Sanctuary Lakes present their debut, self-titled album, out 21 June on Cutters Records. It is a new project featuring members of Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts, forged out of lo fi folk psychedelia, instrumental library records and delicate electronic sounds. Opaque soundscapes forged from fluid basslines, aqueous guitar, naturalist field recordings and vague incantations, the Sanctuary Lakes sound values feeling over form, intention over intellect, imagination over the explicit, a faded watercolour image offering an ocean of interpretation in which to swim. Borne in Brooklyn during idle time improvising in front of the meditation station on television, Tim Hoey sent rough sketches of his noodling to Andy Szekeres in Melbourne, initially to see what his old friend made of them. Beyond merely offering feedback, Szekeres went ahead and added to the songs, initiating a workflow than became an almost wordless conversation between the two, as files drifted back and forth with the currents until deemed done. Arrangements are left loose, choruses never come - or that’s all there is, extended instrumental passages emphasise atmosphere over action, and field recordings of the channel whisper low in the mix. Production across the album has a gently edgeless, soft-focus feeling akin to being submerged in a boundless body of water, at once engulfing and instinctively comforting. As two musicians with years and albums of experience under their belts, Sanctuary Lakes came together during a period of reflection and faint anxiety that their best ideas might be behind them. Work on the album acted as a form of therapy and confirmed that the stream of creativity still runs strong. Tim Hoey is most widely known for his work in Cut Copy, Andy Szekeres in Midnight Juggernauts. Together they are Sanctuary Lakes. “In a sea of love, you and me belong, endless together.”