“Future Folklore” appears on Nature Noir, Out Now

iTunes- http://hyperurl.co/naturenoir
CD/LP- http://bit.ly/25DAg0H

Website:  http://www.crystalstilts.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crystalstiltsofficial/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crystal_stilts/

TOUR DATES: https://www.facebook.com/crystalstiltsofficial/app/123966167614127/

Crystal Stilts - Future Folklore

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: 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 - My Baby Just Sailed Away

Aqua Nebula Oscillator - Jungle Man (SPIRITUS MUNDI - 2013 Pan European Recording / Tee Pee Records)

Aqua Nebula Oscillator - Jungle Man

The War On Drugs 'Lost In The Dream' out March 2014 on Secretly Canadian.

Pre-order now:
Bundle/Deluxe options from SC Distribution: http://smarturl.it/warondrugs
Amazon/physical stores: http://smarturl.it/warondrugs_amazon
iTunes: http://smarturl.it/warondrugs_itunes
Indies: http://smarturl.it/warondrugs_indies


The War On Drugs
Artist Page http://secretlycanadian.com/artist.php?name=warondrugs
Official Site http://www.thewarondrugs.net/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheWarOnDrugs
Twitter https://twitter.com/warondrugsjams
Instagram http://instagram.com/warondrugsjams


The War On Drugs "Red Eyes" from 'Lost In The Dream' out March 2014 on Secretly Canadian

Red Eyes

Buy it on iTunes

The War On Drugs - Red Eyes

T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - “It’s A Vanity”
The Shaolin Afronauts - “Broken Flowers”
CLAMM - “Bit Much”
Young Guv - “Love Me Don’t Leave Me”
Regressive Left - “The Wrong Side Of History”
Doctor Bionic - “Shape Shifters”
Kiwi Jr. - “Night Visions”
Gift - “Dreamhouse”
Frankie & The Witch Fingers - “Cookin”
Ghost Woman - “Jreaming”
Sunny & The Sunliners - “If I Could See You Now”
Clear Path Ensemble - “Absolvo”
Fujiya & Miyagi - "Digital Hangover"
Rush To Relax - “Pesni vo meani”
Sloan - “Spend The Day”
#SweetSkaSounds
Happy Mondays - “24 Hour Party People”

Pressure Drop Show, 18th July 2022

Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ fifth LP, ZAM, bleeds beyond borders and boundaries. Its opening preternatural sounds bubble up out of the primordial soup, spilling into our world, invading the inner recesses of the listener’s mind. Like a two-headed snake wrapped around the skull, the album pendulates between winding instrumentals and dancey riffs that pop like supernovas out of the black void. Just when a song goes one way, it propels another through long stretches of a cosmic inferno. 

Bringing glimmers of krautrock and funk, its eleven tracks unleash a versatile and tenacious weight, slithering between the sexy, the aggressive, the vivacious, and the disorienting—until the living invasion is felt—ZAM—a supernatural entity summoned by four madmen obsessed with tearing open a gateway to dark space. After being pulled apart atom-by-atom, the listener is reconfigured on the other side, born unto starry wasteland. Where head is separated from body. Where music is seen and apocalyptic soundscapes flow to revelation. A funhouse undercurrent pulses through the album’s epoch, reflecting a carnival mosaic shrewdly lulling and doggedly brutal. As one track bleeds into the next, that hour of running time becomes wormhole travel, until the listener returns earthbound, transmuted, craving more odyssey.

Out now via NYC's Greenway Records

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Dracula Drug

Höga Nord Rekords have had the opportunity to work with Al Lover twice before during the last four years and now it’s time for the next step in the relationship between them, this time with the 7” single ”Dark Matter Discotheque / Mark E. Moon”. In these tracks, Lover’s influences mainly stems from a decadent eighties New York or Paris and you can almost smell the heavy perfume mixed with indoors smoking get the feeling of sitting in a room with mirror walls.

Right away, listening to the opening bars of ”Dark Matter”, you can tell that Lover is on to something new and different from his previous Höga Nord-releases. In some ways you hear similarities to ”Zodiak Versions” (2015) but on these two tracks of the 7”, Lover has left the German regions of Europe and the 70’s behind to instead embrace an updated 80’s sound. He comments the new direction with these words: ”'I'd say the influences for these tracks was mainly me wanting to do something different then I have before. I'm alwyas on to next idea, becoming bored with what I've already done”.

pre- orders taken at: https://hoganordrekords.bandcamp.com/track/dark-matter-discoth-que

PREMIERE | Al Lover - Mark E Moon [Höga Nord Rekords] 2019

Al Lover explores the psychedelic underground of the past, present and future in #ElevatedTransmissions

Look out for a new batch of tunes each week + subscribe to the ongoing on Spotify playlist here: open.spotify.com/playlist/3901y34ldDhBPgNIVbLQQf

Oh Sees - Henchlock
Brian Eno - China My China
Beak>  - We Can Go
Froth - Department Head
Flavien Berger - I’araucaria
Moon Duo - Stars Are the Light
MIEN - Earth Moon
Kikagaku Moyo - Majupose
Beastie Boys - 14th St. Break
Stereolab - Wow and Flutter
Sylvester - I Need Somebody To Love Tonight
Thomas Leer - Tight As a Drum
Pussy Mothers - Echo Party
Pigbag - Getting Up - 12” Version
KOKOKO! - Tokoliana
Al Lover - Mark E. Moon
Radar Men from the Moon - Bliss
Chelsea Wolfe - The Mother Road
Marc Bolan - Truck On (Tyke) - Home demos
Daniel Johnston - Ain’t No Woman Gonna Make A George Jones Outta Me
Half Japanese - Roman Candles
Felt - The World Is as Soft as Lace
Emmylou Harris - Hot Burrito #2
Dinosaur Jr. - Outta Hand
Polvo - Fast Canoe

Al Lover's ELEVATED TRANSMISSIONS | 07.10.19

LEVITATION

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