Alternative-pop quartet Ralph of London is pleased to announce the release of their EP ‘Yellow Sky Highway’ and leading single ‘White Bred Blues’, alongside an interactive video game whereby players can win early access digital copies of both.
Currently based between London and the North of France, Ralph of London was formed in 2016 as a solo project by songwriter, drummer, and producer Ralph Phillips who has spent the better part of his life developing various music, art, and film projects in the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Japan, touring across Europe as a session musician for established artists such as Scritti Politti and Go-Kart Mozart as well as scoring soundtracks.
After putting out a handful of singles and recording his first full-length album as Ralph of London, Ralph was invited to put a band together in the North of France and has since been working with musicians Léopold, François, and Diane on developing Ralph of London’s now full-band live repertoire, and playing shows in both France and the UK. The group brings together synthesized rock and roll, West African polyrhythms, and English folk fused into melodic pop songs that glance in on our fragmented social milieu from the sidelines.
Speaking about the album, vocalist and lyricist Ralph Phillips says, “Yellow Sky Highway serves as an introduction to the sonic palette we created throughout the last two years of development as a band. It’s a dystopian vision of our journey as a society into an environment characterized more by our waste than by the nature that once harnessed us. It’s a collection of five pop songs that are of this moment, that belong to the tapestry of our time, and that consequently unearth some of the problems we are least disposed to speak about as a society”
The EP’s leading single ‘White Bred Blues’ acts as a poem directed at the demographic Ralph felt he could most identify with. “It’s a song of despair really, knowing that we have smeared so much of our inherited nature with an obsession to possess, to control, to know, at the cost of alienating ourselves from some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. There is hope in it all though; through melody and repetition and groove we can liberate ourselves somewhat from the bleakness of our everyday realities,” states Ralph.
The music video for White Bred Blues, shot by Sheherazade Bodin, follows a formerly homeless man of over 20 years through the streets of Bristol as he takes her inside what his life once was.
Alongside the EP, the band has created Yellow Sky Highway, which invites listeners to engage with Ralph of London’s music through the portal of an online video game, where the player takes the wheel behind a revolutionary spacecraft for the noble challenge of doing a spot of planetary housekeeping. Above Yellow Sky Country you can see the highway of trash as the only shape left in the cosmos. The player’s mission is to get on the ROL starship and gather trash out of the Yellow Sky Highway.
With five levels to the game, each themed around a song on the EP, the player is rewarded with one high-quality download from the EP for each level completed. Successful completion of all five levels earns the player the entire EP and digital release package.
The narrative theme of the game is extrapolated from the lyrical subtext of the EP and sets the scene for the new full-length Ralph Of London album, to be released later this year. Taking out the trash that is fast becoming a serious existential threat has never been so fun or wholesomely rewarded. Play the game here: https://ralphoflondon.com/game/
For further information on the band, visit the following links:
- Website: https://www.ralphoflondon.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RalphOfLondon/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RalphOfLondon
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ralphoflondon/
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