Montreal-based Tess Roby will release her debut album, Beacon, in May with the Italians Do It Better label, and ahead of that she has now shared a video for ‘Catalyst’ which features on the album. You can watch the video above.
The video, directed by Roby herself alongside Hugo Bernier, sees her set amongst various landscapes including a beach and rocky, deserted land, accompanying the track’s glistening synths and Roby’s mournful vocals.
Beacon itself was written shortly after the death of her father and is largely inspired by her time spent in Lancashire, where the family travelled often. The album takes its name from a watch tower on Ashurst Hill in Dalton, Lancashire, which was built in 1798 to warn of French invasion during the Napoleonic War.
"Throughout my life I have felt the pull to return to it," she says of the area she visited with her family. "I’m beckoned by father’s roots and by the sullen landscape of fields leading to the coast."
She collaborated with her brother Eliot to make the album in 2015, and they describe it as a spiritual homage to both their father and to the Beacon. Roby recorded the songs with drum machines and synths she found in her father’s recording studio. "All the while the Beacon remained effervescent in my mind," she says. "Visions of it ablaze on the hilltop, standing motionless while I searched for understanding."
Beacon is set for release on May 4.
