Boombox Blitz: Aerialists fly through the air with ‘Group Manoeuvre II’

Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.

The sky rips open. Thunder cracks the atmosphere, and a bolt of lighting strikes the earth’s barren shell. A glow emerges out of blackness like a centipede frolicking between the reeds. A singular voice ebbs and flows across the greenery, casting shadows in unlikely places and calling a choir of voices to ascend from the unknown. That torrential, inescapable force comes in the form of musical-mayhem seekers Aerialists, who cull together slivers of pop and rock with traditional folk and Gaelic music into a blend that’s truly not of this world. Musicians Màiri Chaimbeul (harp), Adam Iredale-Gray (guitar) and Elise Boeur (fiddle) comb the most hidden recesses of untainted imagination, often utilizing modern mechanics, for a poetic retelling of humanity and ornate truths.

“Each golden day is a shifting skyline only constant change / And a view that’s not mine, what is not for sale is my soul / Protection phosphorescent stars on an ink black ocean,” vocalist Emily Milliard’s angelic chant washes over you as the song’s only lyrical outlines, and your bones are quickly electrified. The quintet leave you to your own devices to cultivate the storyline, paired with vibrant flashes of the countryside, sometimes golden brown, other times starbursts landing upon the dirt. But child-like wander is bedeviling. The accompanying visual, directed by Ali Calladine, with cinematography by Bray Jorstad, is a celestial masterpiece of stunning color palettes, intense lighting and the unwieldy magnificence engrained in all of us that only comes and goes as the tides locked in the moon’s grasp.

“Group Manoeuvre II” is lifted from the band’s 2018 studio record, Group Manoeuvre. In the past year alone, they’e snagged opportunities at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Belgium’s renowned Muzieklub ‘t Ey, the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Hillside Festival, Deep Roots Festival, Northern Lights Festival Boréal and Islands Folk Festival, among countless other enviable gigs. The group is currently eyeing a new collection of music, release timetable not yet determined.

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