We’ve never heard of Luxury Death, so when the news they’d signed with Punk Slime landed in our inbox we gave a collective shrug. But Luxury Death is such a great name we had to check it out. Ther debut single, ‘Radiator Face’ is a bit more middling indie than we’d usually go for, but we like to keep things varied and we’re more concerned with giving exposure to new and underexposed music than being sniffy about genres. ‘Radiator Face’ is an ace song. Fact. You can hear it here:
The Manchester duo have some tour dates coming up, too, as follows:
August 28 – London, UK – Through Being Cool Bank Holiday @ Lock Tavern September 30 – London, UK – The Finsbury w/ Happyness October 23 – Sheffield, UK – Bungalows & Bears w/ Happyness October 25 – Manchester, UK – Sound Control w/ Twin Peaks & Happyness October 27 – London, UK – Old Blue Last w/ Lowly
Devin Townsend Project are set to release their eagerly awaited new studio album ‘Transcendence’ on the 9th September 2016 worldwide. Ahead of this, August 5th – today – sees the unveiling of the fist single from the album in the shape of ‘Failure’. We could tell you how it’s epic, cinematic, ambitious, proggy and all the rest, or you could just listen to it here:
DTP recently announced a European tour for 2017 with main support from Between The Buried & Me (excl. UK & Belgium) & Tesseract (UK only) plus openers Leprous (all dates). Full list of dates can be found below:
Really? David Tibet and Youth? With an album , Create Christ, Sailor Boy, and live show in the offing, they’ve unveiled a brace of tracks, including the album’s final track, ‘Night Shout, Bird Tongue’. So yes this is really something which is happening nd it promises to be unusul if nothing else. And given the various path-crosings the two have made ove the last three decades, it’s perhps not as bizarre as it may ppear on the surface, so much as a collaboration a long time in the making.
A transformative union of two idiosyncratic tellers, Hypnopazūzu sees Current 93 speller David Tibet joining forces with the eternal Youth, famed not only for his work as bassist with Killing Joke but for production and collaborative work with an outlandishly eclectic list of artists from Alien Sex Fiend to Paul McCartney. Together, they’ve created a singular hallucinatory vision that marries symphonic splendour to indignant gnostic intensity – Create Christ, Sailor Boy draws in, and down, masks terrestrial and celestial and summons a collection of songs unlike anything either artist has created previously. In addition to this debut album release, the duo have also announced a live show in London on Saturday 22nd October at Union Chapel with The Stargazer’s Assistant in support.
Having both first skipped together on Current’s debut album Nature Unveiled in 1983, together, these two again manifested their sticky alchemy, with Youth’s ornate and dramatic arrangements sliding into and around Tibet’s vivid hypnagogic visions to end up in a psychic picnic hinterland that is as sumptuous as it is colourful in its opulence. Tibet’s luxurious kosmoi sliding slyly onto peaks of intent and intoxication on the album, and songs such as the Galactic Sexiness of ‘The Sex Of Stars’ and the Cuneiform Cuteness of ‘The Auras Are Escaping Into The Forest’ show him, backed by the emotive and expressive power of Youth’s arrangements, as a conduit turning unspelled grammars into grimoires.
Transcendent, tumultuous, and tricky, Create Christ, Sailor Boy is the sound of two spirits skipping as one to create a sidereal glimpse into uncounted cartoons. It seems likely this partnership will be a fruitful one, both in this realm and other playgrounds. “I am happy always to work with Youth in any way, forever and for ever and always and in all ways” stresses David. “I wait for my Ouija Board Planchette to receive his Mind’s Eye Text.”
93 years in the making, this elaborately-packaged 3-sided LP (it will have a laser etching on Side 4) contains ten songs and brings together spheres and planets for the Ultimate Hallucinatory PickNick. Also available in CD and digital formats, check out the House of Mythology store for pre-orders. This album will come with two different front covers; one by David Tibet, the other by Youth, available on 26th August.
Cara & Mike Gangloff release their new album Knock On Life’s Door with the Great American Drone Orchestra on August 5th through MIE. Giving a flavour of the unusual rthyms and idiosyncratic approach to arrangement which define the album, they’ve unveiled a video for ‘All of Me’, which you can watch here:
The clue’s in the name: this is Aural Aggravation. We do ambient, but not chillout, no new age shit. We like abrasion, noise and all things unsettling. But it’s Friday night after another week of global turbulence and insanity. The news is a 24/7 scrolling atrocity exhibition and frankly, we need something to keep us from launching ourselves off a bridge. So this comes as a welcome arrival in the AA inbox.
New York City synthesis trio Forma will be releasing their third LP, Physicalist, via kranky on September 23rd, and today we can hear the first excerpt from this sublime album in the closing track, ‘Improvisation for Flute and Piano’. A slow breaking meditation in which the flute provides the soft, subtle atmosphere, and the piano pulses with expressive persistence, it’s a beautiful curtains close on a record that has no shortage of allure and mystique.
Nosound have announced that they will release their new studio album ‘Scintilla’ on 2nd September via Kscope (Anathema, Steven Wilson, Paul Draper). The album marks a major departure and includes guest appearances from Anathema’s Vincent Cavanagh and acclaimed Italian singer Andrea Chimenti.
The band recently shared the first new track from the album, which may be short but is nonetheless epic. You can watch here:
Having already guaranteed themselves a slot in the AA best albums of 2016 list, Mayflower Madame are offering up a video to accompany the track ‘Upside Down (the death loop)’. The psych/goth act enlisted Norwegian art collective Born For Burning to direct the video: "We wanted to make the impression that the video consists of two different found tapes. Inspired by the gloominess of the song we sought to make the images of the video disturbing and shot with a lo-fi camera. Some key ideas were trafficking and crime scene footage, partly inspired by the movie Lilya 4-ever by Lukas Moodysson."
Every email and every press release which accompanies every CD – or at least every other email and every other press release – promises the arrival of a staggeing new talent, a band offering explosive riffs or massive anthems. It doesn’t take long to become immune to the hyperbole, and the spial downwards from enthusiams to despair is a rapid one when every any brings more music than an etitorial team of fifty could even contemplate let alone physically listen to.
So why do we do it? Because even when a press release makes generic promises about a band, sometimes they’re actually worth the effort. The email says that ‘London rockers Saints Patience share their retro-electro anthem debut single ‘Break Of Dawn’ out July 8th’ and the truth is it’s hard to muster a shrug. Whaddaya know? It’s actually a decent tune and hints at a band with some serious potential.
Aural Aggro favourites, female grunge trio The Kut, are supporting the release of their new single ‘Bad Man’ with their most extensive tour to date, taking in a whopping 37 dates. Yes, that’s ovr month of shows. And they’ve unveiled a video to accompany the single release. Watch it here. Go see them.
Anyone who says that there’s no exciting new music any more is talking bollocks and simpy isn’t looking in the right places. And that’s precisely why Aural Aggravtion exists.
Bringing together contemporary dream pop vocals, fuzzy 90s-influenced guitars, and an infectious live energy, Loco Ono is an electric ukulele and guitar-driven powerhouse, based in London. Fronted by Texas-born Grace Zacarias and South African-born Pieter Stone, the two-piece combines addictive pop melodies with heavy garage rock intensity. Drawing influence from artists like Best Coast, Wolf Alice, and Pixies, Loco Ono delivers a unique sound laced with modern apathy and teenage rebellion.
This exactly what we like here at camp AA. Loco Ono look great and sound geat, and ‘Sunny Day’ is a killer tune. Check the video here:
Aural Aggravation 