ANGUS & JULIA STONE TO RELEASE SOUNDTRACK RECORD LIFE IS STRANGE
LED BY NEW SINGLE 'LOVE SONG' OUT FRIDAY AUGUST 20
“They keep evolving. I keep watching.”
- RICHARD KINGSMILL, TRIPLE J
“Dreamy Australian-indie rock”
- THE GUARDIAN
“Silky smooth”
- MUSIC FEEDS
“Angus & Julia Stone have been knocking it out of the park for well over a decade now.”
- TONE DEAF
“The most beautiful of combinations”
- NYLON
Angus & Julia Stone hadn’t planned to make another record — for a while, at least. But life had other machinations in mind, as it always has with Angus & Julia. The pair were famously brought back together by the legendary Rick Rubin and now again, were presented with an impossible-to-ignore opportunity, to reconsider themselves as artists in a new way — as composers, scoring for an award-winning video game.
And so, comes Life Is Strange - set for release Friday 20th August: Angus & Julia Stone’s unexpected, unguarded, unforgettable fifth album, a soundtrack record that might also just be one of the pair’s most immediate, most beautifully-rendered sets yet.
Led by “Love Song”, also out on Friday 20th August, a warm, gently warped pop song among the most beautiful the duo have ever made, this new album acts as a kind of showcase of just how enviable the band’s craftsmanship has become over the past 15 years.
The game, like the music explores the richness and complexity of love between siblings, families, and communities. It’s a theme Angus & Julia have themselves never given up working through: “There's always going to be this common thread that runs through all our songs, which is that at the bottom of everything is love,” says Angus. “It always comes back to love, and things coming from within your heart. When all else fails, love will be the thing that conquers.”
The Life Is Strange franchise has won 20+ awards since its debut in 2015. The franchise boast over 20 million unique players across its lifetime.
In the years since releasing their acclaimed fourth record, 2017’s Snow, the pair have embarked on searching, successful, and creatively fulfilling solo journeys: Angus with his beloved, kaleidoscopic Dope Lemon project, and Julia with Sixty Summers, her moonlit journey to pop’s avant-garde fringes. After years as a decorated, celebrated duo, with a catalogue spanning everything from spectral folk to richly-woven indie pop, the pair were content in their lives as solo artists, and in their relationship as siblings first and bandmates second.
Made over the course of a few years, in the moments where Angus & Julia weren’t devoted to their respective solo projects, Life Is Strange is unique in the Angus & Julia Stone oeuvre: it’s the most free, the most willing to cover new sonic territory. It is a testament to life’s strange confluence, the magical and spiritual forces that guide us through.
“I really like this record because it's a real mix of the old and the new,” Julia says. Both Angus & Julia are talented, distinctive producers, and Life Is Strange is proof, featuring vocal samples and bristling electronics, string-led tracks and funereal dirges, crystal-clear pop and gorgeous, emotive ambience. Julia continues, “I can hear how, on this record, we weren't afraid to try, to follow our noses and not to force any direction that it went. It didn't matter that there was a really folky song next to a really dancy song. I can hear it feeling very free.”
Life Is Strange was recorded in, and inspired by, some of the most beautiful places in the world: the studio on Angus’ farm, ‘Stonecutters’, where the bulk of the record was made; Boulder, Colorado, where Life Is Strange, the video game, was developed; and Neil Finn’s studio in Auckland, New Zealand, where Angus & Julia finished parts of the album.
In the video game, Angus & Julia’s soundtrack takes the player by the hand, guiding them through; in real life, the album might do the same thing. “Things in our lives keep happening that bring us back together without us planning,” Angus says. “It's almost like the universe pulling us, calling us, back together.” Life Is Strange that way.
For more information on Life Is Strange: True Colours video game - please visit:
lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com/en-gb/