Blue Flowers (Westerman, Nilüfer Yanya, Puma Blue) latest signing, London quartet Mylar, have announced their debut EP Elsewhere and shared the first track from the four-track EP, “Plastic Champ.”
“Plastic Champ” is a track that explores the limited language and images around masculinity. “This song came together really quickly from a cartoonish synth line from our drummer Rob”, explains Tom Short, the band’s lead vocalist and the writer of the song’s lyrics. “I got the idea of a narrator who’s on the run from their own lies which is why the vocals feel a bit frantic. There’s an important discussion around the bad aspects of men’s behaviour but I was thinking more about the very limited images of masculinity that we have. Words like champ sound dated but the image of stern manhood they represent is still with us and I liked the idea of a character who has tried too hard to fit this mould, they’ve faked it for too long and now they’re raving about these ideas like a fool in a morality play.”
The song comes with a Beatrix Blaise directed video with animation by Qianhui Yu.
Says Beatrix on the track, “Plastic Champ is such a cartoon style song, it instantly made me think of Qianhui Yu who we’ve previously featured on Girls In Film. There are a few people that stick out to you when you’re creating, and she’s always been one of them. So I really wanted to see what we could do together. And we built on the live-action/ cartoon world tropes of ‘goody’ and ‘baddy’ and the conflicts they may have in this semi-western, semi-anime 80’s style world. It also pays homage to the days of music where fun and not taking yourself too seriously were important.”
The forthcoming EP, Elsewhere, was recorded and produced by Mylar in London in the first half of 2021 and mixed and mastered in Spain by Iñaki de las Cuevas and Julío Rodríguez Sangrador respectively. The EP explores the universal vulnerabilities of their internal selves and those around them, surrounded by a world spinning at a different rate.
“Most of the lyrics are about people feeling trapped by circumstance, or having a sense of time running away, or pivotal moments where you’re hyper-aware of the direction things will take,” explains the band.