Premiere: Wellington's Womb Unveil Lilting New Single 'Feeling Like Helium'

Wellington trio Womb are lifting the lid off lucid new single 'Feeling Like Helium' as the first track from their eagerly-anticipated debut album Like Splitting The Head From The Body. The trio, which is made up of Forrester siblings Haz, Charlotte and Georgette, laid down the bones of the song with Rohan Evans of Arcade Recordings before taking it home and fleshing it out further with rich textures and experimental augmentation. Lyrically, the song paints a vivid picture that emerged as part of being housebound due to illness, as Haz explains in an email to UTR:

"Charlotte wrote this song a year ago whilst having a fever, where she was stuck inside for a few days and felt compelled to make music. I feel like the song carries some sort of fever-dream in a way, with the dream of embodying helium. I like all the sensations that come with this - floating, moving through substances, being invisible. This feels very alive within the instrumentation of the song and how each component converses with another. The dream of floating or of leaving the body also relates to different stuff Charlotte was reading at the time, on the boundaries between humans and nature, humans and other humans. The lonely sensation of being forever in a closed body, but the potential in understanding that the body is not just a contained entity. We have bacteria in us and around us which help us, and that we in return help; we have electrons bouncing off our bodies on to others and theirs bouncing on to us. Feeling like helium is wanting to transcend all this physical, sweaty hot space, to exchange electrons, while realising that we are earthy bodies tethered to the ground. In other words, this song is about splitting the head from the body."

My sister Georgette, most commonly a visual artist, sung on this song which was exciting as it is the start of her using her voice to make music. I love the way Charlotte and Georgette's voices merge and weave around each other. Georgette also did the drums! I played the other guitar and also enjoyed chopping up and pitch-shifting Charlotte's vocals (with the effect of making them sound like mine lol). Charlotte then layered the track with her strings. We recorded the foundations live with Rohan Evans of Wine Cellar (who will also be engineering the album), and then long-time friend Thomas Lambert, of Sonorous Circle, mixed it : )"

Take a listen to the lilting tune and see below for details of Womb's shows in Auckland this weekend...

Womb will be in Auckland for The Others Way Festival on Friday night, and as a special pre-festival treat will be playing The Night Before The Others Way show tomorrow at the Wine Cellar. 

Photo by Thomas Lambert