Birmingham/Black Country alt/indie/psych duo Cut Glass Kings have announced the release of their second studio album, From a Distant Place.
To mark the announcement the band have also shared their new single “At the Borderline” and its accompnying video. The record, produced by James Skelly (The Coral), will be out on February 21, 2025 via Run On Records/Modern Sky UK. Pre-order your copy here.
CUT GLASS KINGS formed in 2014 by childhood friends Paul Cross and Greg McMurray. The band started as a recording project with their early homemade recordings catching the attention of James Skelly who signed them to Skeleton Key Records label. Their debut EP was released in 2017 with their sound being described as “fuzzed out” and “thunderous”. 2019’s “Shadow of Your Love” lifted from their debut LP now has over 4.7 million streams on Spotify.
Following a long break, CUT GLASS KINGS are ready for the next chapter. The new material owes a lot to 1980’s technology and carpentry skills, with their new album forged in a wooden basement studio on a second hand reel to reel recorder. Pandemic-enforced isolation proved helpful to hone their new direction; drummer Greg says:
“For this album we started broadening what we were listening to. I remember early on we were listening to a lot of T-Rex’s ‘Electric Warrior’, earlier Ty Segall stuff, James put us onto the Eels album ‘Hombre Lobo’ which definitely had an influence on us. We were also listening to John Grant’s ‘Outer Space’ a lot.”
Necessity and low-tech were also the mothers of invention for ‘At The Borderline’, with Greg explaining:
“During the pandemic we bought a Tascam 388 and built a studio from scratch in Paul’s cellar. We wanted to try recording directly to tape. Eventually we sent a load of recordings to James Skelly. He really liked them but asked if we had anything a bit heavier or upbeat. So we kind of wrote this song live in the studio as a reaction to that. Lyrically, it’s kind of about struggling to visualise the place you want to get to or how to get there and how overthinking tends to be the enemy of creativity.”
And with that new passion came a revitalised zest, Greg adds; “Having some time away from playing our old songs, and the world going mad for a while in lockdown made it feel like we were starting again. It helped change our own perception of what the band is, and what this album could be. Like we’d killed off an alter ego or something”.
Check out “At the Borderline” below, followed by the album’s artwork and tracklist.
Cut Glass Kings “From a Distant Place” Tracklist:
- Big Dreams
- At The Borderline
- Gift Horse
- Flying Saucer
- Fever Dreamin’
- Thick As Thieves
- The Crossing
- Seven Signs
- Streetlight
- Only The Fire
- Telephone Song
