Chalk Hands – ‘Burrows & Other Hideouts’ EP | Track by Track

By
Jamie Coughlan
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chalk hands

Burrows & Other Hideouts is out now.

Brighton’s Chalk Hands are a fascinating and emotionally hard hitting proposition. Combining the emotional heft and brutality of post hardcore bands like At The Drive-In with the nuance and structural experimentation of post metal / post rock groups like Cult of Luna and Explosions in the Sky, they craft what can only described as soaring confrontation on debut EP Burrows & Other Hideouts.

The result is a short two track burst of something so wonderfully beautiful, melancholic, and ferocious that it demands repeated listens. On a high volume.

The group recently took the time to talk us through some inspirations behind the EP title and the two tracks on the EP.

Burrows & Other Hideouts

The title of the EP Burrows & Other Hideouts refers to the safe place that most of us search for so that we can hide from the daunting aspects of life, such as our own thoughts constantly attacking ourselves and never letting us appreciate how far we’ve come, the fear of death, or being scared of not being good enough, of being a disappointment to the people we love, the meaninglessness of anything we do in life, etc.

We chose the word “Burrows” because it was a strong symbol, as for animals living in the wild, it literally represents a place where they cannot be killed. But a safe place can take many forms (“and other hideouts”), someone’s “arms” or for us, writing music playing it to people. In a sense our EP is the materialisation of what our safe place is, which is why it made sense to give it that name. It’s also what the cover represents, a sort of humanised tree burrow with a city pouring out of it.

Check out our Creative Process podcast interview series featuring The Melvins, Rosetta, and Unsane.

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1. Burrows


The opening track of our debut EP was going to be the first thing people would hear from us as a band, so we wanted something really hard hitting, intense and almost overwhelming to capture people’s attention. That’s why we used “Burrows” as an opening track. It has everything we want to showcase as a band within the first 20 seconds. You’ve got a really quiet and intimate intro that goes all out into this raw, intense and emotional part only after a few seconds – there’s Chalk Hands for you.

2. Arms


“Arms” has got more of a dark edge to it. It’s also less straightforward emotionally than Burrows and, to a certain degree, more intricate as a song. Which I guess makes sense since it’s our most recent one. For those reasons, it just felt natural to include it on the EP and, although it’s hard to say how the band will evolve in the future, it’s probably a good hint of what’s coming next. What we know is that we don’t want to restrict ourselves to a specific genre too much, which is why we like to label our music as “loud, sad songs” because we think it will always have those elements at its core.

Grab the EP via Bandcamp.

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