Last October we premiered the video for Kelora's "Boy", which put a digital spin on celtic folk in a David-Gilmour-endlessly-riding-the-night-bus-in-the-rain sort of way. The Glaswegian duo comprised of Benedict Salter and Kitty Hall are adept at layering sparse and intricate sounds to create a strange sense of both tranquility and unease, like one of those dreams that's incredibly close to reality but the details are slightly off – you walk down the hall of your childhood home expecting to enter the living room but instead it's the kitchen, all the pictures are upside down, your cat looks at you weird. That sort of thing.Anyway, now they're back at it again with a new song called "Nightingale", which is equally unsettling in that it opens with what sounds like a church choir comprised of ghosts and expands into their unusual but somehow perfect marriage of harpsichord and drum samples. The video was filmed (on a phone, the same as "Boy") in a stately home that has been abandoned, subsequently lost its grandeur and is now the sort of place teenagers hang out and smoke weed.Give it a watch below. Once you've taken a moment to reflect you can read the brief chat we had with the duo over email all the way from Rome, where they currently are.Noisey: Hello from London to Rome. How is it over there?
Kelora: We're playing a gig here on Saturday night.Nice. Rome, come through. Could you describe "Nightingale" a little bit for us?
It came together from a lot of fragments of lyrical ideas. A lot of people in Glasgow have noticed a massive rise in homelessness over the last few years, and some of it came from that: ''I'm close, you walk past me every day.'' There's also the association in Sweeney Astray with people turning into birds when they go mad, and hearing birds outside the window of my flat at night. We could probably go through each line and explain how it came about but maybe its best to leave it ambiguous and let people put it together in their own heads.You filmed the video at an abandoned stately home just outside of Glasgow right?
Yeah, these places are everywhere in Glasgow and in the surrounding landscape. We're kind of obsessed with this sort of stuff so its easy to find and use.Looks pretty fucking creepy to be honest. Did anything spooky happen?
We went to scope out Dunmore house before we filmed it. That was quite sinister. It's a bus ride from Sterling, a tiny village off the motorway. It was one of those bus journeys were progressively everyone else got off until we were only ones left on. Dunmore is a small cluster of buildings and you cross a field to get the old house. It was misty and grey and we saw the front of the house emerge from the mist. It was an amazing feeling. I felt like I wanted to be everywhere at the same time. We lay down in the grass with our phones and started filming the main façade, which is in the video at the beginning, I think. In a lot of these places electric fences, falling bricks or who you might encounter is more frightening than 'what' you might find.It feels quite gothic; stately homes, desolate surroundings and the suggestion of madness. Was that the intention?
These houses are far from stately now – they're meeting places for local teenagers. I don't think it has the grandeur or elegance of gothic romanticism, its not supposed to. We filmed the video on our phones with a budget of whatever the train ticket cost. These places are full of broken glass and plastic bags. I think the idea is to create a kind of modern wilderness. It's not traditional or ancient gothic or romantic or looking back. Its about now, this is what these places look like now.Do you believe in ghosts?
No.How would you describe Kelora to someone who hasn't heard you before?
A smartphone that's been left in the moors. Some kids are singing at the other end.Anything you'd like to add?
We're currently recording a new EP which will be out around September, we're also putting on a gig in London with a mixture of artists from Glasgow and London. The date isn't confirmed but it'll be the weekend of 23 June.Thanks!Hear more from Kelora on the world wide web here and here.Follow Noisey on Twitter.
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Kelora: We're playing a gig here on Saturday night.Nice. Rome, come through. Could you describe "Nightingale" a little bit for us?
It came together from a lot of fragments of lyrical ideas. A lot of people in Glasgow have noticed a massive rise in homelessness over the last few years, and some of it came from that: ''I'm close, you walk past me every day.'' There's also the association in Sweeney Astray with people turning into birds when they go mad, and hearing birds outside the window of my flat at night. We could probably go through each line and explain how it came about but maybe its best to leave it ambiguous and let people put it together in their own heads.You filmed the video at an abandoned stately home just outside of Glasgow right?
Yeah, these places are everywhere in Glasgow and in the surrounding landscape. We're kind of obsessed with this sort of stuff so its easy to find and use.
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We went to scope out Dunmore house before we filmed it. That was quite sinister. It's a bus ride from Sterling, a tiny village off the motorway. It was one of those bus journeys were progressively everyone else got off until we were only ones left on. Dunmore is a small cluster of buildings and you cross a field to get the old house. It was misty and grey and we saw the front of the house emerge from the mist. It was an amazing feeling. I felt like I wanted to be everywhere at the same time. We lay down in the grass with our phones and started filming the main façade, which is in the video at the beginning, I think. In a lot of these places electric fences, falling bricks or who you might encounter is more frightening than 'what' you might find.It feels quite gothic; stately homes, desolate surroundings and the suggestion of madness. Was that the intention?
These houses are far from stately now – they're meeting places for local teenagers. I don't think it has the grandeur or elegance of gothic romanticism, its not supposed to. We filmed the video on our phones with a budget of whatever the train ticket cost. These places are full of broken glass and plastic bags. I think the idea is to create a kind of modern wilderness. It's not traditional or ancient gothic or romantic or looking back. Its about now, this is what these places look like now.
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No.How would you describe Kelora to someone who hasn't heard you before?
A smartphone that's been left in the moors. Some kids are singing at the other end.Anything you'd like to add?
We're currently recording a new EP which will be out around September, we're also putting on a gig in London with a mixture of artists from Glasgow and London. The date isn't confirmed but it'll be the weekend of 23 June.Thanks!Hear more from Kelora on the world wide web here and here.Follow Noisey on Twitter.