Coventry dark disco duo Batsch share new single ‘Too Few’ via Golden Palms
Batsch return with latest single 'Too Few', a dreamy alt-pop track infused with jazz, released through Golden Palms Records
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“A strange creature”
BBC 6 Music, Tom Ravenscroft
"Rather Curious"
BBC Radio Wales
“Delightfully off-piste electronic pop music”
Clash
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Today Coventry based duo Batsch, return with their newest single, ‘Too Few’, via Golden Palms Records.
Batsch have been an ever changing, avant pop collective that have been experimenting with synth pop, disco and jazz throughout the last decade. Over the years, Batsch have morphed into different variations, starting as a four piece, including acclaimed soda pop and funk artist Pink Shabab, to a three piece, and now to a duo, consisting of Mason Le Long and Matt Rheeston.
Having served for many years as a house band for Tin Angel Records, Batsch toured extensively with artists such as Laetitia Sadier, Marker Starling, Nicholas Krgovich, Devon Sproule, and John Moods. Over the years, Batsch continue their collaborations with global artists as they have featured on compilation albums such as 2015’s Dear Janet, a love story to Janet Jackson, alongside artists such as Tune Yards and Nicholas Krgovich and appeared on EP’s for the likes of Pick a Piper (Caribou drummer). In addition to this, frontman Mason Le Long, operates from his DIY studio, mastering acclaimed albums for the likes of Mabe Fratti and Crack Cloud.
With ‘Too Few’ Batsch have delivered another perfect example of the skewed, infectious, dreamy alt-pop they are known for. It is the first new material that Mason Le Long and Matt Rheeston have produced since the band became a duo and marks a departure in their approach to composition. Over Rheeston’s bebop-flavoured drum loop and a haunting synth refrain, Le Long’s deadpan vocal calmly depicts a protagonist losing all perspective on their own welfare, sitting right on the knife’s edge between mania and joy. In Le Long’s own words, “I was struggling with some personal issues last autumn, though clearly in denial, so I was just trying to laugh it off. The lyrics were supposed to be poking fun at my own state of mind, but it was only on reflection, listening back a few weeks later, that I actually came to terms with what I was experiencing, and how it’s reflected in the song.”
In 2020 the band were commissioned by the Coventry City of Culture Trust to contribute a new track to their lockdown visual album, Front Room Sessions, joining forces with film director, Michelle Bailey, to create ‘Amateur Mechanic (Meshes of Hillfields)’, a summer banger with an eerie visual art piece to accompany it, all made by the collaborators remotely, in the days when Coronavirus was a new thing. The free time during the pandemic, allowed the members of the band to explore new territories, which resulted in the band’s side project !nvisible Hand, as well as their label Golden Plecs.
In the autumn of 2022, both members of the Coventry-based duo were awarded a ‘Nest’ residency, an initiative from local arts charity, Talking Birds, in which artists of all disciplines are given funding and studio space to develop an idea. With the time and freedom for Batsch to experiment with synths and vocal effects, it was during this residency that ‘Too Few’ took shape. Whilst retaining their signature combination of vintage synths and disco bass lines, which were key features of their most recent album, Attend Every Party (2021), and their not-quite-eponymous debut, Batch (2017), ‘Too Few’ has been constructed with a simpler arrangement and more of a focus on ‘self-sampling’. Previously the band have used samplers in their live set as a tool for expanding their sound palette on stage and recreating elements from their recordings. With their new material, however, they’re approaching it with the intent to use samplers more integrally in the compositional process. This creative choice has also naturally led to a shift in Rheeston's drum sound, notably from the dead, 'tea-towelled', disco sound of their previous work to the high-tuned, ‘unmuffled’, jazzy sound you can hear on ‘Too Few’, which is courtesy of a mid 1960s Olympic drum set, acquired from Le Long's school music department many years ago. Batch’s new single ‘Too Few’, confirms that their ability to write fresh, addictive tunes is as healthy as ever and marking a new era for a band that is here to stay.
