Canadian synth-pop band Operators have shared 'I Feel Emotion', another new track taken off their forthcoming sophomore album 'Radiant Dawn', out 17th May on Last Gang.

 

The band, featuring Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits), Devojka, and Sam Brown (Divine Fits, New Bomb Turks), teamed up with directors

Caleb Bardgett and Johnny Dunn for the song’s video. 

 

“We‘d been working with Operators on creating a dystopian travel ad for 'Radiant Dawn', a sort of near-future vision of the near-former country

of Yugoslavia (or an alternate universe version of it), and it quickly

evolved into a larger series of these sinister-ish videos.

 

‘I Feel Emotion’ is kinda the last episode in that saga (for now at least). It's set in a world newly-devoid of human life, and these TV sets are the last artefacts of human emotion, playing loops from lost transmissions from

some other space-time.”

 

Devojka from the band added:

 

“I Feel Emotion is a song for anyone who feels like they don’t know how to be alive in the world today. The video we made for I Feel Emotion is compound nostalgia. It was inspired by a video installation I saw at an exhibition at MOMA called Toward A Concrete Utopia, Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980. The installation was a stack of tv screens playing

short loops taken from what looked to be old commercials and footage of people in various states of everydayness. As a first generation ex-yugoslavian, I was surprised to find myself fascinated and moved; the intimacy of a woman ecstatically twirling with her purse flung on her shoulder in her

smart and modern skirt completely arrested me. I come from a long line

of pain, and I’ve been estranged from my family for some years now.

Making the video was a way to connect to this heritage; something

equally familiar and foreign to me. I combed through hours of footage

from old Yugoslavian films looking for those intimate moments - the moments that happen between the BIG EVENTS in our lives.”

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The album's nine tracks meld raw analogue hardware with Boeckner's distinct voice to create an immersive cinematic sound. Operators previously released album track “Faithless”, a song Consequence of Sound called “darkly coruscating electro-pop cut with just a hint of ’80s psychedelia adding to the warmth, as solid a return single as anyone could hope for.”

 

Interspersed between the tracks are instrumental intertitles that amplify the album’s 1970s sci-fi dystopian feel. For fans of Boeckner’s catalogue, Radiant Dawn feels like the next logical step in the artist’s two-decade career, while maintaining a completely fresh energy.

'Radiant Dawn' was written and recorded throughout 2018 and early 2019 in Montreal and Vancouver Island. Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury played bass on the album’s closing track, “Low Life.” The album was co-produced by Wolf Parade's Arlen Thompson along with

up and coming Montreal engineer Napster Vertigo. It was mastered by the

Lodge’s Emily Lazar (on the heels of her 2019 Grammy® award win).

LA Weekly, after hearing a preview of the record, made it the album of the week nearly a month before its release, saying:

 

“The first hints of greatness came with the release of EP1 in 2014, followed by the debut full-length, 'Blue Wave', two years later. But it's the majesty of the 14 songs that fill 'Radiant Dawn' that show just how far this group has come.”

 

The band will be touring extensively in Europe over the summer, including a London headline show at Sebright Arms in September.

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LIVE DATES

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17 Jul - Meet Factory - Prague, Czech Republic

18 Jul - Das Werk - Wien, Austria

19 Jul - Durer Kert - Budapest, Hungary

21 Jul - Electric Castle - Bontida, Romania

29 Aug - Driv - Tromsø, Norway

31 Aug - Zdravo Mladi Festival - Skopie, Macedonia

01 Sept - Elektropionir - Belgrade, Serbia

03 Sept - Durer Kert - Budapest, Hungary

04 Sept - Vintage Industrial Bar - Zagreb, Croatia

05 Sept - Flug und Flug Wanne - Wien, Austria

06 Sept - Meet Factory - Prague, Czech Republic

07 Sept - Torstrassenfestival - Berlin, Germany

11 Sept - Klub Kivot - Rijeka, Croatia

12 Sept - Kino Šiška - Ljubljana, Slovenia

15 Sept - Le Grillen - Colmar, France

17 Sept - De Gudde Wëllen - Luxembourg, Luxembourg

18 Sept - Rotown - Rotterdam, Netherlands

19 Sept - Sebright Arms- London, UK

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B I Z Z A R R E

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