Lost Under Heaven at The White Hotel CANCELLED
Johnny James, Managing Editor
Atmospheric rock duo Lost Under Heaven are performing two socially distanced live shows at The White Hotel in September.
Lost Under Heaven is the twin flame collaboration between Manchester’s Ellery James Roberts and Amsterdam’s Ebony Hoorn. Following his ceremonious split with hyped fourpiece WU LYF in 2012, Roberts returned to the abandoned Manchester terrace in which he was squatting to find a stranger – Hoorn – sitting at his kitchen table. The pair shared an intense connection and within a few months had shacked up together in a converted hospital in Amsterdam, where they sowed the seeds for their collective next chapter, entitled Lost Under Heaven.
Released in 2016, LUH’s debut album, Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing, was filled with atmospheric rock songs in which Roberts’ sawtooth snarl and Hoorn’s smoky drawl entwined over string swells, pounding drums and expansive production by The Haxan Cloak. Steeped in gothic grandeur, tracks like ‘I&I’ (below) are all about atmospheric tension, with battle-cry lyrics heightening the musical drama.
Album number two, Love Hates What You Become (2019), saw the pair team up with Grammy Award-winning producer John Congleton. His influence is immediately evident in opener ‘Come’, in which electro synths, bass blasts and digitised percussion provide a hard exoskeleton for LUH’s passionate songwriting. Elsewhere the production is pulled right back, with minimalist acoustic tracks like ‘The Breath of Light’ and ‘Love Hates What You Become’ laying the duo’s anthemic melodies and existential lyrics bare.
Having recently dropped a new single (below), LUH seem on the cusp of an ambitious new chapter. “Alpha Omega”, say the duo, “was conceived one hot evening in June 2020 following months of lockdown’s existential questions as to what the future may hold. After reflecting on our rapturous moment, from the recent exponential rise in sensational and quickly suppressed alternative narratives (or “conspiracy theories”) to the 1984-esque group think and virtue signalling conformity of the “new normal” the song intends to refute the linear notion of time reaching its near catastrophic conclusion in favour of a cyclic awareness of conscious evolution.”
The intensity of Lost Under Heaven’s music makes for a pretty special live experience. Their blistering energy and dogged belief in what they do makes you forget about the world beyond the gig room, so that for an hour or two, you exist solely within the spectacle. That’s a pretty powerful card for a band to hold right now.
LUH will be giving a matinee and an evening performance at The White Hotel on 19th September. Both will be seated and socially distanced, with table service only. Naturally, capacity has been reduced, so you’d do well to act fast on this one.
