L.MAYLAND (OF THE LAST DINNER PARTY) SHARES DEBUT SOLO EP
L.MAYLAND SHARES DEBUT SOLO EP
L.Mayland (Lizzie Mayland, guitarist of the double BRIT award-winning band The Last Dinner Party) is pleased to share their debut solo EP, The Slow Fire Of Sleep.
Lead single, ‘Mother Mother’ explores Lizzie’s formative misplacement within traditional gender stereotypes over sparse, sliding guitar notes. “It’s about not feeling like I have a place within womanhood - within the confines of what I understood as femininity at the time,” they explain. “There’s an expectation that women should have this inherent maternal instinct, and when I began to realise I didn’t have that, and in fact never fit in with the strict rules of the gender binary. I felt that the problem was within myself rather than a problem in the world around me - that I was somehow wrong.”
The project’s only preview, ‘Lighthouse’, arrived in April with an ethereal visualizer directed by frequent collaborator, Cal McIntyre.
Mayland first sowed the seeds which would go on to become their debut The Slow Fire Of Sleep EP during the break between tours with their band The Last Dinner Party - neither on-the-road nor spiritually reacclimatised to their day-to-day existence back home. “These tracks definitely grew from those periods,” they say. “Suddenly finding myself in my quiet flat and filling that silence with my guitar and these sad songs. It was a way to process what was happening in my life, to come back to myself.”
The Slow Fire Of Sleep’s five tracks showcase a more intimate side of Mayland’s talents, informed by Nick Drake, Eva Cassidy and Adrianne Lenker alongside the ambient works of Brian Eno and seminal film soundtracks including Alex Turner’s Submarine EP and Oliver Coates’ Aftersun compositions.
Titular track and EP closer ‘The Slow Fire Of Sleep’ was borne out of hopelessness regarding the world’s ongoing environmental crisis. Juxtaposing the delicate finger work which precedes its outro, the track drops the cur’s debut solo collection with a devastating sense of scale. “It was important to me that the end of the song didn't feature my voice at all,” Lizzie explains. “I wanted an apocalyptic feeling, like a texture, that Will and Immy [producers Will Lister and Imogen Williams] captured perfectly."
An isolated youth learning to articulate their relationship with gender [‘Mother Mother’]. A student formed by the countryside and now residing in a concrete jungle [‘Homeward’]. An adult who is working hard to maintain their first healthy romantic relationship from across the globe [‘Lighthouse’ and ‘From the Other Side of the World I’d Hear You’]. The Slow Fire Of Sleep marks a collection of tracks which sees their narrator exploring the spectrums of vulnerability, loneliness and introspection with a beguiling honesty.
credit: Cal McIntyre
