Archive's Dave Pen shares experimental solo track Death Of Adele

Still of Dave Pen from Death Of Adele video — (Image credit: Dave Pen/Press)

Archive and BirdPen vocalist Dave Pen has released a transformative performance art video for the experimental solo track, Death Of Adele. It's the second single from his debut solo album, Abran Wish & The Light Party, which is out on October 29 via JAR Records.

After 25 years of making music, the musician and singer has turned to his more experimental side to create a concept album about a cult called The Light Party and its leader. “I have always been slightly obsessed with cults,” states Pen. “I’m fascinated by the mindset of it all and how easily we can be manipulated through fear, feelings, love and control. I’ve written songs about cult mentality for both Archive and BirdPen, but never a concept album in its entirety. I wanted to create a story about someone who was lost with nothing but is then given a new chance of life from a higher power.”

As for the name of the record’s chief protagonist, Pen explains, “I came up with Abran Wish and his wife Adele Cutler after making anagrams from words involving cults, developing the story as I wrote the songs in my home studio in Southampton. I had wanted to make a solo album for a while and for a first effort I wanted it to be made entirely by myself. The various lockdowns and complete disappearance of European touring for both Archive and BirdPen provided the opportunity to do it.”

Death Of Adele opens with ambient white noise, followed by sporadic piano chords and a layered, ghostly sounding vocal that are all suggestive of travel into another dimension. Pen reveals that “it is about sacrifice and martyrism. Adele takes her own life due to the escape of two recruits who expose the cult to the outside world, with her death seen as a graduation to the next realm. It marks the beginning of the end for the Light Party with the walls closing in on Abran and his followers as they mourn her death and prepare for their own graduation.”

The krautrock-inspired song represents the first part in a trilogy of performance art videos from the album, with part 2 released with previous single The Storm in late August. Part 3 will follow on album release date.

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