Brooklyn duo release highly-anticipated follow-up to 2017's 'Endless Night' LP
'Interzone', the third full-length album from New York electro post-punk duo The Vacant Lots, is out in the world now. A genre-blending synthesis of dance and psych, the LP is made for secluded listeners and all-night partygoers, meant for headphones and the club. Their first album since signing to Fuzz Club this year (following a split 10" with Alan Vega back in 2014 and a 2017 reissue of their debut LP 'Departure'), you can stream 'Interzone' in its below.
Uninhibited by the limitations of two people and continuing their mission of “minimal means maximum effect,” The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen create an industrial amalgam of icy electronics and cold beats with detached vocals and hard hitting guitars. 'Interzone's trance-like opener ‘Endless Rain’ and the kinetic Krautrock stomper ‘Into The Depths’ are followed by scintillating dark disco anthems 'Rescue' and 'Exit’. Side 2 kicks off with 80’s synth-pop track ‘Fracture’ and haunting after-hours minimal wave ‘Payoff,’ while ‘Station’ and album closer 'Party's Over' deal with disillusionment and conquering one’s indifference to make real change.
The album creates order from chaos and delves into escapism, isolation, relationship conflicts, and decay. With nods to William S. Burroughs and Joy Division’s song of the same name, “Interzone is like existing between two zones,” Jared says. “Interzone doesn't mean one thing. It can mean different things to different people depending on their interpretation. Working on this album was a constant struggle reconciling internal conflicts with all that’s going on externally in the world. Interzone, in one word, is duality."
On Interzone, the band produced the 8 songs, 30 minutes record and teamed up with long term collaborators Ivan Liechti who designed the album artwork, and Ted Young who engineered the record. Maurizio Baggio (Boy Harsher, Soft Moon) mixed the record and contributed additional production and it was mastered by Gianni Peri.
"Jared and I bounced ideas back and forth while working in seclusion on opposite coasts. We would just send files to each other until the songs were arranged. Then we met up at the studio in Brooklyn where we were fortunate enough to borrow Alan Vega’s Arp synth and finished recording with engineer Ted Young. We then worked with Maurizio Baggio to mix it," recalls Brian. After the band finished producing Interzone, long term visual collaborator Ivan Liechti designed the album artwork.
