Leeds’ favourite audiovisual music outfit Team Picture have traded in their marching band uniforms for something more colourful. With the release of their much-anticipated debut album, Team Picture are back after a 2-year wait with a more focused approach towards their signature sound.
Themes centre around the value of creative identity in an automated age, the increasingly disposable nature of art and where that leaves its creators. With an even stronger visual identity than before, the album art features Louis Bryne’s toothy, voluptuous humanoids which stare at the listener in a dumbfounded fashion.
Leaving their heavier sound behind, the new record conceptually pulls from the peculiar John Philip Sousa’s essay The Menace of Mechanical Music. Borrowing the title and adopting a new structural flow, this debut suggests an overall theme of vulnerable Posthumanism and identity searching. Heaving with synths and excellent vocal performances, The Menace of Mechanical Music is an album to be experienced in full, a moody slew of tracks that share their ambience and post-punk roots with Team Picture’s previous releases.
With stand out tracks such as ‘Baby Rattlesnake’, ‘this is the’, ‘Handsome Machine’ and ‘Quit Reading’ just to name a few, it’s apparent that Team Picture are not messing around when it comes to memorable tracks that pack both atmosphere and attitude.
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Words by Aistė Samuchovaitė
Feature Image by Sam Joyce