LANNDS Tickets

“I just want to allow the universe to speak through me right now. What is it that I want to say? How do I truly feel?” These are the questions Rania Woodard found herself asking alongside bandmate Brian Squillace while working on their debut album, Music For The Future (out March 3rd via Run For Cover Records). In the Spring of 2021, Woodard and Squillace decamped to a remote cabin in northern Georgia to work on their new album. Beginning each day with a clear intention to create without expectations, the pair found themselves immediately inspired by their surroundings, and felt a deep connection to the spiritual world around them. “What happens right now is what’s meant to happen,” Woodard says. It is this undercurrent of unyielding trust that runs through Music For The Future.

After finding their own unique sound across 3 EPs, LANNDS has expanded their lush, electro-pop palette into new territory. Music For The Future is a confident, sweeping feat of enlivened production and intimate, emotional storytelling, both gentler and more mature than the band has ever been. Replete with messages of care and reflection, Woodard describes this album as an “open letter” to herself. At the time they began writing, Woodard and Squillace found themselves navigating a wave of personal changes, including the anticipation of their imminent cross-country move from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles. Balanced on this daunting brink of transformation, the songs across Music For The Future are LANNDS’ most courageous yet, and serve as thoughtful reminders to their future selves, and anyone listening, that everything is going to be alright. On album opener “Fortune”, Woodard sings, “I’ll leave the light on for you”, over a bubbling arpeggiated synth, a comforting reassurance that sets the tone for the rest of the album.

In typical LANNDS fashion, Music For The Future was entirely produced, engineered, and mixed by Squillace and Woodard. Some of the vocal takes were taken straight from their writing sessions at the Georgia cabin, while the rest was recorded in Squillace’s apartment. “When we do it ourselves, even if it’s a little more “home done” sounding, it’s just more us,” Squillace says. Years of collaboration have allowed the duo to embrace each other’s creative skills – whether it be Woodard’s blossoming layers of vocal melodies, or Squillace’s soulful piano chords – and shape them into a sound they can truly feel at home in, without the weight of outside influence. On Music For The Future, this level of familiarity has allowed the band to experiment with new ways of writing.