‘Suffer’ is the second single from SDH’s new EP Against Strong Thinking, out now on Avant! Records. ‘Suffer’ poses a question about the tolerance of both physical and mental pain. It’s about the mental place humans find themselves in when feeling a pain that obliterates them completely. Director Pol Barrós captures a claustrophobic club setting as our lead protagonist tries to escape the grasp of the physical manifestation of a darkness deep within her. “From the beginning we wanted to develop a narrative close to the cinema and the stories we feel our own,” Pol explains. “In those precious and devastating four minutes of the song we had to fit the emotions that arise when we discovered ourselves as our worst enemy. And in that process the suffering was represented.”
SDH (Semiotics Department of Heteronyms) is the new project of two key figures of the synth-wave/industrial scene of Barcelona. Andrea P. Latorre and Sergi Algiz, founders of the Cønjuntø Vacíø label and also in the post-punk band Wind Atlas, unveil a new act more oriented towards pop music. SDH is change, alteration, distortion, metamorphosis. Their synth-pop songs, sprinkled with EBM and techno, are mysterious, obtuse and suggestive. The project seems to revolve around the idea of fiction. What is the language of feigned personalities? What is fiction? An individual is one and another, is liquid. It is physical.
Debuted on s/t LP by Avant! in 2018, they have supported artists such as Marie Davidson and Merchandise and performed at the Swedish festival Kalabalik På Tyrolen, one of the reference festivals of the darkwave scene Brand new EP Against Strong Thinking has just been put out last Feb 14 by Avant! again. Although six songs may be insufficient, their new tracks highlight the strengths of their debut. The beats are deeper, the atmospheres sadder. The band continues to explore the musical language as a poetic form and trying to discover new questions that allow the great categories of thinking to be undone. Against Strong Thinking talks about the importance of facing all that categorical, dogmatic and conclusive thinking. There is a need for dialogue with everything that seems unquestionable. Again, the questions guide all the songs and, again, there is no single answer. Sometimes this doubt is fertile, sometimes it is painful and involves a total and profound loss.
The album begins with ‘Suffer’, a perfect song to cry in late night clubs, dancing with tears in your eyes. But SDH know how to make a crowd dance too. ‘No Miracles’ is an instant banger and ‘Your Next Story’ sounds cruelly sexy. ‘Poem Against Strong Thinking’ and ‘Four Arms’ have that melancholic trademark sound with interesting musical progressions that we discovered in their first album and there’s also a good surprise: the inclusion of a re-recorded version of ‘You Pt. 12’, the first song released by SDH in 2016, this time with a better production that makes it easily one of their best tracks. The importance of the body, the senses, the dance and the dialectic is present in each theme as a form of struggle of a voice that dialogues with itself against the firmness of its own strong thoughts.
Tour
20/2 Zaragoza, ES @ InterZona Zgz // 21/2 Toulouse, FR @ DAda // 22/2 Nantes, FR @ ASKIP // 23/2 Rennes, FR @ Bar Le Terminus Rennes // 24/2 Paris, FR @ Espace B // 27/2 Marburg, DE @ Trauma im G-Werk / Marburg (w/ Smittness) // 29/2 Mannheim, DE @ Schatten über Mannheim 2020 (w/ Lebanon Hanover, Esben and the Witch, The Dead Sound, Smittness…) // 03/3 Geneve @ URGENCE DISK RECORDS // 04/3 Besançon, FR @ Les Passagers du Zinc // 05/3 Milano, IT @ Macao // 06/3 Verona, IT @ Colorificio Kroen (w / Veil Of Light) // 07/3 Bologna, IT @ Freakout Club (Avant! Records Night | M!R!M, SDH, Veil Of Light – Freakout Club) // 08/3 Roma, IT @ Fanfulla 5/a – Circolo Arci // 10/3 Firenze, IT @ WIP Club // 11/3 Torino, IT @ LivingRoom // 12/3 Marseille, FR @ L’Intermédiaire // 14/3 Barcelona, ES @ Freedonia // 03/4 Valencia, ES @ CSA La Residencia // 01/5 Sassari, IT @ TBA // 02/5 Cagliari, IT @ Zalu’s Club
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Feature photo by Sara Busquets
