Posts Tagged ‘Tool’

Listen: ‘The Artroom Wonder’ by Peter Murphy

Posted: 21 March 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Having issued ‘Let The Flowers Grow’ (a surprise duet with Boy George) as a standalone single in late 2024, original post-punk icon Peter Murphy followed it in mid-February with ‘Swoon’, a majestic slice of synth-punk/funk that also served as a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for his fans.

‘The Artroom Wonder’ is available as a brand new single from today (21st March), with Murphy explaining its genesis as “an echo from my 4th year at senior school. Daniel Ash [former Bauhaus bandmate] and I are listening to the mysterious 6th year cool intelligentsia that have gathered in the artroom. We have dared to enter their conclave, and the music coming from it is intriguing. We discover that the song being played is [David Bowie’s] ‘The Bewlay Brothers’, highly intelligent, mystical and sensual, with the singer’s voice as seductive as anyone I’d ever heard.”

  Justin Chancellor of Tool plays bass guitar on ‘The Artroom Wonder’, one of several guest musicians on Murphy’s new album Silver Shade, which is scheduled for release on 9th May 2025 via Metropolis Records on 2xLP (with colour variants), CD and digitally. Containing both ‘Swoon’ and ‘The Artroom Wonder’, the physical and Bandcamp digital formats will also include ‘Let The Flowers Grow’ as a bonus track. 

Produced by Youth (Pink Floyd, The Verve, Crowded House, as well as a member of Killing Joke, The Orb, The Firemen) at his studio in Spain, ‘Silver Shade’ is Murphy’s tenth studio album and a long-awaited follow-up to ‘Lion’, which the pair worked on together a decade ago. A symbiotic relationship born of artistic collaboration, Murphy states that “this new album is as powerful as any of my work to date.”

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Solcura – I Am Weak

Posted: 8 April 2023 in Singles and EPs
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24th March 2023

James Wells

One thing the Internet has definitely changed is the single format. Historically, songs were edited for radio play, and to fit on a 45rpm 7” single: for both, three to four minutes was optimal. Now, podcasts and lack of format-based restrictions mean that, at least outside of the mainstream, anything goes and has pretty much the same chance of getting aired at least by someone who digs it.

And so, with ‘I Am Weak’, Solcura may well draw on some retro references – the obvious ones being Soundgarden and Tool, as they mine a hefty grunge / proto-nu-metal sound with some thick, heavyweight riffing – but clocking in at an epic six minutes, it’s very much a contemporary single.

There’s certainly nothing weak about it: the guitars are strong, as are the vocal melodies, and it’s one of those songs that starts gently – simply voice and bass guitar – and then the guitar starts up and the riff slams in and it really gets going, with everything meshing together, interweaving to create a richly-textured sonic cloth where grunge meets prog-metal with a delivery that’s hard to fault. For all its tunefulness, it’s a song brimming with anguish in the grunge tradition, but there’s something eternally affecting about that kind of introspective emotional rawness tinged with self-loathing.

They’ve already played Bloodstock and supported Pulled Apart by Horses, and with a new EP in the offing, 2023 is looking promising for these guys.

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