As we at 7bitarcade wait with varying degrees of patience for the full Great Escape schedule to be revealed, it’s probably not helpful to keep adding new potential clashes to the increasingly daunting pile by falling for yet more bands on an already stellar-looking lineup. With that in mind, Luxembourg’s Persian Rabbit are definitely a new band to fall for on a now even more stellar-looking lineup. Continuing the recent spate of immersive and spellbinding Bands of the Day, the quintet arrive in Brighton next month for what is bound to be a superb showcase of their self-described “dark hippy” sound. Combining orchestral elements with typical post-rock atmospherics is an ambitious undertaking, but its definitely worked before. For Persian Rabbit, it definitely works again.
‘Sell The Light’ is the first of many flooring displays of the band’s ability to make a track feel powerful without ever sending decibel levels particularly high at all. The quintet don’t need a bassline that vibrates the posters off their walls, any piledriving hooks or rib-shaking drum fills; their crescendos leave an impact without any of Persian Rabbit ever needing to break a sweat. The lead single of their self-titled debut album is still a powerful beast, albeit a docile one. The band’s 2012 EP, meanwhile, offers a quartet of tracks ringing out above a synthetic buzz that ends up unfortunately distracting, and is fortunately far less noticeable in more recent work. Despite the somewhat overpowering hum, the untitled releases does provide tracks such as ‘Valour’ and ‘Love With Breeze’, which remain early examples of the band’s knack for a more tranquil composition, with the former an outright highlight of the quintet’s earlier work.
Persian Rabbit wear their influences on their sleeve during their recordings from De Drie Maagdenkapel. Described on the Great Escape website as a middle ground between Godspeed You! Black Emperor and experimental folk artist Shannon Wright, the two-track release became a catalyst for the band’s evolution into a much more formidable force. Fast forward to March’s release of their inaugural full-length effort and Persian Rabbit have become a standout player in Luxembourg’s rarely appreciated music scene. ‘Ginger’ and ‘Sound From Beyond’ are fortunately called up after the De Drie Maagdenkapel release, while the Pain of Salvation-esque ‘Inside Hole’ resurfaces having opened the quintet’s debut EP.
Elsewhere comes track after track of material that will ring out over Brighton in four short weeks time, and tomorrow we find out which of the Great Escape’s many venues will play host to one of the festival’s most intriguing acts; a band which are perhaps Luxembourg’s hottest musical prospect right now, determined to make a name for themselves amongst a sea of emerging heavyweights crashing into Britain’s south coast.
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