FEN release the epic and constantly shape-shifting track ‘Truth Is Futility’ as the second single taken from the East Anglians’ forthcoming album Monuments to Absence, which is slated for release on July 7, 2023.
Fen comment on ‘Truth Is Futility’: “The title says it all: the quest for truth is a futile one and even when presented with self-evident realities, our species will violently reject anything that contradicts enshrined dogma and the fragile beliefs to which many desperately nail their sense of identity to", mastermind Frank “The Watcher” Allain muses. “History has shown time and again that the purveyors of knowledge, the seekers of understanding, and those who challenge conventional wisdom are persecuted and stigmatised. At the very core of most of us lurks the kernel of one actual truth that many of us dare not even admit to ourselves: we do not desire to know the fundamental truths of ourselves and our world. We do not want our cosseted egos and comfortable safety blankets to be disturbed in any way – even by the revelations of enlightenment. Against such cemented defence, what is real truth if nothing but futility? Musically, this song is a true Fen ‘journey’. We feel that ‘Truth Is Futility’ embodies the balance of intensity, encroaching despair, and the primordial roar of rage that can be the only genuine reaction to such hopelessness.”
To celebrate and commemorate the ending of Emma Ruth Rundle’s soul-bearing Engine of Hell album cycle, Emma has announced a live album in addition to sharing the final dates of her Engine of Hell tour through the EU. Engine of Hell – Live at Roadburn 2022 will be released on 7th July 2023.
Of the release, Emma says;
“Roadburn has been such an important place for me and my evolution as an artist. The opportunity to perform Engine of Hell in full there in 2022 was the end of something… and the beginning of this whole new chapter in my life and art. I really do feel free in so many ways. I wanted to commemorate and honor the experience by making my Live at Roadburn album my first self release in 13 years. I will always treasure the Roadburn community”
In anticipation of this release, Emma is sharing ‘Razor’s Edge’ in advance of the live recording; listen below:
ENGINE OF HELL SUMMER SHOWS 2023
Jun 08 – Sideways Festival – Helsinki (FI) Jun 11 – USF – Bergen (NO) Jun 21 Sled Island Music & Arts Festival – Calgary (AB) w/ special guest William Fowler Collins July 15 – BOS Festival – Kortrijk (BE) July 17 – Kulturkirche – Cologne (DE) July 18 – St. Mathäus – Munich (DE) July 20 – Electric Castle Festival – Cluj Napoca (RO) July 21 – Synagogue – Novi Sad (RS) July 22 – Mocvara – Zagreb (HR) July 24 – Anfiteatro del Venda – Padova (IT) July 25 – Porgy & Bess – Wien (AT) July 26 – St. Barthlmä – Innsbruck (AT) July 28 – Magyar Zene Háza – Budapest (HU) July 29 – Primate’s Palace – Bratislava (SK) July 30 – Lukaskirche – Dresden (DE)
Norwegian progressive rock group AVKRVST will release their debut album The Approbation on 16th June, 2023. The Approbation is a concept album about a bleak soul who is left solely with his thoughts, isolated on a cabin deep into the dark forests, far away from civilization. The 49 minutes long concept album contains 7 songs, which take the listener though the thoughts of a man struggling towards the acceptance of death, being hauled into the abyss.
Previously released as a single on streaming services, the haunting new video for the album’s second single ‘Arcane Clouds’ is out now and can be seen here:
AA
At the young age of 7 years old, Martin Utby and Simon Bergseth made a pact that they would form a band when they got older. Now, 22 years later they’ve created an album inspired by everything they grew up listening to from Mew, Anekdoten and Porcupine Tree to Opeth, Neal Morse and King Crimson, yet unique in its own right.
The Approbation was written and recorded at a cabin in Alvdal (Norway) during a rainy, cold fall and winter. Simon (composer, guitars, bass and vocals) and Martin (composer, drummer and synths) were later joined by Øystein Aadland on bass/keys, Edvard Seim on guitars and Auver Gaaren on keys.
Sonically, The Approbation is a massive sounding piece of music. It’s everything from lush, melancholy moods to heavy, more aggressive atmospheres capturing the feeling of a cold, gloomy fall – a dark sky, filled with gazing stars above the mist.
Captivating, glamorous and bold, Belle Scar is a distinctive singer-songwriter, producer and artistic director originally from Montreal but now based in London. Described by the New York Times as “a creature from another dimension, she’s phenomenal,” her dramatic, cinematic music is at times redolent of a Tim Burton film score and at others of a mash-up between Nick Cave, Björk and Portishead.
Scar’s new single, ‘I’ve Been Here Before’, is about the acknowledgement and acceptance of the ‘black dog’ of melancholy. A moody slow-burner, it develops into a superbly arranged epic replete with sumptuous strings and an angelic choir that recalls John Barry and Jean-Claude Vannier. The video for it captures the magic of London at night, with Scar playing the lead role of a wanderer and actor JD Haymer representing her shadow, the clip culminating in a symbolic face-to-face meeting.
Reviewed here recently, ‘Save’ is May’s song from Argonaut’s ‘open-ended’ album, Songs from the Black Hat.
The lyrics were inspired by the Thai cave rescue and a genuine primary school comprehension test answer to the question ‘why didn’t Grace Darling save everyone at the same time?’ Clocking in at six and a half minutes, Save is Argonaut channelling nineties indie anthem 12 inch remixes a la MBV and the Telescopes.
They’ve just unveiled a video to accompany it, which you can watch here:
With touchdown imminent for Cosmic Chronicles: Act 1, The Ascension their debut album on May 12th, Kansas’ cosmic doom crew They Watch Us From The Moon are ready to fire off another track from it.
‘On The Fields Of The Moon’ is the opening number and pretty much nails the band’s unique sound and what they’re about. Cosmic space opera with heavy layered riffs ’n’ textures. Plus the fabulously melodic dual vocal harmonies of Luna Nemesis and Nova 10101001, which really take their sound to another level.
Think ABBA ‘with riffs’. It sums up the scope of their debut perfectly.
The band has this to say about the track.
’On The Fields Of The Moon’ is an epic ditty about the tide of an intergalactic battle turning against our human heroes. A war march with soaring vocal harmonies reminiscent of Alice In Chains/ABBA/OTTN-era Def Leppard.
Plus, there is a trippy and fittingly space age new video to go with it. 50’s sci-fi movies mixed with glam rock and an 80’s vibe in this psychedelic tale of alien abduction. All clashing colours and ‘Liquid Len’ (of Hawkwind fame) lightshow visuals, one can imagine that this lot are quite something to see live.
Watch the video for ‘On The Fields Of The Moon’ here:
Magic Wands is a US dark pop outfit originally formed in Nashville by guitarists & vocalists Chris and Dexy Valentine, but now based in Los Angeles where they have been joined by drummer Pablo Amador. Their name stems from the gift of a wand from Chris to Dexy when they first started making music together while still living on opposite sides of the country.
The group have released three albums over the last decade on which they have refined a shimmering and cosmic dream-pop sound that incorporates elements of shoegaze, post-punk and goth. Textured guitars, droning synths and delicate, ethereal vocals combine to create an otherworldly atmosphere.
Armed with songs that have often been praised on both sides of the Atlantic for their euphoric quality, especially in live performance, the trio themselves have remained dedicated to creating music that is both imaginative and emotionally engaging. They have developed a loyal fanbase drawn to their ability to create a sense of mysticism and wonder through their music.
Magic Wands have shared stages with the likes of Radiohead, Slowdive, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Horrors, Deerhunter, The Kills and The Black Keys. They also played their own headlining tours of the UK and mainland Europe in 2017-18.
Having released a single in late March entitled ‘Joy’, the group have now followed it with ‘Time’. Complemented with a pair of remixes apiece, both are also included on Switch, a brand new album set for release on 12th May by Metropolis Records.
Boris and Uniform might have seemed like a strange pairing when they teamed up for a US tour back in 2019. Sure, both bands harness the power of big, blown-out riffs, but Boris’s rock heroics, lysergic sprawl, and monolithic sludge summon a different energy than Uniform’s mechanised bombardments and frenzied assaults. However, when Boris invited Uniform to team up on a reimagined version of their classic “Akuma no Uta” as a part of their encore, there was an obvious chemistry between the artists. The idea of a collaborative album came up, and the bands spent the next year swapping song ideas and recordings from their home-base studios until Boris and Uniform had an album that captured the fearless exploration and unbridled power of their live performances.
Sacred Bones Records is proud to present the Boris & Uniform collaborative album Bright New Disease on June 16, 2023.
Bright New Disease opens with the collaboration’s first single, ‘You are the Beginning,’ a ferocious thrash-inflected banger concocted by the Boris camp. It was the first piece the band composed during the initial day of their studio session in July 2020. As the title insinuates, the song was written with the idea that it would open the album and, hopefully, open a show one day too. “At that time, we didn’t know when we would be able to resume concerts,” says Boris’ Atsuo, “and our wish became the song directly.” The uncertainty and anxiety of the early months of the pandemic fuelled Bright New Disease, and “You are the Beginning” sets the stage by stampeding out of the gate with vicious palm-muted riffs, snarling vocals, and dual drum bombardments courtesy of Atsuo and Uniform drummer Mike Sharp.
Listen here:
AA
“On tour, we learned more about the depth of their musicality, which we felt was compatible with our own expression,” Boris’s Atsuo and Takeshi say of their tour mates. “They are a band that can be described in many ways—punk, metal, industrial—but they truly excel because they are not locked into any style. They are always experimenting and innovating.” The feeling was mutual.
“Uniform have been longtime fans and admirers of Boris. Supporting them on tour was a dream come true,” says Uniform vocalist/electronics wrangler Michael Berdan. Guitarist and producer Ben Greenberg was equally excited by the opportunity to team up with Boris and shape the recording of Bright New Disease in his studio. “Wata is one of my favourite guitar players ever, so I’m very stoked we got two duelling solo tracks on this record,” Greenberg says, referring to the intertwined guitar leads on “Endless Death Agony.” This isn’t to say there wasn’t also a shared appreciation for certain classics, particularly when it came to Japanese hardcore. “The first time I met Atsuo he was wearing a Gastunk shirt, and Takeshi has schooled me harder on Burning Spirits than any fetishist westerner could ever hope for,” says Berdan.
Members of both Boris and Uniform talk about songs on Bright New Disease in the context of how they’ll play out in a live setting. Under normal circumstances, such considerations are a part of the writing process for any band with an active live presence. But considering that Bright New Disease was written and recorded in the darkest days of the pandemic, it frames the agitated and tumultuous spirit of the album in a new light. Yes, this is the sound of frustration, but it was founded on resilience. “In the end, it sounds like the crystalised essence of both bands at the heights of their creative abilities,” says Berdan. “It is a testament of friendship and hope in the face of a world on fire.”
Synthpop/Industrial band, Distorted Reality has just unveiled the details of their new single, ‘I Can’t Imagine’, their first new music in sixteen years.
‘I Can’t Imagine’ addresses the idea of being in a relationship with someone for a long time while realizing the relationship is essentially over. No one wants to make the scary move of ending it. It’s a difficult and heartbreaking split because you both still love each other. In this case, however, love is not enough.
Everyday Is The Song is an evocatively drifting ambient-adjacent work of sampled tape, a diaristic soundwork that weaves interconnected songs out of field recordings and ephemeral music snippets featuring dozens of players in Void’s artistic community, including Owen Pallett, Sarah Pagé, N NAO, Shota Yokose and YlangYlang.
Two tracks from the album have just been made public.
‘Present Day Montage’ is one of them, and it begins as a scratchy droning chordal piece sampling organ from “I’ve Never Seen Paris In The Spring” by Philadelphian Darian Scatton’s Still Sweet project (from a rare 7-inch on Edible Onions), gradually blended with samples from a Montréal live performance recording by Acid Mt. Royal (Sarah Pagé, Maya Kuroki, Shota Yokose & Eddie Wagner). Void drops one of their trademark minimal broken-clockwork beats around the halfway mark, accentuating the sense of temporal slippage and transience. Disembodied atonal singing voices, the echoes of crowds and empty spaces, and the glistening of freight trains grinding on the tracks that run through Montréal’s Mile-End district, create a montage that melds gently otherworldly melancholy with concrete urban-industrial specificity.
“Present Day Montage” has a self-explanatory title. As one of the closing songs on the album, it was meant to evoke a time-lapse sequence that runs up to my current time and place, in relation to the years where ‘this album took place’—like those epilogues at the end of films that describe the fate of the characters. This time-lapse reveals both changes and repeated cycles, elements that stay in place and others that drift by, the sensation of both fast motion and slow stillness. — Joni Void
Aural Aggravation 