29 November 2022 - 0 Comments

Raiden Freeman, New Zealand's mysterious pop deconstructionist, will be following up his 2021 record Stay Sharp with a new LP on Bankrupt Records, titled Within The Speed Limit of Love. The record will release online and in tape + minidisc format on the 13th of December 2022.

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The record is a calculated and methodical yet sprawling and vulnerable alt rock/pop treatise on principal songwriter Jack Mells' personal journey to finding his footing in the mechanics of reality. The album's themes include his place on the autism spectrum, his grief over the loss of his friend Reuben Winter, social conditioning, Japanese cinema, cause and effect, and a desire to make it through hard times while becoming stronger.

To precede the release, two songs from the album will be dropped as singles with accompanying music videos. The first of these will be Megatron (featuring Annabel Lee), which will release on the 29th of November 2022.

The song is a propulsive, dynamic pop emo banger with instrumentation and flavours from electronic and trap music. In the verses, Mells laments the unwillingness of the people around him to face real adversity when the conditions of the world don't warrant their sensitivity. He then backtracks on this in the soaring chorus, belting out his admittance that he himself "need(s) to be anaesthetised before going outside" - the pot calling the kettle black. Annabel Lee (Veronica Maughan) provides a counterpoint to Mells's biblical/mythical metaphors in her guest verse about living life connected to the spirit realm, while prophesying about the end times. In the epic ending refrain the dynamics of the song gradually fade to Mells at the end of his tether, desperately making an appeal to the listener to see outside themselves.

A music video to accompany this song was conceived, created and directed by Mells in partnership with Samuel Austin, who is behind music videos by Vera Ellen and Hans Pucket. The video stars Mells in a dual character role, a government operative in pursuit of a bizarrely dressed man on the run in the city of Wellington. When Annabel Lee enters the picture, she conducts a ritual that breaks apart the fabric and logic of the video and the world.

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