Returning with their first full-length album in four years, Ladytron are back with their distinctive style of electro-pop music with Time’s Arrow – an album that, like most of their catalogue, hypnotizes you into an altered state and also makes you want to dance at the same time.
“City of Angels” might be about Los Angeles, but it seems more about a city inhabited by beings of light to which Ladytron can readily travel through their use of heavenly synths, electronic beats, and ghost-like vocals. “Faces come from yesterday and arrive tomorrow,” sing Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo on “Faces” – a song about how people drift in and out of our lives and how we struggle at times to remember them. “Misery Remember Me” is flat-out beautiful with soaring synths and vocals that sounds like they’re bouncing up from a canyon at sunset.
On “Flight from Ankor,” Aroyo sings above shimmering synths about waking from a dream and realizing that the life around her is just as incredible as the dream. “I hear whispers on the wire,” Marnie sings on “We Never Went Away,” a dreamy reassurance to their fans that is a little bittersweet now since one of the band’s founding members, Reuben Wu, left the band earlier this year to focus on his photography and fine art. “The Night” brings the pop to their electro-pop with snappy beats that melt into “The Dreamers,” a darker synthwave track that might have you folding up an origami unicorn.
“Sargasso Sea” sounds exactly like you think it should: Floating synths, seagull calls, bubbling bass, and siren vocals. “California” is possibly a callback to “City of Angels,” and is a song about how the state is a mix of luxury, mystery, and misery. The title track ends the album and has a bold, almost off-Broadway brashness to it with its thudding percussion and swaggering vocals.
Time’s Arrow is a nice return for Ladytron, whose synthwave seduction is always welcome.
What do you get when Tim Alexander (on percussion) of Primus and Skerik (on saxophones and synths) of Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade have a jam session one night and later invite bassist and synth-player Timm Mason from Wolves in the Throne Room to the party? You get something that sounds like Neu! mixed with Aphex Twin. You get Sound Cipher.
Their debut album, All That Syncs Must Diverge, is a wild mix of electronica, pulsing beats, saxophone skronks, and glitchy android synths. “Grind Incursion” is the sound of panic in a robot disco. “Ransomwar” reminds you of faraway desert oasis fires and beautiful dancing maidens…and all of it is a slightly unnerving hologram. The way Alexander’s percussion drifts into “Church Turing” and slowly takes over the song like dusk turning to night is a cool effect.
“Permissive Action Link” starts the second half of the album with bad-ass synth bass and growling percussion that will inspire you to throw on a black faux-leather coat and ride a futuristic motorcycle fitted with flame throwers and rockets into a post-nuclear war wasteland in order to rescue someone lovely from a band of mutants. “God Mode” is the song that plays when that quest takes a strange turn after you accidentally fall into a missile silo that’s now used as an underground temple for a strange cult that worships the AI computer that started the war. The song rolls straight into “Entropy Pool,” threatening to pull you down into an even deeper abyss, but showing you a way out of it: a pulsing light in the distance and the sounds of tribal drumming and smoky saxophone reminding you of the lovely companion you came here to rescue. It won’t be an easy climb out of the old missile silo, but it can be done. It must be done.
So, yeah, All That Syncs Must Diverge is pretty much the soundtrack to a cool 1980s European post-apocalyptic / future dystopia film you found one night while scrolling through a weird Roku channel. I hope this project isn’t just a one-off thing. I’d love to hear more from them.
Sound Cipher is the surreal, pulsating audio vision shared by three of modern music’s most uncompromising sound sculptors. It’s the sort of thing that emerges when Tim Alexander (Primus, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle) finds himself inside a thunderous duo improvisation with Skerik (Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade) during a soundcheck for Primus’ Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory tour in Oakland CA. One person surrounded by a circular percussion station of preposterous proportions, another person hurling psychedelic saxophonic screams into the hellfire of analog and digital circuitry.
Skerik and Tim Alexander knew they were onto something. The first official Sound Cipher excursion was scheduled for January 2, 2017 at Studio Litho in Seattle WA with Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Six Organs of Admittance, Akron/Family) at the production helm. He would bring aboard Timm Mason (Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Wolves In The Throne Room, Eyvind Kang & Jessica Kenney, Jóhann Jóhannsson) to assist with modular synth processing during this first session, generally a technical advisory role involving lab coats and clipboards and chin-scratching. The participants arrived and were surprised to find Mason setting up in the live room instead of the control room. As the recording unfolded, Mason’s direct in-the-moment sonic manipulation of the proceedings made it clear that he belonged at the creative core of the project where he remains today.
Listeners and innocent bystanders have reported spiritual resemblances to the experimental German scene of the ’70s with traces of Can, Faust, Neu and early Kraftwerk, the dark manic rumble of Peter Gabriel‘s early work and the complex digital hardcore first birthed by Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, all of it wrapped in an unsettling atmosphere that verily reeks of familiar ingredients: a tumbling machine-tight groove, a wash of analog synths direct from your midnight movie memories, a snippet from your grandpa’s old Louis Armstrong records stretched across miles of fizzling voltage and contorted into barely recognizable and altogether quite mind-altering new shapes.
Initial plans to release the 2017 session as Sound Cipher’s unveiling were revised when the trio found a new level of clarity in shaping their ideas following a series of live performances in 2018. Further recording and mixing took place in 2018 at Avast Studios, also in Seattle. Now, six years after that initial studio date, the finest flowers from those multiple sessions are available to adventurous listeners everywhere in the form of Sound Cipher’s debut LP, All That Syncs Must Diverge, to be released April 21, 2023 on vinyl and digital formats via Royal Potato Family. The opening track “Grid Incursion” (listen/share) is out today on all streaming platforms. In addition, Sound Cipher will reconvene for three live sonic adventures in accordance with the album’s release.
SOUND CIPHER All That Syncs Must Diverge
Track Listing: 1. Grid Incursion 2. Ransomwar 3. Church Turing 4. Permissive Action Link 5. God Mode 6. Entropy Pool
Fever Ray and Olof Dreijer on the “Kandy” set, photo credit – Nina Andersson
Fever Ray’s Radical Romantics, out March 10th (digital/CD) and April 28th (US vinyl) onMute, is one of the most highly-anticipated albums of 2023. Today, they continue their enthralling return with “Kandy,” a new single/video which follows “What They Call Us” and “Carbon Dioxide,” “an explosive single about love and sex in a moment of climate apocalypse” (Pitchfork). The song was co-produced and co-written by Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer and their brother and fellow member of The Knife, Olof Dreijer. This is one of the four Radical Romantics tracks Olof co-produced and co-wrote, marking the first time the siblings have produced and written music together in eight years.
Olof comments on “Kandy,” “I tried to tune in as much as possible into Fever Ray vibes and tried many different styles, or clothes as I usually say when I talk about different music production suggestions. But in the end we took out the same synthesizer, the SH101, used for The Knife track, ‘The Captain,’ and it just worked!”
The accompanying video, directed by long-time collaborator Martin Falck, re-unites Karin and Olof on stage in a homage to the now iconic video for The Knife’s “Pass This On” directed by Johan Renck.
Radical Romantics, the first new Fever Ray album since 2017’s Plunge, “carefully explores well-trod themes of love and sex but through Dreijer’s uniquely esoteric lens” (them). To be precise, Dreijer presents their struggle with the myth of love.
Fever Ray first started on Radical Romantics in fall 2019; working in the Stockholm studios built with Olof, who eventually joined in on working on the album. Other co-producers and performers include the power duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, and Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma.
This spring, Fever Ray will embark on their first tour since 2018, the There’s No Place I’d Rather Be Tour. As Stereogum stated, “Karin Dreijer likes to stage ambitious, slightly baffling spectacles, so this should definitely be something to see.” A full list of European and North American dates can be found below. New shows have been added in Washington, D.C. and Pasadena as part of Just Like Heaven. Additionally, CHRISTEENEhas been added as support on all other US dates. Tickets are on sale now here.
Fever Ray Tour Dates (new dates in bold) Thu. Mar. 23 – Oslo, NE @ Sentrum Scene Sat. Mar. 24 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA Sun. Mar. 25 – Gothenburg, SE @ GBG Film Studios Mon. Mar. 27 – Riga, LV @ Hanzas Perons Tue. Mar. 28 – Tallinn, EE @ Noblessner Foundry Thu. Mar. 30 – Warsaw, PL @ World Wide Warsaw Festival Sat. Apr. 1 – Amsterdam, NLE @ Melkweg Mon. Apr. 3 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal Tue. Apr. 4 – Cologne, DE @ E-Werk Thur. Apr. 6 – Luxembourg City, LU @ Den Atelier Fri. Apr. 7 – The Hague, NE @ Rewire Festival Mon. May 1 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem ^ Wed. May 3 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5 * Fri. May 5 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner * Sun. May 7 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed * Wed. May 10 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater * Sat. May 13 – Pasadena, CA @ Just Like Heaven Fri. June 30 – Werchter, BE @ Rock Werchter Sat. Aug. 19 – London, UK @ Field Day Sat. Aug. 26 – Paris, FR @ Rock En Seine
^ = with 100 gecs & Machine Girl * = with CHRISTEENE
Today Snow Ghosts return with their fourth album, ‘The Fell’, due for release on February 24th through Houndstooth.
‘The Fell’ sees the trio of Hannah Cartwright (Augustus Ghost, Masakichi), Ross Tones (Throwing Snow) and Oli Knowles (The Keep, Sex Swing) return with a collection of old folk songs that were never written – an album that conjures images of animals and ancient tales experienced within a future landscape. Ancestral marks imprint the endless terrain of ‘The Fell’ and their songlines still sing.
Today they share the album’s first single and accompanying visual, entitled “Curse” – a violent storm of wrath; a song that explores the folklore of shapeshifting women and highlights historic misogyny that still exists.
Vocalist Hannah Cartwright comments: “Curse reflects the folkloric trope of witch to hare metamorphosis. It is the furious revenge of the hunted hare, exacted upon her tormentor.”
A seed of an idea was planted in 2015 during a conversation between vocalist Hannah Cartwright and fellow founder Ross Tones about his home in Weardale. The trio, completed by Oli Knowles, have had three releases since that time, giving the album time to slowly grow its roots deep into their creative subconscious.
“The concept of The Fell as a living thing was there from the beginning” explains Ross. “That imagery provided the overarching environment” Hannah continues, “which then left us encompassed by human, floral, faunal, mythological, folkloric and magical elements to explore as and when we approached each piece. It was a chance to completely immerse ourselves in another world, its history and perception through other inhabitants.”
‘The Fell’ is also a liminal or ‘thin’ place. Bog land preserves organic remains, like time capsules, a quality that made it a special place to prehistoric people. These relics serve as starting points for new stories and songs. Folk tales talk of the metamorphosis of animals into people and back again which talks to a deep rooted ambiguity of where people begin and the land ends.
“The moorland fell looks beautiful, wild and desolate.” Ross continues. “From certain places you can look in all directions and see no obvious signs of humanity. Yet it’s a completely man made landscape. We used it as a multilayered metaphor, containing stories of the interaction between humans and nature which express themselves in folklore.”
The arrangement too is multilayered in its approach. 2019’s colossal ‘A Quiet Ritual’ contained a score for a full orchestra and the ancient Carnyx. ‘The Fell’s’ instrumental arsenal consists of esraj, dulcimer, daf and bodhrán drums, violin, guitars, and a variety of synthesisers. Whilst equally vast, immersive and other-worldly, these tools are used to create intimate, personal stories. Sharing a mutual influence of the shadowy elements of folklore and the heavier side of experimental noise, a disparate array of reference points and this extensive collection of instruments combines to form Snow Ghosts’ bewitching and often intoxicating sound.
On ‘The Fell’, they return for a captivating new album where ancient folk motifs intermingle with dark electronics, violins and primordial imagery to create an album of vast contrasts – heavy, yet flowing; electronic yet organic; modern yet steeped in nature and history.
‘The Fell’ will be released on February 24th via Houndstooth. Pre-order/pre-save links here.
‘The Fell’ track list: 1. Given 2. Hearths 3. Filaments 4. Curse – Visualiser 5. Buried 6. Hawthorn 7. Avine 8. Prophecies 9. Home 10. Magpie 11. Vixen 12. Taken
“There is a specific type of grief that comes from witnessing the brutality of what humans are capable of towards each other. If that grief goes unprocessed, it is doomed to also manifest as brutality,” says Phoenix-based musician and producer Sam An. “There have been many moments while writing this record that I was grieving through an event that was personal or worldwide, and then another sudden, tragic event would happen. I needed to re-evaluate what I wanted to say because my world and perspective had shifted again. Trying to keep up with tragedy can make one feel helpless, and one way to feel in control is through acts of destruction. My personal impulse towards destruction nearly ended this project.”
Set for release March 17th, 2023, on 2XLP/CD/Digital through Gilgongo Records, ‘STREGA BEATA’ is the 3rd full-length album from Sam An’s dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project under the semi-notorious moniker Lana Del Rabies. After a brief hiatus, this record is her first full-length release since the gothic, industrial noise of 2018’s Shadow World. ‘STREGA BEATA’, which loosely translates to “Blessed Witch,” is an apocalyptic myth told through dense, textural compositions pulling from the vast corners of dark genre music. The title’s meaning is appropriate for the existential, cathartic, and otherworldly themes explored.
Today, along with the album’s announcement, she has shared the pounding, entrancing first track from the record, entitled “A Plague”.
“A Plague was initially written before the Covid-19 Pandemic began, and refers to the angst of living through an overwhelming number of manmade atrocities, absorbed personally and peripherally by everyone all at once in today’s world” she comments. “The album STREGA BEATA is an allegory told from the evolving perspective of a mythological, cryptic creator figure, who is responsible for humanity but not in control of the world we have created. This track is an expression of the fury towards mankind’s current state of self destruction, while declaring vengeance through the same futile means of destruction.”
Written, produced, and almost entirely performed by An, she says, “I started writing the third record immediately after the promotion of Shadow World. I had recently become sober and was mending myself not just from experiences of abuse and trauma that occurred throughout my life, but processing how I had abused the people closest to me in my most out of control moments. I also at the time had a job involved in child welfare, and the violent separation and exploitation of children at the US/Mexico border was happening miles from where I grew up and affecting the community around me. Brutality often feels like it is everywhere with how we experience the world now, but for the first time, I could not numb myself from it. That awareness only extended through the world events we all have had to live through these last few years, and the personal loss that came from that. I began working through the pain of abuse, death, and grief, through an actual story in my work”
This is where the mythical allegory in ‘STREGA BEATA’ begins – the record is told through the evolving perspective of a cryptic and obscure “Mother” creator figure, specifically echoing the mother and crone goddess archetypes. This figure is vocalized through LDR’s eerie harmonies, spoken words, pleading howls, and frenetic screams aimed towards another archetype, the chosen one. These vocalizations sometimes hover above trip-hop low tempos and unnerving atmospheres (“Mourning,” “Hallowed is the Earth”), sink through vintage horror movie darkwave synths (“Master,” “Apocalypse Fatigue”), weave through art metal distortions and relentless drone bass tones (Mother), or blast through unconventional industrial rhythms (“Prayers of Consequence,” “A Plague”).
Ultimately, ‘STREGA BEATA’ is a deep exploration of the cyclical consequences of unhealed grief for us and our world. “I have used this story to process the harm that power enables. There is a fine line between empowerment and using power to cope with the feeling of losing control. I thought a lot about the power of the natural world, particularly storms, while writing this. Storms are created by opposing pressures, causing destruction. It’s interesting how some ideologies will co-opt storms in their iconographies and language, but don’t acknowledge that storms are events that cannot be controlled or contained. The way out of pain is by reconciling what you cannot control and taking ownership of what you can. It is the only way to stop cycles of destruction. Sometimes you must complete another cycle before realizing you are ready to end it for yourself and others. I feel this record is the end of a destructive cycle for me, and why I returned to myself as this project.”
More about Lana Del Rabies: Lana Del Rabies is the solo dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project of Phoenix based musician, producer and multimedia artist Sam An. With origins as an experimental project that re-contextualized the more ominous aspects of modern pop music made by women (like that of Lana Del Rey), Lana Del Rabies’ music incorporates industrial, gothic noise and metal, with experimental, darkwave and ambient elements. Her work thematically embodies discordant spaces between the occult and the political, personal trauma and collective grief, and brutality and benediction.
Her first two records, In The End I Am A Beast (2016) and Shadow World (2018) were released by Los Angeles based label Deathbomb Arc.
Wild, weird, and wonderful, Gustaf put on a fun late afternoon set under the Angers sun. You could tell they were having a great time. I spoke with Lydia Gammill after the set and she told me they still couldn’t quite believe they’d just played a set in France.
This was the second time I’d seen Death Valley Girls in the same year, with the first being at Levitation France just two months prior. This set was more up close and personal (which is every show at Chicago’s Empty Bottle) and a bit more dangerous to boot. Lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden delighted in walking out into the crowd to sing and mingle with fans.
Speaking of dangerous shows, Warm Drag‘s set at Levitation Austin was sexy and deadly, not unlike a panther. Blending dark electro with sultry vocals, the set had a lot of people grooving and trembling at the same time.
This was the second time I saw Automatic last year. Yes, the first time was in France in June. The trio had only improved in that short time, and they wowed the Austin crowd. The number of Automatic band shirts and tote bags we saw after their set was extensive.
This short set from Welsh power trio The Joy Formidable packed more wallop than most sets I saw from other bands that were twice as long. They were so fierce that lead singer / guitarist Ritzy Bryan headbutted bassist Rhydian Daffyd in the chest twice during the set.
Who’s in the top 15? Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out!
Austin band Holy Water share the first single single today from their forthcoming self-titled debut album via Metal Injection. Hear and share “Waterest Him With Tears” HERE. (Direct Bandcamp)
Heavy music is experiencing a renaissance of innovation and creativity, while most of contemporary music genres have stagnated in recent years.
Case in point: Holy Water, a powerful new step merging heavy doom guitars, stoic experimentalists like Caspar Brötzmann Massaker and Khanate mixed with early 80s proto-industrial sounds like Psychic TV and The Leather Nun, metalgaze melodies and hints of Wovenhand’s gothic folk. Yes, that’s a wide range of styles, but it shows just how deftly Holy Water, the nom-de-tune of vocalist/guitarist Jasper den Hartigh cuts its own sonic space.
Jasper den Hartigh was previously a member of critically praised New Orleans post-punk band Heat Dust, which released a handful of recordings on The Flenser label and toured with Thou and The Body.
Holy Water’s 11-song eponymous album was self-recorded in 2021, at home and at den Hartigh’s Austin rehearsal space. Help on drums came from Andrew Stevens, guitar from Neckbolt’s Ben Krause, and vocals from den Hartigh’s wife, Sarah Contey.
“The album came after an extensive creativity exercise I did called Compost-Turn,” den Hartigh explains. “In which I put out 7 releases from friends and myself as physical bookmarks. When it came time to work on a self-titled solo project, this helped the songs appear rapidly. This album was my attempt at making a pop-record, while trusting my gut, using lessons learned over the course of my entire musical life. From being in punk bands, to playing slowcore, to ambient noise, and heavy metal. The songs all have references to Dutch fairy tales but also contain more personal writing.”
Holy Water will be available on cassette and digital on February 3rd, 2023, LP to follow in summer. Cassette preorders via Primal Architecture, digital via Bandcamp and LP via Time Release.
The second night of Levitation Austin 2022 started at Hotel Vegas. I hadn’t been to a show there since 2013 and was delighted to see the place hadn’t changed much. If anything, the outdoor stage area seemed a bit bigger.
Warm Dragwere the first act we saw that night, putting on the sexiest show of the weekend with their blend of electro, fuzz, and spooky rock. Lead singer Vashti Windish owned the stage in her biker leather while percussionist / beat master Paul Quattrone got to work in his tank top. The crowd was hypnotized by them both by their set’s end.
Warm Drag
Quattrone took a water break and then was back on stage with the rest of his Osees bandmates for the second night of their four-night residency at Hotel Vegas. They came out swinging, blasting through a lot of tracks in just an hour. Their raging punk set of material from their new album, A Foul Form, left the audience breathless multiple times.
Osees
We left Hotel Vegas for Elysium to catch the rare performance by The UFO Club – a sort of supergroup consisting of members of Night Beats and The Black Angels, who performed their (so far) only album from beginning to end. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to hear those songs live, so this set was one of the highlights of the festival for me.
The UFO Club
The night ended with Mexican psych-rock legends Los Dug Dug’s. They played a fun blend of psych, surf, and border rock.
Los Dug Dug’s
Up next would be a trio of Australian bands and doom metal in a blues bar.
Combining the talents of Sunny Faris from Blackwater Holylight and Carn Spies from Night Heron, Whimz‘s debut EP, PM226, is an intriguing stroll through a darkwave garden.
The titles of the EP’s tracks are as intriguing as their sound. “AM1” starts off the EP and your day with sort of a dread-lined gearing up for battle. You know you’ll come out victorious in the end, but you also know the battle might be a slog. Faris’ vocals sound like they’re coming from an old jukebox in the back of a dark bar patronized by ghosts. “AM2” is, somehow, even spookier. It might be due to Spies’ funeral dirge synths and the strange hand percussion instruments that might be made of human bones for all I know.
“I Wanna” sits in the middle of the EP, making you wonder, “You wanna what?” The answer, judging from the Stranger Things-theme-like synth bass and Romanian-like guitar chords, might be “I wanna dance on a rain-drenched street under a full moon and forget about my troubles for a while.” It’s the lone instrumental, setting the table for “PM1” and Faris’ vocals taking us into a crumbling mansion’s drawing room designed with dark hardwoods and lined with old books. It slides into “PM2” as easy as slipping into a dream after a warm bath. The guitars buzz around you and Faris’ vocals slide in and out of the shadows cast by your bedside lamp.
It’s dark, it’s spooky, it’s perfect for Halloween.
