Swedish progressive rock/metal innovators Pain of Salvation will release a very special reissue version of their 2002 album “Remedy Lane” entitled “Remedy Lane Re:visited (Re:mixed & Re:lived)” on July 1st, 2016 via InsideOutMusic.
They’ve unveiled a statc audio clip of ‘Rope Ends (Remix)’ on YouTube by way of a taster. Check its epicness out here:
Bearsuit Records – BS032 – 9th July 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
Bearsuit mainstay Harold Nono returns – not that he’s ever really been away – and once again, he’s come up trumps – and thankfully, not Donald Trumps. Swinging wildly from rumbling, dark ambience to mellowed-out doodlesome synthesised post-rock, Nono’s latest effort is as inventive as ever. But on this outing, he’s definitely set his sights on sparse scenes: a gentle piano tinkles in the subtle mists which hover and hum through ‘Otosan’,
There’s a sinister undercurrent that intimates ‘sci-fi horror film’ about the atmospheric ‘Atam No Nai Uma Ga Hashiru’: in contrast, ‘I’m Disguised as an Idiot’ sees Japanese traditionalism collide with western glitchtronica, while ‘Unbeaten Brothers and Sisters’ created a darkly atmospheric tension with its fractured samples and beneath-the-radar fear chords.
‘The Saline Revival Show’ is an achingly mournful piece, a sparse violin / cello arrangement that’s brooding, moving, and evocative. The post-rock echoes carry through into the sparse closer, ‘Watashi Wa Ie Ni Kaeritai’, rounding off an intriguing album that is – as you’d reasonably expect from Harold Nono, and as you’d reasonably expect from Bearsuit – difficult to place, but a lot easier to dig.
Swans have shared the first full track from the forthcoming album, The Glowing Man, out on Young God (N America) / Mute on 17th June 2016.
‘When Will I Return?’, described by MOJO as a ;revelation’, was written, explains Michael Gira "specifically for Jennifer Gira to sing. It’s a tribute to her strength, courage, and resilience.’
But enough preamble. Listen to this:
Taken from the new EP “Rainmaking”, out May 27th via Denizen Recordings, ‘Crook’ was largely inspired by a strange situation that Andrew (the drummer) found himself in a few years ago, where he and his parents saw an assumed criminal being chased by police officers in central London.
According to Andy, the guy mocked him directly as he ran by for not having the courage to step in, which I found deeply funny – to literally be in the act of fleeing from the police, but still make time to critique other people’s moral fibre is quite an achievement. So, with that as a starting point, we started writing with the intention of exploring cowardice, fight or flight instinct, mob psychology; things like that. What came out was probably more of a self-evaluation than anything else.
Stream it here:
Washington riff rockers Mos Generatorwill release their new full-length Abyssinia on July 15th 2016 in Europe and August 5th 2016 in North America. In advance of its release, the band have revealed the first single from Abyssinia in the form of ‘Wicked Willow’. Get your lugs round it here:
Verlag System – VS011 – 29th April 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
As the title reasonably implies, this is a soundtrack to a bleak landscape. The expansive instrumentals may hint at the potential for travel and movement, but they’re pinned to insistent motoric rhythms. The effect is at once spacious and claustrophobic. The stark synths call to mind New Order’s Movement, but they’re balanced by warmer, fuzzy-edged analogue sounds, which creates a different kind of feel, less morosely bereft and more abstract than figurative in form. Building some dense thrumming throbs and deep grooves, it’s eminently danceable for the most part. That said, there are some deep, sombre pieces which are less percussive: instead, the rhythms emerge from the regular pulsations which form a nebulous sonic body.
Single ‘The Possibility of an Island’, here remixed by GMR and Montxo Burgess is a sedate and rather grand piece, with hints of Visage’s ‘Fade to Grey’. Built around a simple chord sequence and heartbeat bass rhythm, it carries intimations both of 80s vintage and a certain sense futurism. Taking its title (presumably) from Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 science-fiction novel set in a dystopian future bereft of emotion and human contact, it echoes with isolation.
‘Ziggurat’ creates a vast, rippling desert of sound that undulates and pulses toward the whooshing gusts of air that encircle ‘Saturn Radio Waves,’ with fragmentary sounds of human voices drifting in and out.
Thrumming, looping motifs evoke a robotic, dehumanised world of synthesis and desolation. And yet through it all shine bright shafts of light, brave and optimistic, like the rising of a sun over a newly discovered world.
Featuring members of Joanna Gruesome, Thin Privilege and Black International, Glasgow purveyors of no-wave noise are unleashing their debut album via Good Grief records on a pay-what-you-want basis. Which means you can get it for free, but obviously, chipping in a few quid is a good way to show appreciation and to help bands to keep making music. This one’s definitely worth it. Watch the vid below, and check the album out via the link below that.
Norwegian avantgarde rock/metal band Virus have announced details on their 4th album Memento Collider which is their first release for Karisma Records. You can check out new track ‘Steamer’ below.
End Of Mirrors is the forthcoming full length from Oakland-based dark punk conjurors Alaric. Set for global release on May 6th on CD, vinyl, and digitally via Neurot Recordings, and on cassette via Sentient Ruin Laboratories. The record, captured and mixed by Skot Brown at Kempton House Studios, provides an emotional and deeply physical journey through inky, blackened sonic murk, devoid of all hope. Oppressive, gloomy, and epically grandiose, each of the seven psalms comprising End Of Mirrors is at once beautiful and unsettling, and as a precursor to its release, you can now hear the track ‘Mirrors’ here:
The Poisoned Glass (the duo of Stuart Dahlquist and Edgy59) unveil debut album 10 Swords through Ritual Productions on 22nd April. Ahead of the release and coinciding with the start of their first European tour, they’ve offered up for public consumption ‘Low Spirits’. ‘Stockhausen-esque’, it’s bleak, downtuned, doomy and difficult. We like it. Hear it here:
LIVE SHOWS:
14/04/2016 Netherlands, Tilburg – Het Patronaat, Roadburn Festival
15/04/2016 Belgium, Brussels – Magasin4
16/04/2016 Germany, Osnabrueck – Bastard Club
17/042016 Czech Republic, Prague, Chapeau Rouge
18/04/2016 Germany, Hamburg, MS Stubnitz
20/04/2016 Norway, Oslo – Blitz
22/04/16 – Belgium, Antwerp – Antwerp Music City Issue
24/04/2016 Netherlands, Amsterdam – OCCII
26/04/2016 – France, Lille – Centre Culturel Libertaire (CCL)
27/04/2016 France, Paris – La Mécanique Ondulatoire
28/04/2016 UK, Bristol – The Exchange
29/04/2016 UK, London – The Black Heart, Desertfest
Aural Aggravation 