The new album can be heard for the first time on 24.hu.
The ninth album of Amber Smith is ready, which is the Once Upon Timbears this title. As Imre Poniklothe frontman of the band, which has been active since 2000, recalled to 24.hu: their last album came out four years ago, right at the same time as the outbreak of Covid, but since it was roughly one and a half to two years, it doesn’t seem like that much.
This album is the imprint of the last year and a half. It wasn’t the best period of my life, I didn’t make the best decisions. I have mixed feelings, because at the same time, a very good record was born from it all – whether it was worth it is another question
Poniklo is very proud of the new record, and is especially happy that after 12 years, a string orchestra is again featured in six songs. “I think it adds a lot to the tracks they play, there’s still nothing that can beat live strings.”
Anyone who knows us already knows the story that six years ago our guitarist Tomi Faragó moved to London and since then the three of us have been making records and performing. This was especially challenging for me as the only guitarist and singer at the same time, but I love the way it works. On this record, we tried to do as much as possible like we were a beginner post-punk band just starting out and knowing 3 chords. This, after all these years of playing music, is harder than you might think! There is a song (Child of Snow) that has two chords in total. I wanted to put together an accordion, but now it didn’t work out…
– said the frontman, recalling that they brought a lot of different music to each other as a reference during the rehearsals, really from quite a wide range of periods and styles, but according to him “even if we are a small band, there is already a kind of “amber smith” sound that ends up, even then also if Serge Gainsbourg obsession Bowiewe were listening to ambient house or post-rock.”
Brave Ben the drummer also believes that this has become their most varied record so far, and the best in the series.
This time too, the previous working method of recording the album’s material in two stages worked great. And certain songs gave me extra charge after I had the full audio recording and mixing/mastering.
You can listen to the album here:
And here on Bandcamp.
