Photo credit: Si Moore
Tiny Ruins, originally conceived as the solo project of New Zealand singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook, are releasing their third album Olympic Girls on February 1st via Courtney Barnett’s label Milk! Records in Australia, Ba Da Bing Records in North America, Marathon Artists in Europe and on the band’s own imprint Ursa Minor for New Zealand. Today, Tiny Ruins announces NZ album release show dates and shares a new song and video for ‘Holograms’.
Fullbrook comments on the concept behind the video for ‘Holograms’, “The song is a conversation in a way, where one person posits the idea that technology will increasingly connect us. That we will not just be emotionally or mentally connected, but that our bodies will transcend physical and mortal bounds via technology. That we can bring someone back.
For the video, I wanted a sense of longing for this sparkly, colourful other realm, where everyone is connected, in unity. The director Martin Sagadin & I both started out talking about how the song called for a sense of sci-fi, which led us to planets, which led to the idea that we would build planets out of lanterns. This storyline arose where my character is trying to communicate or reach out to another field of existence, via technology. But we felt that the technology could be a bit old and not quite ‘of this time’ – we were inspired by Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting video, or the TV series Maniac, in the sense that technology is kind of old and defunct, and there’s a timelessness or lack of specificity as to time.
The idea of the video, I guess, is that I have a vision of this place I am trying to reach…I gather up particular objects that I feel will connect me to this place. But in the end, it’s futile – I try to reach the planet that appears through the wall, with all my technology revved up, and….it collapses in front of me.”
Olympic Girls was produced by bandmate Tom Healy in the same space (Paquin Studios at The Lab in hometown Auckland) as their 2014 album, Brightly Painted One. Whereas Brightly Painted One was recorded in three short weeks, Olympic Girls recordings took place over a year. It is the culmination of a flourish of spontaneity and experimentation and stridently reaches beyond Fullbrook’s formerly minimalist domain. Olympic Girls is Tiny Ruins’ first release since their 2016 single ‘Dream Wave’, which was recorded and produced by David Lynch and chosen by Lorde for the Hunger Games soundtrack blueprint she curated.
Tiny Ruins – Olympic Girls Album Release Shows (Full Band)
Sunday 10 March – Wellington – Te Auaha, Tapere Nui
Saturday 16 March – Auckland – Pt Chev RSA
Tickets Available now from undertheradar
Purchase / Stream / Pre-Order Tiny Ruins ‘Holograms’
https://tiny-ruins.lnk.to/
Tiny Ruins: Website – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram – Bandcamp – Spotify – Apple Music
Olympic Girls will be released on LP, CD and digitally via Ursa Minor (NZ), Milk! Records (AU) Marathon Artists (UK / EU), and Ba Da Bing Records(North America).
Pre-order now HERE https://tiny-ruins.lnk.to/Buy
Editor Notes:
Conceived in 2009 by songwriter Hollie Fullbrook to describe her solo output, the group has included Cass Basil on bass, Alex Freer on drums and Tom Healy on electric guitar for the past several years. A group renowned for their electric dynamic live on stage, Tiny Ruins have toured the world many times over in solo and varied group formations. They have played stages across countless cities and states with Sharon van Etten, Calexico, the Handsome Family and more.
Hollie Fullbrook is no stranger to acclaim. Debut LP Some Were Meant For Sea (2011) saw her name on billboards, playlists and blogs worldwide. Recorded by Fullbrook and producer Greg ‘J’ Walker (Machine Translations) in a small hall in South Gippsland, Australia, the album was voted 2011’s Album of the Year by BBC World Service arts and culture programme ‘World of Music’ and was a finalist for New Zealand’s Taite Prize in 2012. Tours of New Zealand, Australia and Europe followed, with Fullbrook performing solo, and later as a duo with Cass Basil on upright bass, supporting The Handsome Family throughout the UK. The album’s clutch of “gorgeous vignettes” (BBC) put the artist on the map, and she took to the road from her home in New Zealand to tour extensively through the UK, Europe and North America – a passage repeated many times since.
Second album Brightly Painted One earned more accolades, championed by the New York Times, NPR and David Lynch, and winning Best Alternative Album at the New Zealand Music Awards in 2014. “An album of quiet, devastating beauty,” wrote Pop Matters. The album saw Fullbrook join forces with producer Tom Healy, whom, alongside long-time tourmate bassist Cass Basil and drummer Alex Freer, Fullbrook has worked and toured with ever since.
While spanning continents, Tiny Ruins won fans in critics, crowds and became a sought after collaborator. A New York recording session culminated in the EPHurtling Through (2015) with indie-rock legend Hamish Kilgour (The Clean), while 2016 single ‘Dream Wave’ was recorded and produced by award-winning cult filmmaker and musician David Lynch. Chosen by Lorde for the Hunger Games soundtrack blueprint she curated, Fullbrook teamed up with legendary filmmaker Lynch for the collaboration. “A tranquil, pared-back track [with] a gradually rising sense of the macabre… very special indeed.”(lineofbestfit.com).
