Atelier - Lights Towards The Exit

Lossless

£25.90

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: LL1232
Barcode: 739805810100
Release Date: 31 May 2024
Genre: Electronic/Indie Electronica

Switching seaside ambience for a sound shaped by inner-city living, Atelier’s second full-length studio album, Lights Towards The Exit, channels the mood of a sleepless cityscape.

Lights Towards The Exit is Atelier’s second full-length studio album. After the release of Varsam Court at the end of 2019 on Lossless, run by mentors and friends Mathias Schober and Thomas Herb, the duo experimented with different ideas in the studio, and at the start of 2020 a common thread began to appear between a few of the tracks which laid the foundation for the sound of their second album.

Lights Towards The Exit was written and recorded in different spaces in Berlin – from bedrooms in apartment blocks to three different studios across the city. The different locations all had a specific ambience – such as 4th- and 5th-floor bedrooms with busy street views; a studio with no windows in a typical old Berlin backyard complex forever under threat of being sold and gentrified; and a bigger studio with windows on the opposite side of the corridor overlooking the backyard of a mechanic workshop. The final details and edits were completed in Atelier’s current studio, in a contrasting area surrounded by office blocks, plazas, 9-5ers and, most importantly, their friends and colleagues.

Swapping the mountains, sea and seclusion for tall buildings, backyards and a new community, Lights Towards The Exit channels the sensation of being surrounded by people, but still feeling like you're on your own. The album was written through three years of cold winters, sweaty summers and a period where the world stood still during the pandemic. Frustrated with the cease of momentum, but still optimistic, Atelier disappeared from public view, abandoning social media to focus on recording, songwriting and experimentation.

The sound of Lights Towards The Exit is not a departure from their first album, but a progression: influenced by the new surroundings in the duo’s adoptive city, Atelier’s second album is an ode to first-time experiences, new languages, challenges, club culture and the shift from youth to maturity, as well as a balm to those stuck somewhere in between. The overall sound is a lift not in tempo, but in energy, matching the openness needed to make a new start in a new place.

Tracklist:
A1 Lights Towards The Exit A2 Call My Name A3 Miss You A4 Ritual A5 Metal Head B1 Friday B2 Talk To Her B3 Honeysucker B4 Sometimes I Break B5 Confidant