Comfort share single, ‘My Bias’ and announce new EP ‘All Fears, Fully Formed’, out via Fat Cat Records on August 26th
A duo who can be characterised by their fervent rejection of typical methods of composing, Comfort continue to shift the paradigm in their new track ‘My Bias’. Pulsating drumbeats and off-kilter electronics provide a suitable climate for a sound which delves thoroughly into the unchartered. Comfort have not only created a truly subversive musical aesthetic, but a style which proves a productive haven for their political art to flourish. Following on from their self-released debut ‘Not Passing’ and their follow up single ‘Received Life’, the duo sign to Fat Cat Records who will be releasing their first EP towards the end of August.
‘My Bias’ forces the listener to confront their own identity, allowing us to challenge pre-conceived notions we hold about the world as a breeding ground for reductive systemic ideologies surrounding gender and sexuality. However, and perhaps most importantly, Comfort avoid the utopian (and in their view, false) idealisation that systemic beliefs can be updated or altered; as Natalie proclaims “just cos’ it never was means it never will and its wishful thinking.” comfort are not content with gradual social change, which may leave residual biases, but look to tear down the entire system which has produced “centuries of oppression”. What is so damaging for this band is not so much the polemic between opposing belief systems which are embodied by different individuals, but how a marginalised individual can come to despise their own identity through the strength of social conditioning. Speaking on this, Natalie says:
“As I have allowed myself to be who I am more, since coming out, I have had to contend with the ways in which I have been conditioned to hate certain aspects of myself, to downplay who I am and to feel as though I shouldn’t exist. My Bias is a song which tackles how this lack of self-worth is formed.”
Clearly, these subjugating social conditions which the band wage their war are not easily displaced; secured through the inability for a society to conduct itself through objective means. Perhaps the most important question in this new track is an unanswerable one: ‘Who can be objective?’. comfort becomes even more vital for the band, a metaphysical place from which conventions can be challenged thorough sonic experimentation and biting lyrical content. The video does not make abstract these themes through over-the-top production, but presents a visceral and confrontational insight into the life of Comfort: this duo does not exist through an idealised space, but are present in the here and the now. You better not miss them.
Since seeing this duo at the Bunker in Deptford a few years ago, I’ve been totally hooked – a bizarre, explosive, and totally absorbing performance; it has stuck with me ever since. What a fantastic return for a truly unique and incredibly special duo.
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