ondon five-piece Fanfarlo return with their first new music in 18 months in the shape of new EP, The Sea, released through their own label New World Records on 14th October. The four-track EP opens with ‘A Distance’, which will also feature on the band’s forthcoming third album. A “disco jam” propelled by Moroder-style arpeggios and swimming in bongos and mellotron strings, ‘A Distance’ also explores the “fraught attempts at communicating with each other” of human beings and “how it seems we are reduced to some sort of echo or projection of ourselves in someone else’s brain”. Now, be honest, how many other bands write “disco jams” about that? Title track, ‘The Sea’, meanwhile, is a woozy, white-noise laden affair about humanit evolving back into living in the sea, driven by an instinctive and melancholy longing for a simpler time. It’s about following a call of the wild, our bodies still in search of that elusive lost golden age. This story of giving up the whole project of land dwelling also paves the way for the band’s third record, a concept album about human evolution and possible futures. ‘The Sea’ and the following two tracks are all exclusive to this EP release. ‘The Wilderness’ talks about the call of a different wild: the wilderness inside, the daunting possibilities of life and all the misguided ways we choose to deal with them. It’s about “the sad beauty of squandered chances and waiting for something to happen,” says singer and main songwriter Simon Balthazar. ‘Witchi Tai To’ – a cover – closes the EP with Fanfarlo’s tribute to the magical and life-affirming adaptation of a traditional native American Peyote song as rendered by Jim Pepper back in 1971. It heralds a hopefully fertile sideline in exquisitely curated cover versions.