The anteroom is the space between – a chamber that separates the known and the unknown. In science fiction, it can be the airlock of a spaceship: "a passage into a void in which no human scream can be heard, that will decompose your body in an instant," as songwriter-producer Tom Krell puts it.
His immersive fifth album as avant-pop experimenter How To Dress Well is an exploration of this space, and the emotional cost of existing in such a limbo. "It can be a great place that allows us to connect to the unknown safely. Or it can be the actual worst," says Krell, whose own experience of the anteroom came during "two years in which my life just came crashing down."
Written during that difficult time, his new album The Anteroom is a brutal, beautiful journey through blizzardous electronic noise, fragile melodies and poignant poetry that helped him find his way back to "the avant forge in which I first discovered making music". Returning to the barrier-breaking sound and aesthetic of his early work, it's his grandest statement yet – the culmination of a 10-year journey, and dawn of a daring new one.
Recorded in a converted garage in his new home of Los Angeles, the album follows Care, his 2016 full-length which Krell describes as "the apotheosis of a certain path I started following on my debut album, Love Remains." Love Remains, which introduced fans to his smouldering, evocative universe in 2010, collided contorted echoes and murky, muted beats with haunting vocals.
It was celebrated for its pop undercurrent by fans and media alike, which led to Krell testing his pop mettle further on each release that followed (2012's Total Loss and 2014's What Is This Heart). "I wanted to see how far I could push that side of my work," he explains. By Care, Krell was collaborating with Jack Antonoff and playing large venues traditionally reserved for rock acts – quite an evolution for an artist whose identity was forged at sweat-soaked underground raves, on bills next to punishing noise artists. On The Anteroom, Krell has reoriented himself toward the music he was steeped in when the project began, within the community of experimental and avant-garde music from which he emerged as an artist.
STANDARD 2x black heavyweight 12" vinyl, w/t labels, 2 x poly-lined inner sleeve, Gatefold outer sleeve, 4-page booklet plus Download card