BORIS premiere song via Pitchfork from forthcoming album ‘Noise’!
BORIS has always demolished expectations of what a band can do musically and aesthetically. In keeping with that tradition, they again flip the script by serving up their most all-encompassing effort to date. Noise is an amplification of BORIS’ endless pursuit of musical extremes while moving aggressive, intense rock into new territories.
In writing Noise, BORIS was intent upon condensing all that the band had explored over the years, in order to create something more bold, streamlined and powerful. And, upon completion, the band considers Noise its most defining effort, stating, “If we had to suggest just one album for those unfamiliar with BORIS’ music, we will pick this for sure.” That’s a bold statement from a band having released over 20 albums covering a vast array of sounds. Yet somehow throughout the album’s 8 song, 58 minute duration, the band masterfully intermingles sludge-rock, blistering crust punk, shimmering shoegaze, epic thunderous doom, psychedelic melodies and just about everything else they’ve ever done.
Over the course of BORIS’ three previous Sargent House albums (Heavy Rocks, Attention Please and New Album) the band sought to expand its musical vision ever further. And, the results helped redefine the band’s already iconoclastic sound. However, in early 2013 they decided to return to their classic trio lineup moving forward: drummer/vocalist Atsuo, guitarist/vocalist Wata and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Takeshi. Having been able to explore many new ideas as a quartet in recent years, the band was concerned about logistics, until their very successful residency shows and tour in the U.S. convinced them that BORIS could return to the simpler, solid trio without sacrificing artistic growth. Now, having rebuilt the classic trio’s “equilateral triangle” they’re heavier, louder, more confident and incisive than ever before. Noise is lyrically the band’s darkest album to date.
Noise will be heard everywhere (excluding Japan) on LP, CD and download via Sargent House on June 17th, 2014.
BORIS will be headlining DesertFest at the Electric Ballroom, London on the 27th April.http://www.thedesertfest.com/london/ They will be available for interviews in London on the 28th April.
Posted on: April 12th, 2014
Pitchfork premieres new song from Emma Ruth Rundle’s debut album!
“‘Arms I Know So Well’ captures the grandeur of her textured post-rock endeavors mixed with gorgeous, atmospheric folk.” Pitchfork
Known for her work in Red Sparowes, Marriages, and The Nocturnes, Emma Ruth Rundle’s first official solo album Some Heavy Ocean presents a collection of impassioned, cathartic songs exorcising the ghosts of one of life’s dark detours. Melancholic, but equally hopeful and accessible, the album wears its emotions on its sleeve. One critic described Rundle’s voice as “bone-chilling texture filled to the brim with intent”, and a better description is difficult to imagine; when paired with her compelling guitar playing, and enduring spirit takes root.
Some Heavy Ocean will be available everywhere on CD, LP and Digital formats on 2nd June in the UK from Sargent House.
Posted on: April 12th, 2014
Stereogum premieres video from Jerry David DeCicca’s forthcoming solo album
Understanding Land is the debut album from
Jerry David DeCicca and will be released on
2nd June 2014. After five critically-acclaimed albums with Columbus, Ohio’s
The Black Swans, the last of which,
Occasion For Song, served as a eulogy to the late Noel Sayre – the friend and violinist who DeCicca formed the band with – it felt like a good time to begin a new journey.The 10 songs which make up
Understanding Land, were written in London after 5 months of touring and traveling the US, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. What began as demos, turned into an album when they were shared with double bassist
Andy Hamill(Mark Murphy, Natacha Atlas, Tracey Thorn). Andy added bass and some gypsy slides. DeCicca sent tracks to pals
Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) and
Kelley Deal(The Breeders) and they both came back with sweet harmonies. The legendary
Spooner Oldham (Muscle Shoals, Dylan, Neil Young) played Wurlitzer on 3 songs in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
The first single, ‘First And Last’ features the two Oldhams (unrelated) together on a track for the first time. “It’s a gentle acoustic ballad that matches the easygoing imagery in Matt Bauer’s video, which finds DeCicca peacefully drifting around his new hometown of New Braunfels, Texas by land and sea.” Stereogum.
Everyone you hear on the album (except Spooner who cheated and used a real studio, The NuttHouse in Muscle Shoals, Alabama) recorded the tracks in their home, themselves. Once the digital world allowed everyone to be gathered together, it was mixed in Austin, Texas by Grammy winner, Stuart Sikes (Cat Power, Phosphorescent, Loretta Lynn, White Stripes).
Posted on: April 12th, 2014
The Faint return with new album Doom Abuse
The Faint will return this spring with their sixth album, Doom Abuse via SQE Music. The birth of Doom Abuse, in many ways, is in parallel with a rebirth of the band itself. The Faint, started in Omaha in the mid-’90s, have always created against the grain, disinterested in making anything except what their own inspiration drives them to make. Each album since their 1998 debut Media has shifted and evolved that desire. Some albums, like 1999′s Blank-Wave Arcade, came from urgent, short recording processes while others, like 2004′s Wet From Birth, were more carefully constructed. The musicians themselves are the constant, together embracing a style that is truly unlike every other band out there. While Doom Abuse harkens back to Blank-Wave Arcade‘s immediacy in some ways, it opens a new door. Inside is exactly where The Faint want to be now.
Posted on: February 25th, 2014
bis to release new album data Panik etcetera 5th May 2014!
The influential and ever underrated Glasgow, Scotland trio, bis, return with data Panik etcetera - a release that brings us up to date with recordings from the year spent re-branded as Data Panik, alongside other attempts to record a fourth, and definitive, bis album. Hardcore fans have been desperate to get their hands on these recordings, and the band have carefully selected and remastered the pick of the bunch. The band have been playing storming live sets over the last few years, surprising punters at places such as Primavera and 2013′s Indietracks Festival as headliner, while new material has crept into the set-list.
Manda Rin, Sci-Fi Steven and John Disco, to give them their professional monikers, were known in the late 1990′s for such highlights as being the first unsigned band on Top Of The Pops (allegedly), creating the theme tune to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon “The Powerpuff Girls”, having their own Casio G-Shock watch released in Japan and moving from their punk-rock roots to having an underground European dance hit with “Eurodisco”. Taking influences from Devo, XTC, Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill and The Plastics, bis have also inspired others for 20 years now – being a reference point for a host of artists such as CSS, Los Campesinos!, Joanna Gruesome and Chvrches. The band also featured in NME’s list of Top 20 Cult Heroes and featured in their Top 50 Britpop anthems. Albums, The New Transistor Heroes (under-fi pop/punk songs with twitches into disco, hip-hop and synth-pop), Social Dancing (Glossy electro-pop) and Return To Central (an expansive rebirth, taking in Eno, Moroder and Can) showcased the over-development of their creators, always keen to move onto the next project.
With data Panik etcetera the inspirations had moved onto strict, skinny-tie, new-wave pop songs (‘Control The Radical’, ‘Minimum Wage’, ‘Retail of the Details’), awkward XTC play Chic disco (‘Cubis (I Love You)’, ‘Music Lovers’, ‘Too Much Not Enough)’ and disconcerting goth-techno (‘Sense Not Sense’, ‘Flesh Remover’). ‘Rulers and the States’, meanwhile, has already featured heavily on a Scottish Television advert with its nagging Sparksy riff
Posted on: February 25th, 2014
BIRD to release debut album My Fear and Me in May 2014
BIRD is the creation of Adele Emmas, Sian Williams, Alexis Samata and Christian Sandford. Hailing from Liverpool, they create dark, haunting yet enrapturing music which will entice you into their otherworldly universe.
With a dynamic mixture of power and fragility, BIRD combine hypnotic, tribal drum beats, atmospheric guitars and dreamlike synthscapes to create the foundation for Adele’s beautiful, siren-esque vocals and lyrical poetry.
After releasing two EPs (one of which was produced by composer and ex-The Coral guitarist, Bill Ryder-Jones) and continually touring the UK, BIRD have gained a large following and garnered praise from the likes of BBC Radio 1, 2,3, 6music, and have been invited to play sessions for Simon Raymonde (The Cocteau Twins/Bella Union). The Guardian, Metro, NYLON, NME and Channel 4 have also featured the band.
Support slots with Wild Beasts, Soley, King Charles, PINS, Poltergeist (Echo and The Bunnymen) and Stealing Sheep have cemented BIRD as a formidable live presence. They were invited in 2013 to play at Festival Number 6, The Great Escape and Liverpool Sound City.
Now with new Liverpool label, Baltic Records, launched in 2013 under ADA and working closely with Seymour Stein (Warner), BIRD have been working with producer Darren Jones to create their debut album entitled, My Fear and Me which will be released in May 2014.
Retaining the atmosphere and dark heart of their early EPs, and combining this with melodic hooks, stark lyrical imagery and intensely-layered soundscapes – the band utilise instruments such as harp and theremin to add to their unique sound. With vocals recorded in darkness and instruments recorded in a church, BIRD have carefully honed this collection of songs to tell stories of the soul through the sounds within.
Posted on: February 25th, 2014
Dirty Projectors’ Nat Baldwin to release solo album!
Despite his busy schedule recording and touring as the bass player for Dirty Projectors, Nat Baldwin found time to write and record his most soulful and ambitious collection of songs to date.
In the Hollows will be released on 5th May via Western Vinyl.
After recording the initial tracks at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI, Nat recruited Otto Hauser (Vetiver, Lia Ices, Espers) for drums and percussion and Rob Moose (The National, Antony and the Johnsons, Bon Iver) and Clarice Jensen for string arrangements. Discussing the album’s production, Nat says “I wanted to achieve a consistency throughout that my past albums have lacked. I wanted the strings to add to the mournful quality of the songs, weaving their way through the sonic terrain, providing emotional emphasis, but also leaving necessary amounts of space. Albums by Nick Drake, Judee Sill, Joanna Newsom, Antony & the Johnsons, and Bill Callahan, to name a few, provided inspiration in balancing that intimacy with minimal, but powerful, adornments.”
Immersive, athletic, and often profound, In the Hollows represents his clearest and most consistent album-length statement, melodically, structurally, and lyrically. Nat explains that “I hope it is as unsettling as it is beautiful. I want it to make people feel things they can’t describe.”
Posted on: February 25th, 2014
Silo to release new album after 13 years!
Work is the first release for 13 years from Denmark’s best kept secret: digital power rock trio Silo. Back in the 1990s the group – Frederik Ammitzbøll (guitars), Mikkel Bender (bass) and Søren Dahlgaard (drums) – were the most abrasive act signed up by Swim Records, the independent label founded by Wire frontman Colin Newman and his wife Malka Spigel. After releasing two albums – Instar (1998) and Alloy (2001) – and appearing live with the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, Trans Am and Pole, the group, who came together as students, drifted off into family life and gainful employment. But now Silo have reloaded, and their distinctive twisted-metal sound, built on crunchy digitized guitars, beats that crack like a bolt cutter, and a sturdy industrial rhythm matrix, sounds bang on trend.
Work will be released on 14th April via Novennial Paralysis
Posted on: February 25th, 2014
