Run To Earth - Russian Roulette (ft. Francis Mitchell)

Although this is the first time that we have featured Run To Earth on The Metaphorical Boat, it is not the first time that we have featured the artist behind the project on this blog.

Run To Earth is the new project by Omar Ben Hassine, who has been a member of A Northern Light, a band responsible for two of our favourite local songs of the past few years, "Kill It" and "Paranoia". Whilst those two songs saw the band mixing electronic music with rock, the music of Run To Earth skews much more towards the former. The first track dropped over the summer, "Scaling Mount Olympus", which was a towering slice of euphoric instrumental electronica, and just this week, he's released his follow-up single under the new moniker.

"Russian Roulette" features guest vocals from Frances Mitchell, who is best known as a member of electronic-pop group Loris. Like "Paranoia", it is very drum and bass influenced, although unlike that track it is less rock-orientated, calling to mind the more electronic-orientated D&B masters like DJ Fresh or Sub Focus. It is a really strong single from Run To Earth, and one that should hopefully see this burgeoning project pick up quite a bit of attention.

"Russian Roulette" is out now.

A Northern Light - Paranoia

Now this has been a long time coming.

It seems like it has been ages since we last talked about Belfast/Strabane trio A Northern Light. Well actually, it has. 2 years and seven months, to be precise. When the band released "Kill It" back in 2013, a song that meshed the organic and synthetic so seamlessly and effortlessly, it appeared that the band had finally cracked things and would be on their way to bigger things very quickly. Unfortunately since then we haven't heard as much from the guys, but thankfully 2016 is going to see the group stepping things up with a two-part album in the pipeline.

The first track to be taken from the release is "Paranoia", a track that should hopefully put the band back on the map. Like its predecessor, it sees the band mixing up live instrumentation with electronic goodness, with its mix of rock and heavy drum and bass calling to mind the sound that brought Pendulum to super-stardom in the late 00s. It's a song that sounds like it give immeasurable pleasure to both the dance crowd and the Kerrang! crowd, which if they play their cards right could be a winning combination for them.

Given the gap between releases, there was the worry that A Northern Light would lose the momentum that they had started to build with "Kill It". Thankfully, "Paranoia" should do enough to energise those who first fell in love with the band way back when, and hopefully pick up a fair few new followers along the way.

"Paranoia" will be released on February 19th.