The Desert is headed by frontwoman Gina Leonard, alongside guitarist and producer Tom Fryer, who met her five years ago at the Cambridge Folk Festival, plus fellow band members Jonny and Ryan. Merging the contemplative folky, yet velvet melodies of Leonard with oozing, impassioned progressions, lurching beats and slight electronica, it generates a nostalgia for the trip-hop scene of their native Bristol. A couple of Fryer's favourite albums growing up were 'Mezzanine' and 'Dummy', and this was in part the reason that he moved to Bristol, to immerse himself in that music scene, and you can definitely hear the Portishead influences in the music that they produce today. They've been posting songs to Soundcloud since 2018, with the most recent being an EP last October, and there is now enough material available for an album length release, which would include their impressive take on Kate Bush's 'Cloudbusting', so as it hasn't appeared yet, here's what it would sound like if it was released today.
Track listing
01 Half Hearted
02 Soulmates
03 Playing Dead
04 Just Get High
05 Gone
06 Winning You Back
07 Distract Me
08 Bitterness
09 Cloudbusting
10 Disappearing Act
11 Cut Out
12 All I Know
