GAZELLE TWIN
SHARES VIDEO FOR NEW TRACK, ‘FEAR KEEPS US ALIVE’
NEW ALBUM, BLACK DOG, OUT 27 OCT
AN ALBUM ABOUT CONFRONTATION, CHILDHOOD FEARS AND HOW THEY MANIFEST IN ADULTHOOD
AUTUMN DATES – LONDON, NEWCASTLE, BRIGHTON
Composer, producer, singer, and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz – aka Gazelle Twin - has shared the latest single from her new studio album, Black Dog, set for release on vinyl, CD and digitally via Invada Records on 27 October 2023.
Black Dog is an album about confronting fear – supernatural, collective, and personal, and on the powerful new single, ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’, the fear is explicit and horribly familiar – the fear that Bernholz explains is a “daily, constant, almost mundane common fear among women.” before going on to explain, “I have often connected this lifelong feeling to the sense of a ghostly male presence that lurks in my dreams. Women are (and always have been) constantly haunted by the potential of being harmed.”
The video - directed by long-time collaborator Chris Turner (Favourite Colour: Black) and assisted by photographer Teri Varhol - harnesses the haunting, omni-present qualities of CCTV. Shot on old format DV and Hi-8 cameras to create a detached, coldly voyeuristic point of view, it shares scenes with the upcoming supernatural short film Saint Maria’s Way, directed by Chris and written by Chelsea Kania. The film explores the same themes as ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’, using CCTV to reconstruct the final journey of a missing woman.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/P5S-Scq3vJM
Chris Turner: “I love working with Elizabeth and Teri. We share so many of the same fascinations and obsessions, and this allows an honest and creative freedom to exist between us. We’re also all lovers of ageing, imperfect formats of photography and video. The visual and thematic elements of the song, the short film, and the album all seemed to fit perfectly together.”
Elizabeth Bernholz: “Chris, Teri and I share a passion for the weird and the uncanny. The film and images we’ve made together in various forms just wouldn’t have happened without their enthusiasm, generosity and genius skill. ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’ is another brilliant collaboration and has produced such a striking outcome that blends so many shared ideas and visions so naturally.”
Black Dog tells a story that unfurls like a film. It addresses how our childhoods shaped our adulthoods: how any sense of trauma and grief is burnished onto a person’s memories forever, however much we try and escape it. Black Dog suggests how these feelings return in particular intensity when a person becomes a parent, as they watch themselves pass things on that they wish they hadn’t, wish they wouldn’t.
She explains, “I’m in the habit of facing my fears. So I spent years intimately recalling these childhood memories and rifling through old photos. I spoke to my family, and their various experiences of the house, and for some, the black dog in that bedroom. I spoke to friends, and friends of friends and heard their untold ghost stories, and listened obsessively to podcasts and documentaries on hauntings, possessions, and poltergeists.”
In some ways, Bernholz is purging herself on this album. Unlike her masked characters for previous releases, her face is recognisable and, she explains, she is “not as removed this time” from her persona. She is imagining herself as a medium for the voices inside herself, rather than looking out to displace them with other ideas. She emerges huge and godly as she does so, her voice moving from delicate tenderness to doom-driven power.
This is an album where old stories have to be pillaged, digested, and regurgitated to write new ones, where we have to question ourselves utterly. Black Dog looks back and looks in and looks back and looks in. We enter as we listen. We turn ourselves inside-out altogether.
BLACK DOG TRACKLISTING
I Disappear
Sweet Dream
Two Worlds
The Long Room
Unstoppable Force
This House
Author Of You
Walk Through Walls
A Door Opens
GAZELLE TWIN LIVE
10 November – London, Bush Hall
16 November – Newcastle, Sage 2
24 November – Brighton, ACCA
10 November – London, Bush Hall
16 November – Newcastle, Sage 2
24 November – Brighton, ACCA
24 February ’24 – Bristol Simple Things Festival
Tickets are on sale now
Pre-order Black Dog: https://lnk.to/siMY2p7Z
