Hi-Fi Curious - show 122

Featured on the upcoming 2nd Repo Man album, provisionally titled 'Put Down The Fake Title: All I Had Was Denim'. Recorded September 2014 at Nine Volt Leap Studios.

Static Excess Strobe Effect [Minesweeping / Lava Thief 014 / 2015)

Single supporting the debut album of Mourning Birds - released 29 June 2015. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkiNlcPhQno

MOURNING BIRDS- The Last Thing (I Need)

Dine Alone Records is excited to announce the June 16 release of the new highly anticipated Heartless Bastards record. Titled Restless Ones, the album is the band's fifth and was produced by GRAMMY® Award-winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Swans). Restless Ones was tracked in August 2014 during a 10-day session at El Paso, TX's renowned Sonic Ranch. Located on 2,300 acres of pecan orchards bordering the Rio Grande and Mexico, the studio - the largest residential recording complex in the world - provided the perfect setting, miles away from all real world responsibilities and thus able to fully invest themselves in the act of creation.

Heartless Bastards -- Wennerstrom, guitarist Mark Nathan, bassist Jesse Ebaugh, and drummer Dave Colvin -- have spent the past decade in motion, boldly pushing their unique brand of rock 'n' roll into new shapes over four acclaimed albums and nearly non-stop roadwork. Now, with Restless Ones, the band sets out once again, blazing a path to a place of shifting moods, seasoned songcraft, and unbridled spontaneity. Restless Ones is the follow-up to 2012's breakthrough Arrow. The album finds Wennerstrom exploring as-yet-unvisited avenues of sound and sensation, her bravery and ambition readily apparent in the emotional timbre and the sheer physicality of her songs. Her spellbinding vocals are of course front and center, her one-of-a-kind voice as primal, cathartic, and indefinable as ever.

Heartless Bastards On Tour
6/11	Birmingham, AL – Saturn #
6/12	Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge #
6/13	Raleigh, NC – Cats Cradle #
6/14	Baltimore, MD – Ottobar #
6/15	New York, NY – Webster Hall
6/17	Philadelphia, PA – TLA #
6/18	Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls #
6/19	Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
6/20	Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern (NXNE) #
6/21	Detroit, MI – St. Andrews #
6/23	Grand Rapids, MI – Wealthy Theater #
6/24	Columbus, OH – A&R Bar #
6/25	Cincinnati, OH – Woodward Theater #
6/26	Cincinnati, OH – Woodward Theater #
6/27	Chicago, IL – Sausage Fest #
6/29	Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue #
6/30	Omaha, NE – Slowdown #
7/01	Kansas City, MO – Record Bar #
7/02	Dallas, TX – Trees #
# - Craig Finn of The Hold Steady supporting

Follow Heartless Bastards online:
Website: http://www.theheartlessbastards.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heartlessbastards
Twitter: https://twitter.com/heartlessbstrds

Heartless Bastards - Gates Of Dawn

Taken from our 10-track limited edition cassette compilation featuring new or previously unreleased tracks from some of our favourite bands of 2015. Released 8th June with 100 copies available.

https://soundcloud.com/frontwards

https://www.sadsack.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/sadsackrecords



Frontwards - Speechless

Track taken from Joi Sound System - a 22 track double album compiled from Joi's three gloriously inventive albums: 1999's One and One is One, 2000's We Are Three and 2007's Without Zero, plus three bonus tracks.

Pre order Joi Sound System (out 22 June):
iTunes - http://smarturl.it/JoiiTunes
Amazon - http://smarturl.it/JoiAmazon
Google Play - http://smarturl.it/JoiGoogle
Real World - http://bit.ly/1cKVS1j


Joi - Asian Vibes

Pre-order 
LP, CD or limited edition cream vinyl - http://smarturl.it/GirlsNames.ToughLove 
iTunes - http://radi.al/AAAViTunes

Northern Ireland’s Girls Names return this autumn with their third full-length album, Arms Around a Vision, due for an October 2nd release via long-term home, Tough Love Records.

PRESS RELEASE:
“We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life,” says the band’s frontman, Cathal Cully, when discussing the album. “For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art.”

True, Girls Names formed in Belfast, but they’ve long considered themselves a European band. The distinction is important – their vision of Europe is one of weird, labyrinthian histories, blackest-ever-black coffee, and long drives to dismal places. Romantic notions for those of a certain disposition, but behind the thousand-yard stares they’ve always been a soft-hearted lot. As the title of Arms Around a Vision would suggest, they’re all set to let love in.  

The band initially came together as a relatively lean two-piece back in the summer of 2010, but over the course of a handful of EPs and three very different albums, they’ve grown in number and ambition. Their last album, The New Life, was an unexpected underground hit in early 2013, taking the band around the world and garnering much critical praise, culminating in nominations for both the Northern Irish and Irish Music Prizes. Emboldened by the reception to that record, in March they returned with an 11-minute single that was played in full on Radio 1 and, typically, does not feature on their new album. Girls Names like to do things a little differently. 

On Arms Around a Vision, they’re more widescreen than ever but also more direct and aggressive. The bass, drums and guitars are still there, but so are saxophones, organs, detuned broken guitars and pianos, and even sheets of metal assaulted with hammers. Conceptually, Arms Around a Vision acts as a love letter to European elegance – Italian futurism, Russian constructivism, Germany’s Zero Group and both Neubaten and Bowie’s Berlin. 

Love and pain, romance and fucking. It’s all in there somewhere. Grand claims, perhaps, but in an ever bleak world, why not skygaze? The album opens with ‘Reticence’, a song in two parts that’s half metallic knockout, half midnight swagger. It sounds unlike anything they’ve ever done before, and is a perfect primer for an album that treads a course between Eno-era Roxy sleaze, Birthday Party dissonance and M.E.S’ three R’s: repetition, repetition, repetition.  

As confident as it sounds, hardship has equally played a role in shaping Arms Around a Vision. “I'm not starving or anything, but I've practically been living hand to mouth since I was 22,” confirms Cully. “Most guitar music now is just a playground for the rich middle classes and it's really boring and elitist. We're elitist in our own way, in that we're on our own and you can't fuck with us when we’ve nothing to lose”. The near-6 minute ‘A Hunger Artist’ tackles that subject full on, addressing that age old adage of suffering for one’s art.

While the songs aren’t narrative-driven as such – the band still generally favour abstraction and ambiguity – there is a consistent underlying message: “We've got nothing. We’ve never had anything. And we don't expect to. The only person I ever wanted to impress was myself. I've never got anywhere close to succeeding in doing that until this album. I'm proud of it. I think I can start saying I'm a musician now.”

Tracklisting:

1. Reticence
2. An Artificial Spring
3. Desire Oscillations
4. (Obsession)
5. Chrome Rose
6. A Hunger Artist
7. Málaga
8. Dysmorphia
9. (Convalescence)
10. Exploit Me
11. Take Out the Hand
12. I Was You 


iTunes pre-order

Girls Names - Reticence

Back again for more of the same,
All aboard the train
Bring your energy and your faith and resume the chase,
Start your engines
Once more you've an agenda,
An unfamiliar adventure,
Preparing to go intercontinental
Or even fully interstellar
Propelling forward, you develop
You accelerate, make comets jealous
See dawns over favelas,
Or the sun set over empty deserts
Progress is your essence,
Optimism is your greatest weapon,
Every single second now seems a present as the future beckons
So ring the bells, all aboard, the destination's north
You've set your course, with open mind and hope you're going forth
Past valleys and fjords,
Through darkened skies, high winds and storms
This is your course, so ring the bells
Settle for nothing else
Ring the bells
Ring the bells
Ring the bells 
Ring the bells
Ring the bells

Bring your energy and your faith and resume the chase, chase, chase

Preparing to go intercontinental 
Or even fully interstellar

Optimism is your greatest weapon

Ring the bells
Ring the bells
Ring the bells 
Ring the bells

So ring the bells, all aboard, the destination's north
You've set your course, with open mind and hope you're going forth
Past valleys and fjords,
Through darkened skies, high winds and storms
This is your course, so ring the bells
Settle for nothing else

Hi-Fi Curious - show 122

johnnydobbo