Premiere: GLOK & Timothy Clerkin – Empyrean (Official Video)

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Music

Written by Lily Mumby

Andy Bell & Timothy Clerkin are premiering a psychedelic, mind-melting music video alongside the first single from their upcoming joint-album.

Last Thursday, Andy Bell, of RIDE fame (under his GLOK moniker), and Insult to Injury boss Timothy Clerkin announced their brand new seven-track album, Alliance – releasing on Bytes on November 8th. The collaboration finds Andy and Tim with their freak flags flying, working in a freewheeling environment where nothing is off limits, with influences ranging from Death in Vegas and Boards of Canada to James Holden and New Order.

Andy and Tim met when they were introduced by Bytes when the label suggested Tim as a participant for the Dissident Remixed album, put together in 2019. Tim delivered a killer rework of ‘Projected Sounds’, turning the Neu!-meets-Steve Reich original into a tripped-out, slo-mo acid house wonder. They later met in person at the funeral of Andrew Weatherall (whose influence can be heard in every groove of the album) and kept in touch.

The catalyst for the album was Tim finding an old Les Paul in a case that hadn’t been touched for years. It was still in tune (albeit a rather odd tuning) and Tim posted a short film of himself playing it on Instagram. Andy was into what he heard “and said I should make it into a song,” Tim explains.

“I asked if he’d like to do it as a collab and it snowballed from there.” - Timothy Clerkin

Alongside the announcement of their first album together, was the release of the first single from Alliance, the ever so woozy and entrancing Empyrean. The heavenly single combines the analogue-decayed production of Boards of Canada and the ethereal vocals of ‘Xtal’ from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 with a fizzing behemoth of a synth line.

There are echos of psychedelia and psilocybin-induced influences across all acres of this album, with echos of Death in Vegas in tracks such as Scattered and The Witching Hour, where 1960s counter-culture rock mixes with psychedelic electronics. Andy and Tim reached out to photographer and filmmaker Jean De Oliveira to create a music video for Empyrean, the end result being an analogue-fuzzed-out mushroom trip – quite fitting really!

Buy / stream Empyrean HERE

Watch Jean De Oliveira’s music video for Empyrean by GLOK & Timothy Clerkin BELOW!