Music Industry News

Aotearoa electronica artist Frau Knotz (Lauren Nottingham) has returned today with the beautifully anthemic new single ‘The Heart of Spring’. This is the third and final single to be released off her forthcoming debut EP Nextraterrestrial, out Friday 23rd August 2024.

Opening with a bouncing arpeggiated bass and a shuffling drum beat, Frau Knotz’s voice appears almost instantly with a vocaloid quality, detached from the love poem of free-form rhymes she sings. The song devolves at the two-minute mark into a tale of two halves. Amidst a swirl of dreamy synth pads and fuzzed out distortion, her true self emerges as she sheds the façade of autotune and exposes a warm, organic human voice. A second love poem is delivered so sparsely that each carefully-created phrase is given the space it deserves. The euphoric, ascendant melodies gesture toward otherworldly grandeur, evoking the gauzy, after-hours feeling of watching the sun rise over the dancefloor after a late night out.

Lauren explains “I feel strongly that this song epitomises my EP as a whole. The first half of ‘The Heart of Spring’ was completed in 2021 on my laptop; those original home-recorded vocals and MIDI arrangements remain on the final track. But the magic lies in the second half; composed and recorded within three hours in the creative cradle of Rhythm Ace Studio. Both Sam Johnson and I were astounded by how the heavens aligned on that day, allowing us to forge a slow-burning, expansive soundscape that did justice to my fresh lyrics penned over a year after the original poem.” ‘The Heart of Spring’ is a powerful ode to love, capturing snapshots of time in the passing of seasons and lived memories.

‘The Heart of Spring’ music video is yet another captivating piece of 3D animation work, highlighting the stunning visual craftsmanship of Christchurch-born, LA-based Blue Hamel a.k.a Halfofnothing (Kanye West, Childish Gambino). The video features a 3D avatar of Frau Knotz falling endlessly through sunlit skies amongst floating islands of cherry blossom trees.

Mastered by Joshua Llewellyn at Downbeat Mastering and co-produced and mixed by Sam Johnson at Rhythm Ace Studio, today’s release is the final single to come from her upcoming debut EP, following the enigmatic vignette ‘Odyssey I’ and beat-centric track ‘Other Futures’ both of which were met with eager support from local and international media, playlists, blogs and independent radio, the latter charting on the Top 20 Hot NZ Singles Chart. Featured across Radio One, The Most FM, RDU FM, Radio Control FM, The Hits, More FM, NZ Musician Magazine, 13th Floor, Zone Nights (Argentina), Expansión Radial (Mexico) and reviewed by Flash-Trax.

Elevating, uplifting and expansively arranged, ‘The Heart of Spring’ represents a compelling final glimpse of her debut EP before its release next month, that joins the musical dots between Frau Knotz’s influences such as Royksöpp, Grimes and Weyes Blood while delivering something truly unique, beautiful and profound.

To celebrate the release of Nextraterrestrial, Frau Knotz will be hosting a very special EP film screening and behind-the-scenes seminar in her hometown of New Plymouth on Thursday, August 15th 2024. Tickets are available from UndertheRadar here.

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Photo credit: Joaco Dibbern