The sweet synth lines and metronomic guitar riffs give the album a transportive, mind-shifting mood – something that’s been dubbed “Devon cream-adelica”. Powered by all the above – this unusually broad sampling of music’s cornucopia – Pale Blue Eyes have made a debut album of scope and sophistication. They recently provided music for the ambitious Atmos project, alongside a sound-and-light installation from Brian Eno. Pale Blue Eyes have been able to support plans for sustainable community development in Totnes. Sea Change has been created by the people at Drift Records, a remarkable shop and one at which PBE’s Matt has worked on and off for many years. The latter has recently been led by Sea Change festival, the arts-and-music spectacular that has brought artists including Gruff Rhys, Aldous Harding, The Comet Is Coming and Peggy Seeger to a semi-rural settlement of 8,000 people. PBE’s Aubrey and Matt grew up in and around the South Devon market town of Totnes, a place that has become a socio-cultural hotspot, home to initiatives in environmentalism and entertainment. Aubrey has played in various jazz-oriented ensembles – and it’s an indication of his youth that his dad played drums with Metronomy’s Joe Mount, as the latter’s pop masterplan took shape. Aubrey is a big Motown fan, a devotee of that label’s in-house bassist, James Jamerson. The third part of the Pale Blue Eyes triad arrived when Matt and Lucy met bassist Aubrey Simpson at South Devon’s Sea Change festival. There he ended up doing some formative recordings with Sigur Rós studio engineer Birgir Jón Birgisson. Speculatively, he turned up at Sigur Rós’s Sundlaugin studio, outside Reykjavik. With money he’d saved from working at the soup factory, he decided to go and spend some time in Iceland. Matt had met a couple of Icelanders while studying for his music MA. As he entered his twenties, he’d become enamoured of the sounds Sigur Rós had been making in Iceland. While Lucy examined her home city’s hifi heritage, Matt’s musical exploration saw him travel further afield. The title of Lucy’s college dissertation makes clear her own interest in South Yorkshire synth innovation: “An Investigation into Sheffield's Alternative Music Scene Between 19, with Particular Reference to Cabaret Voltaire.” He mixed and mastered the Souvenirs album and also acted as adviser during the record’s creation. With his studio experience with artists including Róisín Murphy, I Monster, the Human League and Add N To (X), Honer became an important part of the PBE story. Lucy also, subsequently, got to know Flanagan’s Moonlandingz co-founder, Dean Honer. As she’d left her teens, Lucy played in various bands in Sheffield – including several projects overseen by Adrian Flanagan, later of Moonlandingz and the Eccentronic Research Council. Alongside all the gear in the studio, there was a crucial resource outwith. The Moon Funeral Fuzz, the Big Sky reverb. The Moog Little Phatty, the Prophet 12, the Roland Space Echo. In time and with hard work, the PBE studio took shape.
LIGHT BLUE EYES HOW TO
Our dream was to have more studio time, to develop songs without being 'on the clock', and to learn how to produce ourselves.” Rockfield was like heaven to us, but it was somewhere we could only afford for a couple of days. " When we were younger,” says Lucy, “we recorded at various studios – from makeshift DIY places in Sheffield and Plymouth to residential studios like Rockfield in Wales. Matt and Lucy were married in 2018, years after meeting at art college. The core of PBE debut album Souvenirs was written and recorded by Sheffield’s Lucy Board and South Devon’s Matt Board. To create the studio, the band members took out a bank loan and worked pretty much anywhere that would provide a wage – at a soup factory, at music festivals, in greenhouses and cinemas, running bars at disturbing corporate events, as a tree surgeon’s assistant. The PBE studio sits in the Devon greenery, with buzzards wheeling overhead, just south of Dartmoor. Pale Blue Eyes’ own Penquit Mill studio has been crucial here. Pale Blue Eyes’ excelsior modernist pop music comes from Devon and Sheffield – via stop-overs in Iceland, KLF-land and the Steel City home of British electronic music.
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