Portland, Oregon synth-pop duo and self-described “future lounge” outfit Reptaliens are gearing up to release a new EP called Wrestling, and today they share the spaced out lead single, “Taking,” featured below.
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“‘Taking’ is about perception and existence,” the band says in a statement. “It’s a song that carries the listener through the balance between action and perspective inherent throughout the human experience. Deviating from our traditional ‘reptaliens sound’ we chose to create a collection of darker songs with which to play on this reoccurring theme.”
The song also arrives with an apocalyptic lyric video that features a dashcam view of a blazing red sky. “The video was shot while crossing the California/Oregon border a month ahead of the single release,” explain Reptaliens. “The chaos that wildfires have brought to the west coast seemed to encompass the visual juxtaposition between the darkness and light that nature brings.”
Reptaliens is the project of husband-and-wife duo Cole and Bambi Browning. The pair engineered, mixed, and produced Wrestling themselves, having written and recorded the EP’s four tracks in July.
According to a press statement, the band started working on Wrestling after borrowing a Roland SH-2 bass synth from STRFKR’s Josh Hodges. The second half of “Taking” feels particularly indebted to the fellow Portland band, as Reptaliens lock into a gliding, whirring synth groove. Reptaliens have toured and collaborated with STRFKR on multiple occasions—most recently for a joint cover of Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” to benefit Brown Girls Rise.
“My favorite tour was the first STRFKR tour we did,” Cole said in an interview last year. “We hadn’t even put out our album yet and decided to take us as their opener and we were so stoked and everything felt so new and exciting and things were really happening. We got to go all the way down to Florida—which is about as far from Portland as you can get, and it was so fun to be with them and dance as astronauts for their set every night.”
“Every time we go out with STRFKR the audience is filled with so much energy and we get to spend each day with people we care about and look up to so much,” Bambi said in the same interview. “It’s like adult art summer camp.”
Wrestling comes after Reptalien’s 2019 album VALIS and their 2017 debut FM-2030. The EP centers Bambi and Cole without their usual collaborators Julian Kowalski, Bryson Hansen, and Tyler Vergian.
“Bambi and I made a song for fun with no intention of performing or starting a band,” Cole told Born Loser of Reptaliens’ origin story. “Then we made more. When we decided to perform them we needed musicians so we asked Julian at a house party to play guitar and Tyler said he would drum when we were hanging out at Pickathon together one year. Rest is history.”
Check out the first glimpse of Reptaliens’ new project below.
Wrestling is out November 6 via Captured Tracks.
