Taken from the album "Stars Are Our Home."
Out now on Slumberland Records (US) and Sonic Cathedral (UK)

Order the digital download from iTunes: http://smarturl.it/bhb-itunes
Order the LP/CD: http://smarturl.it/bhb-album

more info: www.blackheartedbrother.com
Black Hearted Brother Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackheartedbrother

It was Alfred Bester, if I recall correctly, who called 'the stars my destination', in his brilliant novel of the same name from 1956. Long considered a libertarian science fiction classic, it's also notable for featuring one of the very first accounts of synaesthesia in English-language fiction. This might be drawing a particularly long bow, but the title of Black Hearted Brother's debut, "Stars Are Our Home", immediately brought Bester's book to mind – and there's definitely something of the synaesthesic experience about this album, overflowing with enraptured, glowing textures, flaring white light like magnesium, in consort with brilliant red-blue waves of psychedelia.

Of course, the first thing that might crane your head towards "Stars Are Our Home" is the group's membership: Neil Halstead, the éminence grise behind Slowdive and Mojave 3; Mark Van Hoen, an original member of Seefeel, subsequently working solo and as Locust; and Nick Holton, the main mover behind Holton's Opulent Oog, and member of Coley Park, who have released albums on Halstead's Shady Lane label. They had previously converged on Halstead's 2001 solo album, "Sleeping On Roads," though Van Hoen also co-produced Mojave 3's "Out Of Tune" (1998), "Excuses For Travelers" (2000) and "Spoon & Rafter" (2003), while Holton took up production duties for Halstead's "Palindrome Hunches" (2012). Van Hoen and Halstead go back much further still, to 1992, when they were in Seefeel and Slowdive respectively: 'Mark taught Neil much that was electronic and ambient music.'

You could hear that education bearing fruit with Slowdive's late-period masterpiece, 1995's "Pygmalion." In some ways, "Stars Are Our Home" echoes that album's experimental process, if not the outcome, as Black Hearted Brother are a very different, distinctive beast, often indulging in what Halstead, self-deprecatingly, describes as 'a lot of very long and indulgent space rawk.' And indeed, that space-rock drive is writ loud and clear on the album's opening title track, an instrumental bliss-out that navigates through ocean-tides of FX-drenched guitar. But there's a lot more to it: 'The idea was to just make a record that was in some ways "unedited",' Halstead continues. 'To not worry about a particular sound or style, but to just go with the flow. We all make quite focused records individually so, as Mark says, it's our "guilty pleasures" album.' That seems about right, except with "Stars Are Our Home," the outcome is no guilt, all pleasure.

'Neil and Nick had, I think, started a few months before they asked me to join the party,' Van Hoen recalls. 'I think they had a few songs on the go, and needed an extra hand to add a few funny noises and generally add to the chaos – or maybe bring some order to the chaos.' Van Hoen has picked up on the dialectical nature of "Stars Are Our Home" here, its "order" and its "chaos": it's a rich, compelling album full of unexpected twists and turns, at times overloading the sensorium with so much material you're drenched in noise, but it'll just as quickly flip back on itself and drift through a glazed-eye, agrarian moment of acoustic melancholy (see the start of "Time In The Machine", which, as if to prove my point, takes less than a minute to build into a clangorous, droning monster).

So, there's a whole lot going on in these grooves, and plenty of it's unexpected, or from unexpected sources. The trio plays fast and loose with what listeners might consider their pre-ordained 'roles'. 'Primarily the songs themselves were started either by Nick or Neil individually,' Van Hoen explains, 'but then edited, developed and generally messed around with and rendered almost unlistenable by either myself or the others. The roles were not always clear cut. Sometimes Nick would be playing keyboards and synths, and myself guitars.' Lyrics on the record feel like another texture, another layer: sometimes they're invocatory chants, sometimes Halstead's and Holton's voices are ghosted by electronic manipulation, as on "Oh Crust". Often there's more going on than at first glance, and an index of the album's lyrical concerns runs to 'romance, sci-fi, places to go on holiday, real UFO abduction, the duality in the meaning of words, lament for the loss of psychedelic freedoms by the masses…'

"Stars Are Our Home" is brave and beautiful, mysterious and resonant. Its experimental edges never forget the importance of the pop moment; the best way to bring people around to your way of hearing is to seduce their ears, and there's seduction plenty here, pure pop like "Take Heart", the Other Green World of "I'm Back", the closing driftwork that is "Look Out Here They Come". A real head-wrecker of an album. And what does the future hold? The trio speaks as one: 'Black Hearted Brother will grow and mature into something very sophisticated in the coming years. A kind of comedic-space-rock-dancehall outfit to define a zeitgeist for the 22nd century, if you like.' Ha, yeah – amen, brothers!

Black Hearted Brother - This Is How It Feels (Single Edit)

From his forthcoming debut LP out January 28th, 2014 on Trouble In Mind Records. www.troubleinmindrecs.com

Morgan Delt - Obstacle Eyes

https://soundcloud.com/manukahoneys

Written by George Boorman
Produced by Kristian Smith

Manuka Honeys - Pushing Pillows

First single from Weirdo Shrine, the new Ty Segall-produced sophomore album by Seattle surf-rock group La Luz, out August 7th on Hardly Art records.

Pre-order Weirdo Shrine
Hardly Art: http://www.hardlyart.com/shop/laluz.html
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/weirdo-shrine/id992981833
Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00Y1QSCEK

Follow La Luz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/laluzers
Follow La Luz on Instagram: http://instagram.com/laluzband
Like La Luz on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laluzusa

Weirdo Shrine

You Disappear

La Luz - "You Disappear"

Heaven's Hounds is taken from Weird Dreams' new album, Luxury Alone, out 10th June.  Weird Dreams play The Waiting Room, London on 7th March. Tickets here - https://tickets.songkick.com/events/26011288

Pre-order Luxury Alone 
iTunes (w/ IG) - http://smarturl.it/LuxuryAlone.iTunes
CD/black vinyl/ltd ed sky blue vinyl -  http://smarturl.it/LuxuryAlone.LtdVinyl 

Weird Dreams - Heaven's Hounds

Drug Train - All My Friends

Bambi Lou's debut single "Call Waiting"

Recorded & produced by Kate Cooper of An Horse in Montreal

~ Stream / Purchase ~
iTunes: http://apple.co/2ezTY9G
Spotify: http://bit.ly/2eZiJKL
Tidal: http://bit.ly/2gbQ5Im

Call Waiting

Formidable by nature and not only by name, those Psychedelic Southsea Noise peddlers at Strong Island Recordings​ are putting out a hulking monster of a track from seaside spectres Melt Dunes.

The song in question is ‘Flesh’, a near 6-minute krautrock workout played with the gusto of The Stooges ​and the subtleties of CAN. ​The band charge mercilessly through the track with a cutting, persistent and droning synth providing the fuel for guitars to scream, drums to bludgeon and vocals to burn down a night sky with. It’s ‘Waiting for the Man’ for a disenchanted beach kid who’ll wait for no man, who knew chewing up a classic was going to sound so good, so twisted and so unique in an ocean of bands trying a little too hard to be The Growlers, King Gizzard and Ty Segall ​rather than become peers and equals?

‘Flesh’ is the first of many great numbers the band are set to release, with a ton of live shows booked the first part of this year, Melt Dunes ​will pummel and hypnotise the crowds with fuzzed out bass, Evil synths and heavy protopunk guitars, all doused in the winter sea mist anddelivered in a closed fist caked in slime from another planet.

UPCOMING SHOWS

4 FEBRUARY - Hoodoos, London

23 FEBRUARY - Epsom SU, Epsom

24 FEBRUARY - The Alex, Southampton

3 MARCH - The Festing, Portsmouth

4 MARCH - The Crofter's Rights, Bristol

29 APRIL - Portsmouth Psych Fest

MELT DUNES ONLINE

www.facebook.com/MeltDunes/

www.twitter.com/meltdunes

www.instagram.com/meltdunes/

http://strongislandrecordings.tumblr.com/

PRESS CONTACT

Popular Favourites​ - Charlie Wyatt 



Mastered by Subsequent Mastering

Artwork by GRITT

Melt Dunes 'Flesh'

@francobollo
www.facebook.com/francobollouk
twitter.com/francobolloland

Written and performed by Francobollo.
Recorded at Iguana Studios.
Produced by Charlie Andrew.
Engineered by Brett Cox.
Published by Big Tree Publishing.

Released 16/05/2017 on Square Leg Records.

Worried Times

Con Conn Was Impatient

'Nocturne' is out in North America August 28th on Captured Tracks.

http://capturedtracks.com/artists/wildnothing/

Wild Nothing // Midnight Song

minor chords, major attitude // hibambilou@gmail.com

Call Waiting

Bambi Lou

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