2-17-17-release-preview

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)

Released digitally on 21st April via Hatch Records

Forthcoming UK Dates:

3 Mar: Night & Day, Manchester (Headline show)
24 Apr: Live Rooms, Chester (w/ Nine Black Alps)
25 Apr: The Underground, Stoke (w/ Nine Black Alps)
26 Apr: The Hop, Wakefield (w/ Nine Black Alps)
2 May: Trades Club, Hebden Bridge (w/ Nine Black Alps)
3 May: Live At Leeds, Leeds

facebook.com/thenthickens
www.hatchrecords.co.uk

Then Thickens - Tiny Legs

GROUNDERS' new album will be available May 12.

“Where do you go? Waiting around, where do you go from here?” wonders the chorus of “Secret Friend,” the first single from GROUNDERS’ debut self-titled LP. 

With a dreamy, reverb-drenched intro, the song drifts alongside layers of wobbly arpeggiated synth lines and space-age guitar melodies. It’s the opening track, and it’s also a fitting intro to GROUNDERS. It shimmers and gleams, but there’s a scrappy, stripped-back undertone that chips away at any polish. For every catchy hook and lush arrangement throughout the album there’s a woozy counterpoint that keeps things slightly off-kilter. 

Where do you go from here? Into the weird and wonderful pop world of GROUNDERS.  

This spring, the Toronto-based band – Andrew Davis (vocals and guitar), Daniel Busheikin (keyboards), Mike Searle (Bass) and Evan Lewis (guitar) – will release their first full-length album, a collection of dense and intricate pop music under the gauzy veil of krautrock and psychedelia.   In the time between releasing the Wreck of a Smile EP in 2013 and laying demos for their debut album, GROUNDERS rediscovered their love for classic pop music, an appreciation that had waned over the years as they became obsessed with circumventing the conventional. They listened to pop staples like David Bowie and Devo, and revisited old favourites like Velvet Underground, Neu and the Zombies. When GROUNDERS finally came up for air, they had a newfound love for pop and a glut of ideas for a debut LP.  

Meanwhile, Meditation for Dummies and David Lynch’s self-help guide Catching the Big Fish, on transcendental meditation and the creative process, were passed around the van while touring through North America. As Davis’s interest in meditation increased, his lyrics began to reflect his search for serenity and inner peace. 

The album came to life in two distinct spaces: Davis’s bedroom in Toronto’s sleepy High Park neighbourhood; and a spacious two-car garage packed with vintage gear from various pawn shops and second-hand stores across the country. 

After recruiting DIANA’s Kieran Adams to handle drums, the band headed into the studio with longtime pal Marcel Ramagnano (Born Ruffians, Absolutely Free) to record. Months of tracking, tinkering and layering later, GROUNDERS enlisted the incomparable David Newfeld (Broken Social Scene, Holy Fuck) to give each song the bombastic, fried analog treatment he’s become known for.   

First single "Secret Friend" sounds like a bleached and sunbaked Zombies; “Vyvanse,” which yes, is named after the ADHD drug, contains a lilting guitar riff that’ll break your heart; “Pull It Over Me” careens into the dreamy ether courtesy of a wistful cyclical guitar that’s the epitome of a lazy summer’s day; “No Ringer” is a wobbly Silver Apples trance doused in a saxophone freak-out; "Fool's Banquet" sparkles like early Broadcast flooded by constant glistening waves of pleasure.  After cross-country tours, an acclaimed debut EP and a David Lynch-inspired spiritual journey, GROUNDERS have finally come of age.


GROUNDERS - Secret Friend

7" RELEASE DETAILS COMING SOON!
Written, Recorded and Produced by Early Ghost
Drums recorded by Sam Hatchwell
Mastered at Metropolis Studios
Artwork by Fabienne Thomas

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtpbPszFV5E

Devil's Got Me Now

https://spritzer420.bandcamp.com/  
new album! available on vinyl at that link above!
Kyle Olson - Drums
Ryan Weiner - gutiar ripping
Brian Betancourt - Bass riffs
Paul Hogan - melty key boards
Matt Meade - vocals / guitar / bar tab

Made good / recorded by / mixed by : Sam Owens
Mastered by Josh Bonati

Melt

Black Twig return with their third long player Blaze On A Plain, released via Soliti In April 2016.

To wet your appetite for such exciting news, the band share the first single from the album, 1998. Possibly the band's most melodic cut of music yet, 1998 share's an affinity with the best music made with guitars, drums and bass. Yes, as the song intones, 'it's somehow cathartic' . Oh yeah, and did we mention uplifting?

A video accompanies 1998, with Black Twig commenting "It's not about nostalgia, it's more like a visual memory. It is what it is. Shot on digital8 with our friends in Helsinki. We love you!" 

Watch 1998 here
https://youtu.be/P5AhRy7OYmo

https://www.facebook.com/blacktwigmusic

Black Twig:  1998

Taken from the 'Crystal' EP released on Sonic Cathedral 

Reunion Message

"Try" is the first single from Molly Burch's debut album, Please Be Mine, out February 17th, 2017, on Captured Tracks.

Pre-Order Physical here: https://www.omnianmusicgroup.com/products/please-be-mine
Pre-Order Digital here: http://smarturl.it/pleasebemine

Please Be Mine

Molly Burch // Try (Official Single)

“Tall Glass of Water” from the upcoming album 'Saturday Night' out February 17, 2017 on Jagjaguwar

Pre-order ‘Saturday Night’: https://timdarcy.lnk.to/SaturdayNight

TALL GLASS OF WATER

Tim Darcy - Tall Glass of Water

“Radio Kids” from ‘Hard Love’ by Strand of Oaks, out February 17th on Dead Oceans 

Available on LP/CD/Tape/Digital: strandofoaks.lnk.to/hardlove

Hard Love

Strand Of Oaks - Radio Kids

Artist: Grails
Title: Pelham
Album: Chalice Hymnal
Release Date: February 17, 2017

Pre-Order: store.temporaryresidence.com/products/trr279

When Grails dropped their fifth studio album, Deep Politics in 2011, it was instantly hailed as a cult classic and became the moment when Grails truly cultivated a sound all their own. Six years later, they advance that sound with their most lush, expansive album of their inspired career, Chalice Hymnal.

Rather than pick up where they left off, Grails take the sky-high riff-based heaviness of their earlier albums and distill it into a nuanced, widescreen opus. The perennial influences of mid-20th century Western film scores, obscure library music, and psychedelic krautrock are indelibly imprinted, but Chalice Hymnal exudes an eerie patience in unfurling the many layers of its subtle details.

Produced by the band over the past five years, Chalice Hymnal bears some of the European psych and experimental hip-hop production techniques of founding members Alex Hall and Emil Amos' other group, Lilacs & Champagne. Amos' meditative metal band, Om, and longtime singer-songwriter project, Holy Sons, also naturally find their way into the Chalice cauldron. Rounding out their leaner line-up, cofounder Zak Riles (also of experimental kraut-psych trio, Watter) layers synths and programming into an electronic-prog hybrid that pushes Grails further into the deep end, displaying a profound resonance, both musically and emotionally. No one else sounds like Grails, and on Chalice Hymnal they sound more like themselves than ever before.

Chalice Hymnal

Grails – Pelham

"What's That Perfume That You Wear?" off Jens Lekman's 'Life Will See You Now,' out February 17, 2017 on Secretly Canadian

Pre-Order 'Life Will See You Now': https://jenslekman.lnk.to/lifewillseeyounow

Life Will See You Now

WHAT'S THAT PERFUME THAT YOU WEAR

Jens Lekman - What's That Perfume That You Wear?

Firestations - Receiver

New single 'Believe' out 16th Feb 2018 via Propeller Recordings: https://frokedal.lnk.to/Believe

Believe

Buy/stream

Frøkedal - Believe

Over & Under

A passionate music company with a global digital and physical distribution solution, for the most exciting independent labels and artists.

Tim Darcy - Tall Glass of Water

Jagjaguwar

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