The Last Dinner Party announce debut album ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ and share new single ‘On Your Side’
The Last Dinner Party have announced their debut studio album ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ – you can listen to the new song ‘On Your Side’ below.
The much-hyped London band and NME 100 alumni are due to release their first full-length record on February 2, 2024 via Island (pre-order/pre-save here). It’ll feature this year’s singles ‘Nothing Matters’, ‘Sinner’ and ‘My Lady Of Mercy’.
Produced in London by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, Foals), ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ has been further previewed today (November 1) with the track ‘On Your Side’.
In a joint statement, The Last Dinner Party described the tune as “a love song with its hands tied”, adding: “It’s about being so devoted to someone that no matter what they do, no matter how much it hurts, how much you know you should leave, you can’t escape.”
They continued: “The outro came from a wonderful improvised moment in the studio; James Ford had this synthesiser that warped and delayed and played with the fabric of whatever you put into it.
‘So Aurora [Nishevci, keys/vocals] and Abigail [Morris, vocals] sat in the studio after lunch and improvised some piano and vocal lines, letting the sounds build on top of each other until that final gasp.”
The band went on: “It turned into this wrenching shimmering section that sounds like the end of a poisonous relationship; dissolving, fragmenting, painful but also ultimately freeing.”
Explaining the inspiration behind ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’, the members said: “Ecstasy is a pendulum which swings between the extremes of human emotion, from the ecstasy of passion to the sublimity of pain, and it is this concept which binds our album together.
“This is an archeology of ourselves; you can exhume our collective and individual experiences and influences from within its fabric. We exorcised guitars for their solos, laid bare confessions directly from diary pages, and summoned an orchestra to bring our vision to life.”
They added: “It is our greatest honour and pride to present this offering to the world, it is everything we are.”
As announced last month, The Last Dinner Party will play a sold-out headline show at the Roundhouse in London on the eve of their album’s release (February 1). The group previously teased that the gig “could be historical”.
The Last Dinner Party are currently out on their first-ever North American tour, having completed a run of UK dates last month. Recently, the band made their debut appearance on Later… With Jools Holland.
Speaking to NME back in April, frontwoman Morris explained that the forthcoming ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ wouldn’t have come out as it did if the group “hadn’t been playing live for so long” beforehand.
“We were really able to do a lot of experimenting and feeling the emotion of the songs live, and I think that’s informed it,” she said.
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Tom Skinner
NME
