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debut album includes the single “A 10+ minute epic, ‘Cymbeline’ feels dark, almost doom-laden, weighty rather than heavy, rather beautiful and darkly angelic. Raw, feral and at the same time refined, crafted and painted, it touches on places Godspeed might want to take you” also includes ‘Terzo’ : an Italian word translating as ‘the third’, it represents an additional presence that new darkwave/shoegaze/post-rock duo Terzo sensed inhabiting their most creative moments when they began working together. Karl Clinton (former bassist in post-punk act Diskoteket, plus co-founder of improvisational project Tsantsa) and Billie Lindahl (lead singer and guitarist in dream pop/dark folk act Promise and the Monster) share a mutual penchant for dark sounding music in all its forms. They have also both been itching to free the shackles binding them to strict timelines; not only those of the music industry, but society in general. “Terzo was born out of a discussion about songs we mutually liked and a wish to try a different work process to our then current projects,” they state. “We wanted to do whatever we wanted without restrictions, using our obsession and gut feeling as guidance.” Their preference for music and art that embodies a degree of doom and gloom is evident on their upcoming self-titled debut album, with its central theme of ‘love and death’ linking all six tracks. Their very first studio session yielded the 10+ minute post-rock epic ‘Cymbeline’, a unique cover of a 1991 song by the Celtic/world music singer-songwriter and composer Loreena McKennit, which has a lyric lifted from the William Shakespeare play of the same name. It was released as their debut single in February 2023. While in the middle of recording it, they both had the sensation that a third presence was keeping them company. Intrigued by the thought, “we started talking about the appearance of a third element, in sleep and in dreams,” they explain. “Terzo is about acknowledging this, the swirl that light in the darkness generates, opening ourselves out toward our own weaknesses.” The duo followed it up with ‘Eve Seven’, an entrancing piece in which distorted electric guitars embedded in thick layers of synths and drums provide the perfect backdrop for a bewitching vocal performance. Outside Left described it as “a spacious Cocteau Twins dreamscape that beguiles in all the right places,” while Brutal Resonance praised the fact that it “throws in some jazz influences for quite a beautiful sound that is serene, addictive and heartfelt.” Terzo travelled to New York in the summer of 2022 to play their first live shows, with the video maker and photographer Johan Lundsten accompanying them to document the trip. Footage from this can be seen in the videos for both ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘Eve Seven’. TERZO
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