Topographies

Topographies

Interior Spring

Dark Entries

Bay Area post-punk outfit Topographies deliver their sophomore LP, Interior Spring, via Dark Entries. Formed in 2018 in San Francisco by Justin Oronos, Jeremie Ruest, and Gray Tolhurst, Topographies link the icy riffs and gloomy atmosphere of early coldwave with the textural depth and warmth of classic shoegaze, emerging with a style that’s both contemporary and timeless. On Interior Spring, Topographies explore themes of guilt, inherited trauma, and recovery. The meaning of its title is triplicate: a submerged river carrying hope, an anxiously wound clock, and a season where wildflowers bloom on the graves of the past. While the work of Tolhurst’s father - Laurence Tolhurst from The Cure - provides a clear influence, Topographies expertly channel acts like Asylum Party or The Chameleons on anthemic pearls like “Night Sea” and “Chain of Days”. Tolhurst’s lyrics draw on his own experience in recovery from substance abuse to examine the cycle of use and hopelessness that characterizes addiction. Through these ten songs, the group hopes to present the idea that freedom is not an escape but an embrace of the quotidian beauty of human life.

Topographies

Difference & Repetition

Dream

Topographies is a band formed in San Francisco in 2018 by Justin Oronos, Jeremie Ruest, and Gray Tolhurst. Their music combines the lush, reverb-heavy guitars of shoegaze with the icy rhythms of post-punk. The band has released a 7” (Pink Thoughts/ Roman Figure), a cassette of their Part-Time Punks session as well as a single with venerable London-based dream-pop label Sonic Cathedral. Topographies has shared stages with the likes Soft Kill, Be Forest, Tennis System, and The Chills and have plans for further touring in 2020. Difference and Repetition, the band’s first release with Dream Recordings, marks a shift to a darker tonality in the band’s music. The EP’s title refers not only to the makings of a song but also to the structure of living itself, a seemingly endless procession of days broken by small joys and small sorrows. Musically, the four songs hew close to the band’s influences merging the “repetitions” of 80s coldwave and post-punk as well as the ethereality of bands like Slowdive and Pale Saints. Tolhurst’s lyrics draw on modern poetry, especially the work of the Romanian-born Jewish poet Paul Celan to craft narratives that are both oblique and sentimental, surreal yet poignant. On Difference and Repetition¸Topographies draws these disparate influences into a mesh of sound and feeling that hopes to act as a map of being, here and now.