The genre adventurers Ferris & Sylvester today share the brand new video for their track ‘Mother,’. The song features on their recent EP ‘Side A (Storm)’ which is part of a forward-thinking campaign ahead of the release of their second album ‘Otherness’ on March 1st. The EP replicates Side A of the album in full, giving fans the opportunity to experience the album’s first side of vinyl in digital form. The husband-and-wife duo made a phenomenal impact with last year’s debut album ‘Superhuman’, which went straight to #1 on the Official Jazz & Blues Albums Chart and won UK Album of the Year at the 2023 UK Americana Awards.
‘Mother,’ is initially folk-rock at its most elegantly haunting, with Issy Ferris’s dark-hued vocals and Archie Sylvester’s supporting harmonies narrating the story of a child who is pleading for their mother to make a fresh start in search of a better life. But then the atmosphere completely shifts like a dream coming true as her voice soars into the refrain, “And we’ll start over again in a house from a magazine.” Further elevated by a fuzzy psychedelic guitar solo, ‘Mother,’ encapsulates the duo’s flair for taking genre conventions into entirely unpredictable directions.
Archie Sylvester says, “This is the song that shaped the album. It’s a song about dreaming of a better life, and being on the outside looking in. We wrote it in our studio with long-time collaborator Michael Rendall and it quickly became important to all of us. We worked on it for months, but the vocal take from that first day was never replaced. There was magic in the studio that day.”
The video, directed by Toby Cuthbertson, plays upon the song’s contrasting moods. Initially Issy is filmed sullen and near stationary, her intense gaze in keeping with its heartrending back story. But as the song deviates into a more uplifting atmosphere, so too does the visual, with the couple beaming as they bounce upon a trampoline. As for the unusual camera angle? That comes from a camera mounted to Issy’s body, an approach that magnifies both of the song’s spectrum of moods,
Issy adds, “We shot the video on a cold, windy afternoon at the top of the hill right above the town where we live. It was all done in one take using a SnorriCam, which is a camera that is strapped to you. I have the bruises to prove it. We wanted to capture how the song flickers from reality, where we’re walking through the darkness or scrabbling to get hold of one another, to a dream world, where we’re jumping, almost flying. It was such a fun shoot, jumping on a trampoline with a camera strapped to my chest, hoping no dog walkers or angry farmers stumble across us. In all seriousness, we wanted to do justice to a song that carries a big meaning and we hope it resonates with people.”
This video is the duo’s second top tier visual project of this album campaign. They also filmed a series of live videos during sessions at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, where they were joined by the Halo Strings quartet plus Ross Gordon(drums) and Edu Bisogno (keys).
A lot has happened for Ferris & Sylvester since releasing ‘Superhuman’ in March 2022. While in Nashville to play a festival, the then heavily pregnant Issy became life-threateningly ill leading to their son Lucky being born six-and-a-half weeks prematurely. They remained in Nashville for almost two months – three weeks in intensive care followed by four weeks of recuperation – before they could head home to the UK. The experience of everything going desperately wrong, but somehow finding the strength to carry on inspired many of the themes within the ‘Otherness’ album. The record then took shape at sessions split between their own Archtop Studios and Real World Studios, with Archie producing alongside Michael Rendall. Its warm, analogue sound was captured by recording direct to a 1960s tape machine – an old school stylistic approach for a digital age.
The ‘Otherness’ album is available to pre-order or pre-save HERE. It will be released on three physical formats: a signed CD, regular black double-vinyl, and limited edition signed marbled red heavyweight double-vinyl.
Having recently announced details of a sprawling UK headline tour in 2024, Ferris & Sylvester have just announced details of their first ever run of headline shows in Germany. Their upcoming tour dates are listed below, remaining tickets are available HERE.
FEBRUARY
8th – Milton Keynes, MK 11
9th – Tunbridge Wells, Forum
10th – Portsmouth, The Wedgewood Rooms
14th – Hull, The New Adelphi Club
15th – York, The Fulford Arms
16th – Sunderland, Independent
17th – Cambridge, Portland Arms
20th – Huddersfield, The Parish
21st – Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge
22nd – Brighton, Komedia
23rd – Bristol, Thekla
24th – Guildford, Boileroom
27th – Liverpool, Camp and Furnace
28th – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
29th – Manchester, Deaf Institute
MARCH
1st – London, Lafayette
6th – St. Albans, The Horn
7th – Dover, The Booking Hall
8th – Golant, Bar Silo Cornwall
9th – Falmouth, The Cornish Bank
11th – Glasgow, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
12th – Edinburgh, The Mash House
13th – Dublin, The Grand Social
18th – Cologne, Blue Shell (JUST ADDED)
19th – Hamburg, Nochtwache (JUST ADDED)
21st – Berlin, Prachtwerk (JUST ADDED)
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