Nightbus journey into sex and shame on Angles Mortz
Nightbus
Share new single 'Ascension' - listen here
debut album Passenger, out 10th October on Melodic
UK Tour starts in November (dates below)
Having announced their long awaited debut album last month, Manchester duo Nightbus are today sharing the new single 'Angles Mortz'.
Leaning deeper into alter-egos via the video game-psychological horror of a Silent Hill dystopia, 'Angles Mortz' is the the band’s Fight Club moment, turning its literal translation of death angles on its head as it reflects upon kink and internalised shame reincarnated as pride.
On the track Olive says:
"Angles Mortz explores the theme of shame depicted through sex. ‘Can I meet you in another life’ suggests that our shame is completely perceptive and could be something that’s embraced in an alternate reality. How many people are ashamed of feeling shame?"
Watch the video for 'Angles Mortz' here
Flickering in ultraviolet, there is an elusive place where blue pill meets red, ups become downs, and day merges with night. Those liminal spaces where anything is possible is where you’ll find Nightbus and their hypnotic debut album Passenger. Doom, uncertainty, and opportunity lurk in the shadowy corners of their murky existence with stops at disassociation, co-dependency, and addiction before reaching its final destination - a glimmer of hope.
“We’re travellers in our own bodies; there’s an alter-ego nurturing our secrets, fantasies, shame, and fears, lost in the underworld of humanity. A dreamscape of tabu existence, things that define us but wouldn’t come up in casual conversations. This album is that traveller, the passenger,” Olive Rees reveals, who, alongside partner-in-crime Jake Cottier, is Nightbus. “This self-destructive side can be triggered at any moment, and you’ll experience life in a completely different light. It’s not about hiding that side, but if it were gone, what journey would it experience?”
The in-between of Nightbus’ own Gotham lies where Manchester’s city pulse meets Stockport’s outer realm. An audio-visual entity formed among a musical family of friends, freaks, and foes in messy mills and after hours on dancefloors alike, their sound bleeds from tension where collective creative forces are bound together and collide with the fallout of being torn apart. Before even playing a show, their So Young released single ‘Mirrors’ – a knowing nod of respect to some well-known gloomy Northerners - may have made old school indie heads shimmy at shows in Salford’s The White Hotel but also signalled the duo’s knack for offering listeners a Bandersnatch approach to hitchhiking their own personal Nightbus in whatever direction they choose to take.
Whilst reverb hefty melodies and dread-filled loops embody isolation from writing at each of their home studio set-ups, magic happens in the ether across 90s trip-hop, indie sleaze and electronica; Jake’s production layers Olive’s pop sentimentality with drums and samples whilst tales of a cast of faceless characters place Olive as puppet master; her severed self’s perspective manipulating their stringed limbs at arm’s length to see how their stories play out when scenes reflecting her own lie close to the bone. “It’s a bit fucked; like having this out of body experience with a made-up movie running through my head,” she says. “As I write I can see they’re all from a similar world, but they allow me to explore different feelings without giving away part of myself.”
Tracklist
1. Somewhere, Nowhere
2. Angles Mortz
3. False Prophet
4. Fluoride Stare
5. The Void
6. Ascension
7. Just a Kid
8. Host
9. Landslide
10. Renaissance
11. 7am
12. Blue In Grey
Tour Dates
6/11 - Hug & Pint, Glasgow (tickets)
11/11 - Hare & Hounds, Birmingham (tickets)
12/11 - Corsica Studios, London (tickets)
14/11 - The Croft, Bristol (tickets)
21/11 - Soup Kitchen, Manchester (tickets)
Instagram | Facebook | X | TikTok
