Sundara Karma have evolved once more, with their shock-and-awe inspiring new single ‘Oblivion!’
As is customary for the Reading genre-shifters, they’ve skipped across the dial once again into a world of epic riffs, shimmering alt-pop and dramatic dynamics for a song that starts off as self-titled era The 1975 and ends as gigantic, 00s stadium rock.
It’s the first taster of a new EP, also titled ‘Oblivion!’, produced by Clarence Clarity (Charli XCX, Rina Sawayama) and set for release on April 1 via Chess Club Records.
The track comes alongside a music video directed by Prosper Unger-Hamilton (A.G. Cook, Alt-J) and artwork and images created by Hannah Diamond (PC Music). You can check it out below.
Discussing the new single, frontman Oscar Pollock explains: “’Oblivion!’ came together so quickly, I wrote the whole thing in about 2 days in the summer last year. I had been revisiting a lot of my favourite music from around 2003 and was feeling quite nostalgic at the time. It definitely plays into the rockier aspects of our ‘sound’ but ultimately I think it’s a wonderful pop song. For me ‘Oblivion!’ is about the aftermath of a deeply intense relationship, there can be a lot of loose ends and debris. The rug gets pulled out from under your feet and in many ways it feels like your reality shatters. It’s about this kind of fatalist feeling you can feel when you’ve put your all into something and for some reason things aren’t working out. It feels like the end of the world and like everything around you is crumbling.”
The video’s director, Prosper Unger-Hamilton, says: “When you’re a teenager it feels like one world is ending and another is about to begin. The pressure to perform and win is like a giant rock that’s going to crush you, if you let it.”
On the video, Oscar Pollock reveals: “There is a lot about ‘Oblivion!’ that is overtly Americanised and right from the get go we felt it was a great opportunity to lean into this theme aesthetically. Prosper Unger-Hamilton thought it made sense for the video to reference images of impact and collision and we explored different types of extreme sports and the kind of garments the players wear but American Football felt like the perfect backdrop for a doomsday narrative. It was such a pleasure working with Prosper and Hannah on this video and I think the final product looks a million dollars.”
Oblivion! EP tracklisting:
- Oblivion!
- All These Dreams
- DESIRE
- Everytime
- Godsend
