TesseracT has debuted the reimagined version of their single “Survival”. The song is taken from the forthcoming tour edition of their latest full-length Polaris, which hits stores on September 16th through Kscope. This version of the album comes with a bonus disc titled Errai, a four-track EP with four Polaris tracks – “Survival”, “Cages”, “Tourniquet”, and “Seven Names” – reimagined by the band’s long time live producer and sound engineer Aidan O’Brien. O’Brien comments:
The fascinating thing about taking a track apart to remix, rework, or re-imagine it, is being able to look at each individual element and figure out exactly what makes it tick as a composition.
In the case of ‘Survival’, it was amazing to see how the track still retained a real power and drive even when the distorted guitars and drums were stripped away, and it was very exciting to experiment with rebuilding the track around a basic chord structure and Dan’s vocal by using piano, synths and a handful of sound design tricks to push it into a darker and more cinematic direction.
Using that as a base to build on meant that when I brought the track back to the band they were able to reinterpret a lot of what they had originally written in a totally new context – capitalising on that darker sound and resulting in an arrangement, which in some ways is much lighter and sparser but in others is far more brooding and menacing.”
TesseracT frontman Dan Tompkins offered:
“It’s been fantastic to re-visit and re-work the vocals to some of the Polaris tracks from a different angle and with the benefit of time and space. The normal process of writing TesseracT songs starts with the creation of the music followed by the lyrical content; this time Acle and Aidan have stripped away the music and re-created the songs based around the vocals. As a result this has allowed much more breathing space between both and also highlighted much more detail in the performance.”
The Polaris tour edition, which includes Errai, is available for pre-order now at tesseractband.co.uk, at the Kscope store, and on iTunes. Errai is also available individually on iTunes.
Polaris (Disc 1) track listing:
1. “Dystopia”
2. “Hexes”
3. “Survival”
4. “Tourniquet”
5. “Utopia”
6. “Phoenix”
7. “Messenger”
8. “Cages”
9. “Seven Names”
Errai (Disc 2) track listing:
1. “Survival” (Re-imagined)
2. “Cages” (Re-imagined)
3. “Tourniquet” (Re-imagined)
4. “Seven Names” (Re-imagined)
