*The Following Press Release Was Issued By Ocean Flaws*
Castigated by the detachment of quarantine, we wrote this song about that feeling when nothing seems to stick – when your wheel won’t hit the ground. It’s an Epitaph to the grounding impact that 2020 had on our inner lives and is sung, for the first time ever, by our guitarist, Hamish.
“The sound of ‘Touching Down’ is a slight departure from our pop roots – borrowing from the likes of War on Drugs, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty,” Hamish said. “That shift could be down to the fact that the writing process itself was totally different this time. Whereas most Ocean Flaws songs come out of the rehearsal room, this track began its life on Callum’s iPad, as a 30-second loop of synth samples and drumbeats, created on GarageBand. There was a real charm to its rudimentary sound. Within a few hours, I sent back a recording of myself singing over the loop, Alex and Sean added percussion and keys once we got in the rehearsal space and the song hardly changed from there – even the GarageBand synths remained, which you can hear easiest at the very start of the song.”
Named a Radio X “Hot One” by John Kennedy in 2020 off the back of our dancy debut single, “Deep Sea Dreaming,” we showcase our appreciation for Classic Rock this time – and dedicate “Touching Down” to Fans of Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen.
Living in Essex, we felt compelled to compose this track during lockdown – not just as an attempt to give the county a name beyond Jonathan Antoine and Charlotte Jaconelli, but to stick our own sentimental stake into the slurry of pandemic-related self-expression and exclaim: “Ocean Flaws was here – February 2021.”
Appropriately, therefore, the music video for “Touching Down” takes the form of a year in retrospect, tracking the systole and diastole of our lives in 2020 – but at breakneck speed, in 2.37.
What will we say about this era, once we can look back and join the dots?
