December 16 2022: Welsh duo LSN will release their second album – Misuse Of Power.
16 tracks deep, featuring collaborations with the likes of Flowdan, Youngsta, Zameen-A, Ruby, Kujo, Roger Robinson and Rider Shafique, Misuse Of Power is a powerful and paranoid experience that weaves an all-too familiar narrative during these turbulent and greedy late stage capitalist times.
“These ideas were born out of a need to keep moving and staying positive during confusing times,” the duo stated on social media when they announced the album earlier this week.
“It was dark times when we were writing it,” adds Jim, one half of the duo. “It’s been a hard few years for us and mostly everyone else. We think that’s reflected pretty clearly in the sound and tone of the whole thing; there’s an underlying paranoia to it all.”
Tense, brooding and at points breath-taking; Misuse Of Power is a stark body of work that sucks you into the duo’s frustrations, passions and fears. Weaved together with short, dystopian interludes the album is sculpted and delivered as a whole experience.
“We’re presenting it as a cohesive piece,” Jim continues. “That proved to be a nice challenge, but it paid off. It’s mostly 140bpm which we’d somewhat planned from the start, but generally we aimed to make a heavyweight bit of work.”
Heavyweight in every sense; the album will drop on Sentry the label run by Youngsta who recently appeared on 1 More Thing with Nomine following their own album Ascension. Dubstep pioneer Youngsta also appears on the track End Theme alongside Zameen-A who provides ice cold strings that fit the album’s stern and uncompromising message.
“We were striving to understand what was going on,” says Dan, the other half of the duo who are based in Bethesda. “Not just the world over, but also within the walls of Wales. It felt like parts of Wales and other parts of the world were getting sold off because of people with money trying to buy into places without money. We were witnessing and watching it first hand, living in a beauty spot.”
“Also there was so much conspiracy and bullshit floating about, it was hard to find any truth,” Dan continues. “We tried to stay grounded without getting lost in people’s agendas. In a nutshell it was just trying to understand what the fuck was going on.”
Two years later, we’re still nowhere near uncovering just how much corruption, disinformation and bare-faced propaganda we were subjected to and manipulated by. The silver lining is that albums like this were made during that time. It’s not the only meaningful body of work Jim and Dan have created during recent times, either.
LSN have also been working with award-winning poet and singer Roger Robinson as the producers behind Roger’s Black Space Quartet, a sublime project that smoulders with Mezzanine-level soul. Also featuring Welsh singer Ruby Ann Jones, both collaborators appear on LSN’s last Artikal release Always Sinking and appear on different tracks on this new album too.
We expect Dan and Jim to continue moving, creating and staying positive during confusing times in the future. Next stop: Misuse Of Power. Released fully on December 16, the sampler is available to pre-order now. You can check the first track to be revealed from the album – 23 – on Bandcamp now.
LSN – Misuse Of Power is out December 16 on Sentry Records: Pre-Order now
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