Track By Track: Ed Scissor on Tell Them It's Winter

The pair - British rap artist Scissor and Glasgow-based producer Lamplighter - are also sharing their new visuals for latest single "Week" to celebrate Tell Them It's Winter's release.

Mixing experimental hip-hop with futuristic electronics, neo-classical motifs, ambient synths, and huge ambition, Scissor and Lamplighter have created a record full of emotional heft. It's a fascinating escapade through innovative ideas, but the interplay between words and music is at the core of TTIW.

Listen to Tell Them It's Winter below, and check out Scissor's Track By Track guide after.

Grandzeen

Track one is driven by longing and loss, pain and regret, fear and loathing. It’s a song about doing everything in one’s power to dwell in the past and avoid looking forwards. The organic sound of a solitary piano speaks for history and the pull of the past; Lamplighter’s cocoon of spectral synthesizers strike a contrary tone of disquiet. From there my job felt simple...

TTIW

I wanted to write a song that was timeless in the sense that the protagonist could be alone in either the 1750s, 2150s, or 2016. I’ve tried this a few times before with varying success... Lamplighter’s production is always filmic and on "TTIW" he excelled himself, tying together psychedelic rock influences in the form of a plaintive guitar refrain and resonant analog sounds speaking to a retro-­futurist angle.

Week

This song is about the cyclical nature of one night stands. More than just the typical one night, "Week" is inspired by my tendency of spending one week with a girl, literally co­existing with them for a full seven days before disappearing from their lives forever.

Don’t ask me why.

The Dust Don't Lay

Me and my friends spent a summer ‘riding the pimp storm’. It was stupid, but fun. This song attempts to encompass that place in time, where everyone appeared caught in an unrelenting and uncontrollable cloud of hedonism. The song descends into a dream/nightmare sequence driven by a harrowing drone outro detailing a bike ride with a girl shortly after sunrise.

Any Infrastructure

I wrote this song for anyone who has ever been in a relationship so decaying and empty that the only things keeping it afloat are convenience and laziness. Lamplighter, once again, composed a piece of music of such beauty that it was only ever going to go one of two ways:­ joy or total sadness. I went for the latter.

Hyperballad

This was the last song we wrote to finish off the LP. It is my best attempt of articulating the never­ending spectrum of life and love that spins endlessly throughout time, down every street, in every home, pub, park, college, club and country. In this respect, the song truly is inspired by everyone and everything. Lamplighter wears his more traditional hip hop roots on his sleeve on our new single, he still treads an introspective tone expertly here.

Light Round Here

An extension of "The Dust Don't Lay", "Light Round Here" starts as a typical love/lust story driven by drugs and music, but descends into a lethal blend of madness and psychedelia. Lamplighter and I collaborated on the hook which means a lot to me. I was sat in Jardin Du Luxembourg when I finished it off. He deserves a co­writer’s credit on this song.

AFK

Inspired by a number of sci-­fi references, "AFK" is a doomed love story of a man who purchases ‘Persephone’, an animatronic replicant to replace the former love of his life. Lamplighter rewrote the second half of the song to further articulate the change in mood for the protagonist as he tries (and fails) to ‘make it work’. Suffice to say, the purchase doesn’t go to plan...

Detours

Lamplighter sent me the most beautiful instrumental when I was driving in the rain through San Francisco last year. It was 11 minutes long and I simply couldn’t find any justification to shorten it, so I set about writing a love story about a destructive small town romance that breeds pain and suffering due to short­sightedness and fear of loss. It certainly takes some listening, but we’re both super happy with the result.

Many Made One

I met the love of my life at a doomed music festival in London’s docklands. This song recalls the moment we met and how I felt in the days after. It really is as simple as that, and from experience, simple is always the best way to close a body of work.

Tell Them It's Winter is out today on High Focus. Watch the video for "Week" below exclusively on Best Fit.