Imagine: You're floating on an air mattress in a quiet stream. Summer will soon be over but it isn't cold yet. There's a cloud that looks like a kingfisher. No waterfall could disrupt your flow.
"Pillowside" is the first single of amilost, a Norwegian-British trio that you might want to place between Sigur Ros, Bon Iver and Billie Eilish. The band consists of vocalist and producer Sigrid Zeiner-Gundersen from Oslo, drummer and co-producer Ross Craib, born in Glasgow, and Charlie Fowler, on bass, from Cornwall. Starting off slow and melancholic, the song builds up throughout its course into a somber chorus of dreamlike vocals layered on top of the heart-wrenching piano.
"Pillowside" was written in lockdown and inspired by the places our minds transport us to when we go to bed at night. Wanting to welcome the listener into their landscape, Ross began the track in his cliff-top studio, where he brought the environment to life by 'sampling the room'. Amid the rich melody are hidden sounds reflecting the song’s intimate theme: a hanger sliding on rails, a kettle boiling...
This is amilost at their best: Bon Iver-style introspection and beautiful melody – then an intense guitar climax that sounds like a sun rising.
"We want other people to channel their pain and their questions through listening to our songs,” says Sigrid. "'Pillowside' is about escapism and living through your imagination when things are tough… imagining something better."
amilost are releasing their new single on August 19th, becoming the first members of our new singles club, made ARCADE, which will see a new unique single released every few weeks from a different unsigned artist. An eclectic mix of female-fronted alt pop and intense post-rock, the track is part of amilost's upcoming debut EP ‘Introspective Souvenirs’.