Sanctuary by W. H. Lung
Find enclosed a Bandcamp Friday treat, a new track taken from the Every Inch of Earth Pulsates sessions.
Joe: When we wrote this tune I had just moved to London, after spending much of my time in Ireland. I found myself trying to adapt to this new wonderful but challenging place, trying to work out what I was for and what I wanted to do with my life. One of those times!
I’d also started occasionally sleeping over at someone’s house in west London, hence the line about portobello road. That person had also sent me a poem called sex that was, in its entirety: ‘we are one body we are one soul.’
Some of the Leeds contingent of Lung had lived in a big sprawling flat which they lovingly called The Sanctuary (in the grounds of which we shot the music video for Kaya) and I’d always wanted to write a song with that name. There’s something so essential about a place of ritual safety, a commodity I wanted that so dearly at the time.
Tom: Even though it’s only entering the world properly today, Sanctuary was actually the first song we wrote between Vanities and Every Inch of Earth Pulsates. In fact, the music for it was written before Vanities even came out back in 2021…but we finished it together in early 2022 between Manchester, London and Austin, during our first trip to the States.
In some ways, it’s almost more of a Vanities track in nature as it’s the only one of the new record without a single note of guitar in it and is built up from only samples and synths. Listening back I can place where Joe was living and where we were both at in our lives through the lyrics. Musically it’s super down-tempo because it came about in a time where the only DJ sets and mixes I was listening to were mostly daytime radio shows so there was a sudden influx of balearic and dub mixes to my record collection.
It changed of course in the studio with Ross adding live drums and a hand played sequence on a Pianette. We even sped it up…but it still remains a nice little postcard of where we were at as a band and as people what’s now over 4 years ago.
Artwork by Elli Kypriadis
