Leya - INTP

Purchase: http://theghostlystore.com/collections/music/products/htrk-work-work-work
Release Info: http://ghostly.com/releases/work-work-work

HTRK’s Ghostly International debut 'Work (work, work)' is a flat-lined study of desire and submission, sentimentality and dysphoria. The London by way of Berlin and Melbourne art-rock duo (pronounced “Hate Rock”) finished the album’s production while grieving the sudden loss of founding member and bassist Sean Stewart to suicide in March ‘10. And while that tragedy has certainly found its way into the music’s bottomless sonic void, 'Work (work, work),' written from 2006-10 in Berlin and London, is about much more than abject darkness. Much, much more.
On 'Work (work, work)', HTRK craft a stark soundscape: achingly slow 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, vaporous guitar noise, and Jonnine Standish’s androgynous, detached vocals, dripping with reverb. And yet it’s the careful way the pair combine those elements—organizing and juxtaposing them with a minimalist’s attention to detail—that makes their music so emotionally devastating. “Ice Eyes Eis” starts things off by enveloping you in a slippery erotic zone, in which a German sex TV babe splays herself over a molasses-slow beat and clouds of dry-ice atmosphere. The creeping “Eat Yr Heart” embodies HTRK’s touch with sonic unease, showcasing a high-pitched horror-movie synth obligato that flits like a swarm of bats around Standish’s declarations of longing (“glucose, cellulose, saccharine”/ “you fill me up then make me starve, eat yr heart”). Late-album highlight “Love Triangle” takes a more sensuous tone, describing a perfect three-person encounter (“he on she on me / she on me on he / bermuda bermuda bermuda”) over textured guitar swirls and a languorous drum-machine march.
For all of Work (work, work)’s more abrasive elements, its sense of bleakness and mourning, one finds a surprisingly romantic core. A sense of doomed melancholy, a heavy heart, lives below the layers of a murky and heavy space. HTRK’s remaining members, Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang, sweeten their heavier sonic reference points (Pan Sonic, Suicide, et al) into songs of love and lust, creating an imaginary party record for the end of time. And what of all that “work”? In the end, HTRK’s album title seems both to refer to the tireless craft that went into its creation, as well as Standish and Yang’s endless quest to extract beauty from melancholy.


HTRK - Eat Yr Heart

Phantom Youth

2 to 3

Sally Dige - Doppelganger

The Music Industry Is Trying to Enslave Me

PEINE PERDUE (Coco Gallo/Stephane Argillet) - 2010 
excerpt from the album "No Souvenir" (Cold Beats records, 2014)

Une capsule métal
Recouverte de sel
Scellée hors du sol
Abrite des tunnels
De parkings en spirales

Les êtres se reflètent
Sur les faces glissantes
Des superficies abjectes
Aux réflexions obéissantes

Un ciel de tapis roulants
Rampe en silence
Vers l’embarquement

Francfort Aéroport
Terminal Continental

Chaînes de montagnes
Renversées en plafond bas
Tableaux en pointillés de signes
De cristaux liquides, plasma

Vodka, Cigarettes, Baccara
Embarquement immédiat

Peine Perdue - FRANCFORT AÉROPORT

Dark Stains

Closing track from the 'Psych For Sore Eyes' EP - six tracks of modern psychedelia mastered by Sonic Boom and also featuring Hookworms, Ttotals, The Vacant Lots, White Manna and Lorelle Meets The Obsolete. The EP will be released on February 18, 2013 and will be available on limited-edition double 7" on green and red vinyl with a fold-out 3D sleeve (designed and screen printed by the good folk at Heretic) and glasses. It will also be out digitally via iTunes and Bandcamp.

The Band In Heaven 'High Low'

you are the dead

You Are the Dead - FOKKER

MNQ 038 LIGHT HOUSE - IN THEIR IMAGE 12'' EP

 
Mannequin Records is simply elated to present the debut 12'' EP from Light House. 

Light House have been kicking around Portland for two years. The band contains Chris Relyea, an ex member from The Rapture, Dawn Sharp and Brooks Blackhawk from Atriarch. Excellent dark wave with spacious mixes, minimal synths, reverb drenched guitars and eerie malevolent vocals that either pierces your heart or your spinal cord.

Originally released in United States by Freee record label in 2012 and recorded on pure analog tape, ‘In Their Image’ EP illuminates the romantic and elemental nature of Light House's dreamlike sound, a moody, theatrical dirge which brings to mind classic 4AD acts such as Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil. 

To celebrate this relaunch Light House will be touring America and Europe, hitting the West Coast in mid June to coincide with Warm Leatherette in San Francisco, then onto New York and making their way along the East Coast. 

Light House is music that lulls the Etheric body awake, in a hypotetical world where Tropic Of Cancer meets Soft Metals. 

- 12’’ EP on black vinyl 
- Limited edition of 300 copies 
- Artwork by Giandomenico Carpentieri 

Strongly recommended to fans of Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, 4AD, Factory Records, Minimal Wave. 

Tracks: 
In Their Image 
Watchword 
The Walls Want Communion 
Seven Seas You Sent

Dark Stains

Exploded View

Related tracks