also announced their upcoming UK tour, the dates of which can be found below. On the tour, they will be performing their ‘Lamp Show’, which features vintage lamps that flicker on and off in real time to the music:

21/10 – The Jam Jar, Bristol 

22/10 – South Street Arts Centre, Reading

23/10 – Bush Hall, London

28/10 – The Grand Pavilion, Matlock

29/10 – Leiston Film Theatre, Leiston

30/10 – Con Club, Lewes

2/11 – The Blue Arrow, Glasgow

3/11 – The Deaf Institute, Manchester

4/11 – Light Up, Lancaster

5/11 – Leaf, Liverpool

6/11 – Westgarth Social Club, Middlesbrough