Darkwave duo a place both wonderful and strange resurrect eight-year-old album Matter And Desire

Matter And Desire had lingered in an unfinished state for nearly a decade. “We set out to make this album eight years ago, and it simply did not happen,” the duo explained. “But there was never a reason, or really a desire, to finish this album. The album never went away though. We kept collecting sounds, lyrics, and even full songs.”

The album centres on themes of ecology. “It's the staring down an apocalypse of the natural, the political, and the personal, and saying ‘what am I going to do now because I can't simply do nothing?’” the band said in a statement.

The pair suggested that personal and creative evolution was necessary before the material could feel authentic. “We had needed to become different people in our own lives and as a creative pair, to ever get these songs to be realised and authentic,” they said.

The duo, whose name is taken from a line in Twin Peaks, have spent the past decade touring both a live show and an audio-visual piece titled “Keys Open Doors: The Hidden Life of Laura Palmer”, which received its final performance in April following the death of David Lynch. Their most recent prior releases were two EPs from 2018.

Marshalek also works as a writer and DJ, and is a member of the collective behind “This Party Is Killing You!”: The Robyn Party, an acclaimed pop club night. Hajek maintains a separate art practice and performs solo as Edith Pop.