The Body & Dis Fig announce their debut collaborative album Orchards of a Futile Heaven, out 23rd February, 2024. Along with the album announcement, The Body & Dis Fig have shared the first single “Holy Lance,” a triumphant anthem which finds The Body guitarist Chip King’s guitar meet the uncanny drone of Dis Fig’s (aka Felicia Chen) accordion in an all-consuming blast, Chen’s voice transforming the moment from anguish to defiance and empowerment.
The Body & Dis Fig also share potent, affecting new single “Dissent, Shame.”
The track’s devastating force lies beyond pure noise or abrasive textures, evoking weighty emotions with a minimalist drone dirge that gradually builds into an enchanting choral passage. Suffused with a raw vulnerability and a longing for catharsis, Dis Fig’s voice searches for escape in the midst of oppressive atmospheres as if determined to find relief from guilt. She elaborates on the track: “It’s about the act of abandonment, and the guilt and shame that comes with it. Running away from something, seemingly towards your own safety, but as your conscience picks you apart the entire way.”
Check out the smouldering new single “To Walk a Higher Path.” Heavy without conforming to any of the usual tropes of metal or electronic music, the trio here carve out their own distinctive sound-world, neon-lit scenes slowly unfurling amidst light and shadow. Rippling synthesisers beam out like searchlights scanning the horizon, slowly coalescing into strafing melody and staggered rhythms, with Dis Fig’s vocal vapour trails floating weightless above The Body’s obliterated howls and blasted electronics.
The Body & Dis Fig are a natural pair. Each has pioneered instantly recognisable worlds of sound all their own that defy any traditional categorisations or boundaries. The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, continually challenge any conventional conception of metal, collaborating with myriad artists and from the folk-leanings of their work with BIG|BRAVE to their groundbreaking work with the Assembly of Light Choir to the intensity of their collaborations with OAA or Thou.
Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, pushes electronic music into dark extremes, from warped DJ sets to avant production, from being a member of Tianzhuo Chen’s performance-art series TRANCE to being the vocalist with The Bug. The Body and Dis Fig find kinship in reimagining what it means to make “heavy music”. Their debut Orchards of a Futile Heaven is the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution.
While sampling has long been essential to each, The Body & Dis Fig deftly meld their differing approaches to sampling and creating extreme sounds until the boundaries are entirely blurred. The two found kinship in their desire to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two. “I always wanted the heavier stuff but I also didn’t really like heavier guitar music,” says Buford. “None of it really felt quite heavy enough to me. A human can’t be as heavy as a machine.” Chen counters, “I love the balance. You could never connect to just a machine as well as you could a human. Which is why the combination is so potent for me. I don’t want to hide. I think nothing connects you more empathetically than another human’s voice.”
The Body & Dis Fig plan to tour throughout the US, UK, and Europe in 2024.
ORCHARDS OF A FUTILE HEAVEN TRACK LISTING:
1 – ETERNAL HOURS
2 – TO WALK A HIGHER PATH
3 – DISSENT, SHAME
4 – ORCHARDS OF A FUTILE HEAVEN
5 – HOLY LANCE
6 – COILS OF KAA
7 – BACK TO THE WATER