This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
CMU Approved
Approved: The Keep
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 7 November 2019
Recently signed to Houndstooth, The Keep is a project from Sweden-based producer Oliver Knowles. He is set to release his debut EP, ‘Primer’, on 6 Dec, from which the track ‘Barry Manny Drone’ is taken.
Raised in Indonesia until he was six, Knowles references this heritage on the EP by sampling traditional Indonesian instruments to build the various drones that wind their way through the track.
Not that you’re likely to be able to identify the instruments used, but that fact possibly contributes to how the track slowly draws you in to its initial intimate sound – evoking industrial noise, whale song and church organs – before it opens up into a vast, euphoric expanse.
“‘Barry Manny Drone’ is about loneliness”, says Knowles. “The track is meant to be a kind of reassurance or comfort blanket”.
Of the EP as a whole, he adds: “With this EP, the tone of films like ‘Under The Skin’ and ‘Annihilation’, and reading ‘The Southern Reach Trilogy’ that ‘Annihilation’ was adapted from, was very influential”.
You can catch The Keep live at Paper Dress Vintage in London on 12 Feb next year. Watch the video for ‘Barry Manny Drone’ here.
Stay up to date with all of the artists featured in the CMU Approved column by subscribing to our Spotify playlist.
