PREMIERE: Limerick psych-pop act Martian Subculture unveils 'Bumblebees'

Irish artist Martian Subculture has announced his debut album Bank Street Prologue by sharing the project's first single, ‘Bumblebees’.

Due February 2022, Bank Street Prologue will feature plenty of Martian Subculture’s left-field, lo-fi world, combining psychedelic rock with melodic vocals that could be described as bedroom-pop Beatles.

“This is one of the first songs in the making of this album where I found the Martian pop sound I've been searching for for years," the Limerick act explains. "Lots of Casio and Akai S20 on this. It's a collage of different styles, which I imagine a band playing in some pub on mars in a sci-fi movie. Played with instruments that are unrecognisable, but still come across as a 'song' overall.”

Recorded alone in a bedroom studio, Martian Subculture's 2019 EP Mars represented a broadcast from the stratosphere met with earthly acclaim. His forthcoming debut album, to be released via New York City independent label 22TWENTY, offers deeper insight into the ‘martian’ state of mind.

22TWENTY have quickly become one of the most ambitious and exciting labels to emerge from the independent music boom of the past few years, having offices in NY and most recently LA. In the past two years alone, they have signed and released the likes of Parisian troubadours Oracle Sisters, LA based pop wizard Madge, Spanish crooners Family Time and many others.

A prologue in the sense that is an introduction, "Martian Subculture's debut album is a science-fiction landscape; a guided tour through an industrial Martian metropolis" a press release states.

Expanding on the lo-fi psychedelia of the Mars EP, Bank Street Prologue is an assembly of sonic experiments inspired by jazz and funk from Arabic speaking parts of the globe from the '60s to the '80s. At the time, artists operated without the restraints of recording processes and song structure that the West was seeking to solidify at the time.

"Ultimately, the album is an experience of a city on an alien planet, which to the potential listener, highlights my experience of feeling alien on our own planet, as a human/artist/being," Martian Subculture adds.

Check out the visualiser for 'Bumblebees' below:

Pre-save Martian Subculture's debut album here.

Bank Street Prologue Track Listing

Bank Place
Enter Martian Pedestrian
Bumblebees
Imperial City Intermission
Soda Pop!
Bitter
Thin Lines
Anytime
A hallway, but on Mars.
To be continued in…’BANK STREET’!

Photo credit: Thomas Ralph