Originally, the duo consisted of Anders Hagström and Yasmine Uhlin. However, she announced her surprise departure from the band in Hamburg at the last concert of the Out Of line festival tour 2008.
Anders and Yazmine met in November 2005 and, upon discovering that they shared the same musical vision, decided to form a band. Their collaboration soon came to fruition with the release of a 9 track demo entitled "Angora Overdrive" after a very intensive month in the studio.
The second four track demo, "Parliament of Rooks", which was finished in February 2006, had a more refined sound compared to their first offering. They decided to send it to a few select labels because the reaction they got to the first demo was quite overwhelming. Having sent the demos on Monday, Ashbury Heights was contacted and contracted by German Out of Line records on Wednesday, only an hour after the label had received the CD. This probably makes Ashbury Heights one of the fastest signings in history. Several other labels expressed an interest in the band, but there was no bidding war as Out of Line moved so quickly.
Although having signed the famous German act "And One" at about the same time as Ashbury Heights, which ate a lot of the labels' resources, Out of Line wasted no time. The legendary producer John Fryer was brought on board to produce the promotional single "Cry Havoc" in April 2006, something quite unheard of in the world of the electronic underground. Very few bands in the synth-genre get to release promo-CDs (if any), and certainly no other band in modern synth-history has released a promo-CD produced by a celebrity of the likes of Fryer.
John Fryer would eventually mix their first album "Three cheers for the newlydeads". Released in october 2007, the debut album was recieved with overwhelming optimism from press and audience alike proving once and for all that Ashbury Heights truly is a force to be reckoned with.
In 2008 Ashbury Heights returned with the "Morningstar in a Black Car" EP, containing five new songs and four remixes. The EP received good reviews and helped keep up interest for the band. A video was made for the track "Spiders", a low budget affair which nevertheless managed to project some of the bands unique flair.
Ashbury Heights, with brand-new female vocalist Kari Berg, released their new album 'Take Cair paramour' on the 2nd of july 2010. In 2010, following a long running dispute between Hagström and the record label Out Of Line the band disbanded. This dispute was settled in 2011, whereupon Hagstöm and Out of Line renewed their collaboration. However, it took until 2013 for Hagström to find a new singer. The new singer is Tea F. Thimé, the first female to co-write lyrics for Ashbury Heights.
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Illusion
Ashbury Heights Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Grant me disconnected perception
Give me automatic redemption
Grant me your divine intervention
I wanna come inside
I wanna come all over you
Execute my dim apprehensions
Fill me with your lifelike injections
Come inside my facial expressions
I wanna come inside
I wanna come all over you
The lyrics of Ashbury Height's song "Illusion" is a depiction of an individual's obsession with being controlled and dominated by someone else. The singer of the song seeks to get away from reality through egocentric deception and disconnected perception, wanting to be lost in the illusion of being powerful while controlled by someone else. He/she seeks redemption that is automatic and divine in nature, wanting to be saved from the struggles of real-life.
The singer wants to be filled with artificial lifelike injections, giving a surreal feeling to their life. They crave for someone to execute their dim and vague apprehensions, which ultimately reinforces his/her belief that being controlled by someone else is the only way out of the tedious monotony of life. The lyrics suggest that this person is even comfortable with sacrificing bodily autonomy through sanctification of corpus conventions.
The song is a reflection of a dysfunctional relationship between two individuals, and the singer's inability to accept reality. The desire to escape from reality and intense need to be controlled is an addictive cycle that they fail to break out of.
Line by Line Meaning
Give me egocentric deception
Let me believe everything revolves around me and manipulate my own reality to match.
Grant me disconnected perception
Allow me to detach from the world around me and ignore the true consequences of my actions.
Give me automatic redemption
Offer me a way out of my problems without having to face the actual consequences of my actions.
Grant me your divine intervention
Provide me with a supernatural solution to all of my problems that I cannot solve on my own.
I wanna come inside
I want to have a strong emotional and physical connection with you, to feel that I belong with you
I wanna come all over you
I want to completely possess and control you and keep experiencing pleasure from it.
Sanctify my corpus conventions
Cleanse my body and soul from societal constrictions and moral constructs that limit my freedom.
Execute my dim apprehensions
Eliminate my doubts and fears that I may have about the things I want to do and the person I want to become.
Fill me with your lifelike injections
Pump me full of chemical stimuli to make me feel better, alive, and able to keep pursuing my desires.
Come inside my facial expressions
Read and understand every detail of my body language and emotions, so that you can manipulate me better.
Contributed by Annabelle L. Suggest a correction in the comments below.