Change might be the only constant in life, but that doesn’t mean that fans won’t hold strong to their expectations of an artist’s music. As such, we may need to distribute whiplash warnings ahead of the debut Erskine Lynas album, because holy crap is it a hemorrhaging deviation from the almost-grime tunes that earned real-person Thomas Emslie attention in the first place. Emslie’s T_A_M moniker has heretofore been the vehicle for his heavy, percussion-centered tracks, but summer 2016 coincided with an unexpected change for the Aberdeen, UK-based musician, as In Tandem inspired meditation at twilight as opposed to dancing in the club.
Lease of Youth is the debut album from Emslie under the Erskine Lynas moniker, and the result is similarly unexpected. In a marked contrast from the abstracted electronics and ambient music of yore, the album is actually quite reminiscent of the electronic pop songs that sent the world into a neon tizzy during the 1980s, with influence from “the naive melodic synth-pop of bands like Tears for Fears, The Blue Nile, OMD and Magnetic Fields,” according to its label, Local Action.
TMT has the pleasure of premiering mid-album track “Madrigal Morning.” Listen to it below, after a note from Emslie about both the song and the process of writing the album. Then look for Lease of Youth on November 10, both digitally and on vinyl, via Local Action. Pre-orders here.
“Madrigal Morning” was the first song written for what would end up being the album. I can’t remember how exactly I decided I was gonna start writing what — in my head was a straightforward pop song — but I wrote it exactly as it is now in one morning, and then in the afternoon, I added some lyrics that I had been saving on my phone (with no real purpose other than to get them out of my head) over the previous year or so and just paired them together.
This process essentially made up the method of writing the whole album, which took about 5 months and about 16 or so songs, which me and Tom narrowed down to the 10 on Lease of Youth.
What started as a sort of mistake became the most enjoyable music-writing process I’ve ever undertaken and allowed me to focus on songwriting with a very small pool of synths and a guitar and not ever having to think about whether it would make people dance or suit DJs. It also meant I could draw on a huge pool of musical influence that I had never really considered incorporating into my own music and indulge in that. It’s extremely cliche, but it was very much making music for me.
Lease of Youth tracklisting:
01. Feather Fall
02. Craiger Caught The Sleeper
03. New Concrete
04. 20 Years
05. Madrigal Morning
06. Forever Rain
07. Humid Thought
08. Run Away / There’s No Face In The Strings
09. Lease of Youth
10. Accord
More about: Erskine Lynas, T_A_M
