With just over a month until the release of their new album, Lust For Youth have unveiled a Silent Servant remix of their album-title track ‘International’. The forthcoming LP is set for release on June 10th via Sacred Bones Records.
This particular remix showcases that dark & unsettling vibe that immediately grabs you the way that any track from Juan Mendez a.k.a. Silent Servant would while still containing the raw emotion of the original piece.
‘International (Silent Servant Remix)’ will be featured on the ‘International’ Remixes EP, which is available as a download when you buy an LP copy of the album or the deluxe digital version of the album. There will be a cassette version available with purchase of the limited edition version of the LP directly from Sacred Bones.
To put it bluntly, Lust For Youth’s International is unrecognizable as a Lust For Youth record on first listen. Frontman Hannes Norrvide’s previous solo albums under the Lust for Youth moniker have been described as “dark, cold, atonal, tormented, lonely, and lower than lo-fi.” The approach on‘International’ has shifted dramatically. Writing as a three-piece now, withlongtime live collaborator Loke Rahbek and new band member Malthe Fischer, who produces and plays guitar, LFY have entered a completely new territory. The result is stunning. International is a buoyant synth masterpiece in the vein of early Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys and New Order. Norrvide’s work has always had pop sensibilities buried deep in the reverb, but the hooks are front and center on International, and there is nothing lo-fi about it.
That is not to say the record is without substance. There are still some deeply introspective moments as well, notably the instrumental passages ‘Ultras’ and ‘Basorexia’, which evoke the morning-after loneliness that a lot of earlier LFY work has explored. According to Rahbek, “the record sort of happened by chance. Hannes and I had talked about recording some stuff together for the fun of it, and Malthe offered to help us record. Initially, we were just going to do a song or two for the fun of it, but within a few weeks it was obvious that it was a combination that worked. Malthe went from recording to joining within the first few days and we made the whole thing over the last half-year, drinking gin and tonics everyday in the studio. The period was strange, terrible things happened in everyone’s life outside of the studio, so as a result many hours were spent in the studio, like a safe zone.”
“As the title indicates,” Rahbek adds, “the record deals with the rootless, sometimes almost inhuman, nature of traveling and touring. Hotel rooms and strangers' beds, drugs and clubs, and the impossibility of living a regular life.” It may be an irregular life, but nothing could suit them better; International is Norrvide’s magnum opus, and with Fischer’s production and Rahbek’s co-writing skills, the potential this band has always shown has been gloriously realized.
The deluxe edition of International, exclusively available through Sacred Bones mail order will ship with a bonus cassette featuring remixes by Silent Servant, Total Control, Helm, Cult of Youth, Marshstepper & more. This bonus remix EP will also be available as a deluxe edition of the album available from digital retailers.
