Zach Top Colours Yet To Be Named

"Colours Yet To Be Named" marks the third album release by Lightning In A Twilight Hour, the latest project of Bobby Wratten (The Field Mice, Northern Picture Library, Trembling Blue Stars), one of the most brilliant and prolific songwriters in recent British pop history. This is the follow up to 2022's "Overwintering", which was chosen by BBC 6Music's Mark Radcliffe, as his album of the year. A soundworld of alternate tunings, experimental guitar, clicks, crackles, strange atmospherics and mournful synths, "Colours Yet To Be Named" seeks to communicate feelings, long before any lyrical content hits home; knowing that the beating heart of a record is first and foremost the sound palette on display. The album undertakes a journey beginning with American poetry in England and ends with English poetry in Switzerland. Between these two points are visits to mid-sixties Paris and mid-eighties London. A trip to a Nico-inspired subterranean cocoon and a place of authoritarian atrocities and dehumanisation. The latter, drawing parallels between the past and present. In other songs, Brian Eno meets a simple Yoko Ono inspired lyric where the vocal line must continually adjust to the five circling chords underneath and a storm at sea encroaches on an initially tranquil song of friendship that becomes ever more uncertain and adrift. Written, recorded and mixed between autumn 2024 and spring 2025, the album features Anne Mari Davies taking lead vocals on four tracks and contributing an array of additional vocals ranging from spoken word to unison, to the highly processed and experimental. Beth Arzy sings lead and harmony on the closing song and contributes backing vocals to three others. Michael Hiscock is featured playing bass on seven tracks, and Ian Catt resumes his role as producer and engineer, continuing to push the envelope of what pop can be. Building on techniques developed in the making of "Overwintering", digital technology was employed to turn improvised landscapes into song shapes which continued to be adjusted as lyrics and vocal parts were written. The sessions were a process of discovery; a road towards a complete self-contained statement of songs of introspection and observation, that slowly revealed itself as each came to fruition, adding another piece to the picture. Tracklist>> 01 Red Comet 02 Fortress 03 Inner Heat 04 Addicere 05 Opaque Retreat 06 Every Flame a Sunset 07 The Quiet and the Confusion 08 The No-sound of Falling Snow 09 Graph Paper 10 Blue Traces 11 Folk Radio