After Sex

After a slow start, Cigarettes After Sex saw their fortunes swiftly reversed by a whirlwind of YouTube hits. Although they formed in 2008, CAS waited nearly a decade to release their debut record, and rather fittingly it unfolds at a lethargic pace. The music that Greg Gonzales and his fellow bandmates produce is slowcore in the extreme. The shimmering guitars, placid percussion, and wistfully delivered vocals also reveal their debt to dream pop and shoegaze. More than anything, early supporters of the band have praised Gonzales' unashamed sentimentality and dyed-in-the-wool romanticism. You don't have to venture beyond the opening track to experience his hazy passion.

Cigarettes after Sex, a Brooklyn-based band that formed in the 2008, will release their much anticipated debut album (assuming we we disregard their 2011 self released album, on which their sound has not quite developed) is due later this year. Their sound is characterised by down tempo beats, and reverb / delay drenched guitars that are reminiscent of shoegaze and ambient bands.

Greg Gonzalez often thinks in cinematic terms. “It should have a rougher feel, like a documentary would,” the Cigarettes After Sex frontman tells Apple Music of the recording process for Cry, his ambient pop outfit’s sophomore LP. “In film, it's like, 'Do you shoot on location or do you shoot on set?' We weren't in some office recording studio where there were standards of how you do things and gear set up. Our overall philosophy is to avoid studios. We should just record where it feels nice.” For Cry, that meant returning to a cathedral they’d once played in Germany and setting up in the courtyard of a Mallorcan villa. “It definitely made everyone play in a very relaxed way, which was exactly what I was looking for,” Gonzalez says. “In the end, I liked the energy in the gentle landscape of Mallorca, the wind in the trees under the stars. And that's how the feeling of the record was, too.” Here are the stories behind every song on the album.