Listen: Winter Drones – “Towns Alight” [Premiere]

Winter Drones is London singer/songwriter/guitarist Leon Dufficy’s pet solo project, an arena where he can indulge his experimental tendencies outside of his numerous other projects, namely shoegazers Still Corners and psych-folk troupe Hush Arbors.

Winter Drones’ first outing, 2011’s Blood In The Coffin, played to type as Dufficy often stretched his compositions out, slowly building from hushed silences and the tiniest of sonic details into immense, relentless guitar drones or subtly shifting and cascading ambient movements. “Towns Alight”, Dufficy’s first glimpse of his upcoming latest Winter Drones offering, Heavy Eyes, however, completely flips the script.

An impossibly steady tom-tom beat hits the ground running, its metronomic quality verging on Krautrock. Dufficy is joined by Hush Arbors frontman Keith Wood on guitar, laying down lean and limber psych riffs, seamlessly interlocking with the driving drum pattern. While a dash of breathy and delicate dream-pop vocals offers a winsome counterpoint, “Towns Alight” is unquestionably grounded, feet squarely on earth – a new setting for Winter Drones, where Dufficy had previously either drifted in the ether or seemingly dispatched from the Earth’s core.

Heavy Eyes is out April 14 on Marshall Teller Records digitally and on ultra-limited edition vinyl, which you can preorder here.