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Basement announce first album in eight years, drop two new singles

“This is what I’ve always wanted Basement to sound like…” The Ipswich alt.rockers are back with new album WIRED, and they’ve released the title-track and Broken By Design.

Basement announce first album in eight years, drop two new singles
Words:
Emily Garner
Photo:
Adam Powell

Basement have just announced their first new album in eight years, WIRED.

Following 2018’s Beside Myself, the beloved Ipswich alt.rock crew – vocalist Andrew Fisher, guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, bassist Duncan Stewart and drummer James Fisher – will release their long-awaited next full-length on May 8 via Run For Cover Records.

“I never thought Basement could sound like this,” admits Alex of the LP, which was produced by John Congleton and is described in a press release as the band’s ‘most decisive artistic statement yet’. “But in my head, it’s what I’ve always wanted Basement to sound like.”

They’re previewing what’s to come with the title-track and fellow newbie Broken By Design. Andrew explains that the former song is about “how sometimes it feels that we are set up to feel and behave in certain ways beyond our control. That no matter how hard you try to hide it, eventually it will come out – either by choice or by force. This song was almost lost – a few of us were into it, but it sort of lost traction for a bit. Then one day it cropped back up and we put it at the forefront of our minds and it ended up being one of my favourite songs to perform and record.”

Of the latter, meanwhile, he states that, “Broken By Design is about giving something your absolute best and realising it’s destined to fail. Getting to the other side of the situation, looking back and deciding to do everything differently and feeling grateful for the opportunity to grow. We’ve all done a lot of work on getting better at talking to each other as friends and as bandmates. Sometimes that’s an easy distinction – or rather, not a distinction at all. Other times, the lines are blurred and we lose track of who we are and why we do this.

“When I’m singing, ‘Let’s go back to the start’ I mean to when we did this purely for fun. For an excuse to see each other, to travel, to be creative, to express ourselves through music. We all feel so lucky to be in a position to still get to do this and this album and this song in particular, is us trying to go back to how it should be.”

Listen to WIRED and Broken By Design:

And check out the full WIRED tracklist:

1. Time Waster
2. WIRED
3. Deadweight
4. Broken By Design
5. Pick Up The Pieces
6. Embrace
7. Sever
8. The Way I Feel
9. Satisfy
10. Head Alight
11. Longshot
12. Summer’s End

Catch Basement live at both legs of Outbreak Fest this summer – they headline the Bowlers Exhibition Centre in Manchester on June 28, and then appear at Victoria Park in London for the All Points East crossover on August 23.

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