Portland Oregon’s pop trio WL release new album ADHD via-Beacon Sound & share new video inspired by Alan Turing's legacy.
Fusing spacious electronic minimalism, shimmering guitars, and the empyrean voice of Misty Mary, Portland’s WL (pronounced ‘well’) arrive at the end of 2020 with their new record, ADHD, an album of lustrous, crystalline Left Coast pop that is destined to be a trusted companion during the long nights ahead.
The video for the track "Voices" was created when artist Jonathan McCabe integrated the album's stems to drive the changes in this endlessly expanding Turing pattern. Visual artist Jonathan McCabe's says about the video:
In this video a self organizing process loosely based on a theory of structure formation proposed by Alan Turing grows. New structures are formed influenced by the older structure which has expanded. Membrane bound shapes reminiscent of nuclei and mitochondria form from the tiniest fluctuations.
The color is determined by the amplitude of different sections of the music, mixing together various ways of mapping the four dimensional space of the structures to the three dimensions of color and tying the video and the music together. Each moment of sound gives a different view of information which can't all be seen at once.
ADHD is a defining statement of purpose for the group, made during a time of personal upheaval and featuring an evocative song cycle that begs to be listened to on repeat.
From the slow gallop of "Show Me" to the all-consuming gale that is "Voices," listening to the album from start to finish is like taking an autumnal walk across one of the city's iconic bridges, a cinematic embrace that feels both protective and expansive.
The album's alchemical magic is revealed through the depth of its deceptively simple song structures, with each song blooming into its own mini-cosmos.
Ruminative, self-assured, and spun through with warmth, ADHD reveals WL to be in a class of their own. And if "Water's On My Side" isn't the most Portland of songs, we don't know what is."
WL - ADHD