Something About That Night

Randall Dunn, the musician, producer and engineer renowned for his work with Sunn0))), Earth, Tim Hecker, Six Organs of Admittance, Anna Von Hausswolff and so much more, finds his own voice on his first solo album, Beloved, which is set for release on vinyl and digital formats via figureight on November 9th, pre-order via Bandcamp below.

Following a turbulent period of change and loss, the esteemed producer channeled his energies into a seven song meditation on “anxiety, paranoia, different shades of love, different realisations of mortality, how it can make you feel the stages of your life more deeply.”

Such sentiments are reflected across this beautiful video for the album track “Something About That Night” directed by Mu Tunc, a filmmaker from Istanbul, which has been released alongside the album announcement. About the video Randall remarks “I found a common ground in our two cultures current socio-political climates and in the themes of the song – loneliness, loss, and the feeling of human connection’s absence. Mu expressed these sentiments through a compassionate character study of two people who are making their way through a lonely night with all of the pressures of our current age.”

On Beloved Dunn shifts his knack for emphasising the human component of music toward mining emotional resonance, and wrangling a new earthly language from the subtle details and textures generated from early digital and analog synthesisers. “I wanted to make something more like prose or a Gerhard Richter painting with sound,” Dunn says of the album. “Being someone that composes with sound, I wanted to find a voice in it that felt personal, that felt human, especially with electronics, something that didn’t feel too mechanical.” Though electronics can often feel rigid and cold, Dunn sought to find the poetry in their oscillations and a heartbeat in a rhythm outside the grid. “It’s the first time a language hit me and it felt like it was mine,” Dunn says in summation.

Across Dunn’s career as an engineer and producer he has also proven to be a valuable studio asset as a collaborator. He’s lent his arrangement ideas to SunnO))) on Monoliths and Dimensions and Earth on The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull and gone beyond producing to provide instrumentation for Six Organs of Admittance, Anna von Hausswolf, Tim Hecker, and longtime colleague Stephen O’Malley. All of which led to a pivotal invitation to engineer and produce Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s original score for the stylised horror film Mandy. During the project, Jóhannsson encouraged Dunn to explore his synth-driven sound designs. Jóhannsson’s unexpected passing in early 2018 also added to what Dunn refers to as “powerful moment of change.” The gentle encouragement of Eyvind Kang and Jóhann Jóhannsson, and the affirming creative contributions across the album by past collaborators like Timm Mason, Frank Fisher (Algiers), and Zola Jesus were all crucial to the birth of Beloved.

(photo: Una Blue)

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Social Candy

Perth (Australia) rockers Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have shared somewhat bonkers visuals for new single Social Candy.

Graduating from the same thriving scene as Tame Impala and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, the Australian outfit announced their arrival in the UK earlier this summer with Cornflake, receiving  airplay on Aural Delights 295

Having proven their stripes as a frenetic live act in their homeland with impressive national tours alongside Royal Blood and Nothing But Thieves, the band will be bringing their eclectic style to a wider audience on their debut UK/European tour next month – several dates already sold out, including their 13th September appearance at Gullivers in Manchester, such is the hype surrounding the quartet.

Social Candy’s swirling guitars, heavy percussion and hypnotic vocals are sure to make it a favourite amongst their growing fanbase, with frontman Jack McEwan discussing their video in further detail:

“The world is weird. Who’s to know if your weird is the same as mine? “Gotta think outside the box mannnnnnn” in your best McConaughey voice. We wanted to emulate the songs care free, spangled train wreck vibe and then Mighty Boosh came to mind. So we built our own Dioramas to the best of our Year 7 craft abilities, called up our mate Jake who owns a camera and inhaled a shit load of paint, swallowed a bunch of sparkles and munched hard on Perth’s finest beach sand. The results are four cookers making the finest botch-home-job-video you’ll ever see. Spike Jonze rates it”.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ Social Candy is out now via What Reality? Records and available on all digital platforms. You will be able to hear it on Aural Delights 301 on September 6th.

Soulstench

Death/doom group PULCHRA MORTE have released a limited-edition single featuring the haunting sounds of “Soulstench” on Side A and a rendition of Paradise Lost’s “The Painless” on Side B. Previously released in its demo form, “Soulstench” will appear on the band’s upcoming full-length while the cover track is exclusive to this release.

Drummer Clayton Gore says, “When it came time to decide what song we should release first, we had a difficult decision. While all of the songs on this record fit into a cohesive palette, they are all very different from one another and no single song is representative of everything we do. But we all agreed that ‘Soulstench’ serves as a great introduction to what PULCHRA MORTE is about and the corner of the musical world in which we exist.”
Adds guitarist Jarrett Pritchard on the Paradise Lost cover, “We very proudly wear our inspirations on our collective sleeves and really wanted to give a nod to Paradise Lost, particularly from the Gothic-era of their career. It is personally my favorite song on that album, and in general I’m still impressed at how all of their songs from that record are just feeling and dark melody. It was a really big influence on us at the time. It showed that all things heavy didn’t really have rules. It wasn’t all about speed and technicality. It still isn’t. Feeling and intention are still everything.”

THE VERDICT – This is epic death/doom full of cascading twin guitar riffs, raucous vocals, and additional operatic backing vocals.  Excellent ear scorching metal!

Soulstench/The Painless is available digitally now via the band’s official Bandcamp page . A limited vinyl edition will be available in three color variants — 100 metallic silver opaque, 100 smoke (clear with heavy black swirl), and 100 black. Preorders are available now at the Bandcamp page and ship in November.

PULCHRA MORTE features guitarist Jarrett Pritchard, best known for his time in Eulogy as well as his production work with the likes of Goatwhore, Gruesome, 1349, and Wolvhammer. Together with drummer Clayton Gore (Eulogy, Harkonin), vocalist Jason Barron (Sidirial, Harkonin, Bastard), guitarist Jeffrey Breden, and bassist Dylan Kilgore (Withered, Waited), PULCHRA MORTE evokes a style reminiscent of the early waves of death/doom metal.

Both tracks will be featured on the September edition of Sonic Attack Aftermath via Mixcloud.

 

On Dark Horses

The cover to Emma Ruth Rundle’s fourth solo record, On Dark Horses, has a blurry photo of the songwriter obscuring her face with a large toy horse with broken legs. The photo suggests something candid but also hidden, graceful but also fractured—a fitting portrait for an artist who has established a career by moving between shrouding herself in mystery and exposing her wounds to the world.

Her first solo release, Electric Guitar: One, was a collection of Fripp-like guitar instrumentals written and recorded in a tour van during her tenure in Red Sparowes. It’s a record devoid of context, revealing nothing of Rundle’s personal narrative. The first peak behind the curtain came with Some Heavy Ocean, where layers of distortion were retired in favour of acoustic guitar and Rundle’s beguiling vocals. There was a distinct difference by the time Rundle released Marked For Death, a stark and deeply personal meditation on mortality and self-destructive behaviour. Her entire musical trajectory—from the cinematic instrumentals of Red Sparowes to the lush haze of Marriages and onward through her solo career—seems like a gradual disclosure of intimate secrets. With On Dark Horses, Rundle doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable realities or retreat into a private world, but it does capture an artist who has survived their personal nadir and come out stronger on the other side.

“In the wake of weak beginnings, we can still stand high,” Rundle sings over banks of electrified minor chords and ghostly guitar leads on “Darkhorse”. It’s a statement of purpose and a recurring motif throughout the album. “The record is about overcoming—understanding and embracing the crippling situation and then growing beyond it,” Rundle says. “Horses keep working their way into the lyrics and visual dimension of this record. They’re powerful and beautiful yet not free really. So the dark horse works for me in a visual way, as a representation of a contained force that will win the race or exceed the expectation of society and self.” The horse metaphor takes a darker turn on the reverb-soaked gothic Americana song “Races”, where Rundle draws a parallel between alcoholism and being a “touring vampire wastoid… creeping around in the night dragged along by the need.”

Taking the full arrangements of Marked For Death on the road needed a backing band, which Rundle pieced together from tour companions—first Dylan Nadon from Wovenhand and Git Some and later Evan Patterson and Todd Cook from Jaye Jayle. Rundle’s budding romance with Patterson prompted a move to Louisville, Kentucky, which not only amplified the equestrian themes of the record but also yielded a new writing process. “This the first time I haven’t played all the guitars on my own record,” Rundle says of Patterson’s contributions to the writing process. “It was stressful letting go but it was also rewarding.” The collaboration worked both ways, with Rundle contributing to Jaye Jayle’s No Trails and Other Unholy Paths. That album’s “Marry Us” mirrors On Dark Horses’ “Light Song”, with the union of Rundle’s siren vocals and Patterson’s poised baritone conjuring a dizzying and feverish update on the duets of Johnny Cash and June Carter.

True to the empowering mission statement of On Dark Horses, album opener “Fever Dreams” speaks of “a life spent uneasy / in pieces, always in pieces / life rent completely” but still exudes an overall air of vitality and strength. It charges out of the gate with an intensity that continues in the duality of dream pop and distorted deluges on “Control” and onto the haunting guitars, galloping percussion, and majestic vocal delivery of album centerpiece “Darkhorse”. The eight tracks of On Dark Horses capture the evolution of Rundle as an artist, with vestigial traces of the savvy guitar work of Electric Guitar: One, the siren song beauty of Some Heavy Ocean, and the amplified urgency of Marked For Death all factoring into the album’s rich tapestry. Rundle arrives at the end of the album with an ode to a traumatised and heartbroken friend on the grand and triumphant “You Don’t Have To Cry”. After laboring over the majority of the material for the album, she wrote the finale in one sitting, describing its easy birth as a gift from the gods. It’s a fitting closer, a song announcing Rundle’s newfound hope and reminding us to take control during our darkest moments instead of succumbing to them.

On Dark Horses was written in the fleeting moments of downtime during Rundle’s relentless touring schedule in the latter half of 2017 and into the early months of 2018. It was engineered and produced by Kevin Ratterman at LA LA LAND in Louisville, Kentucky over the course of ten days in February and March.

Sargent House release On Dark Horses on September 14, 2018 on CD/LP and all digital formats.

THE ALBUM WILL BE FEATURED ON AURAL DELIGHTS 302 ON 13th SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 

Deep Wound Red

Formed in late 2011 by a group of high school friends, ACCIDENT PRONE began their journey by traveling out of town to play shows as often as possible soon after their local debut. After a string of EPs, a split, a full-length record, and several lineup changes, the band fully honed-in on their blend of modern hardcore/metalcore, culminating with the release of their 2016 EP, Love. Hate., produced by Andreas Magnusson (Oh, Sleeper, The Black Dahlia Murder, Scarlet).

ACCIDENT PRONE has continued to develop as musicians and songwriters by reaching a new apex on their new release, Deep Wound Red, exhibiting the band’s savagely unique guitar riffs and seething, aggressive vocals layered on top of the technical, crushing rhythm section. Deep Wound Red was produced by Lee Dyess (Against Me!, From First to Last, Evergreen Terrace), mastered by Brad Boatright (Oathbreaker, Code Orange, Full Of Hell), and completed with artwork by Rusty Painter.

Even as they’ve strayed into new territory with a refreshing display harmonious melodic sections, ACCIDENT PRONE has continued to stay true to their hardcore roots with an attitude and intensity matched by few in the current DIY scene.

ACCIDENT PRONE independently releases Deep Wound Red on CD and digital August 23rd.

AIRPLAY ON SONIC ATTACK OVERLOAD 6 IN SEPTEMBER 2018

Sunn O))) re-issue White Albums

For twenty years, Sunn O))) have been challenging the way we think about music. From 1999’s The Grimmrobe Demos to 2015’s Kannon, core members Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have forged connections between the worlds of Metal, Drone, Contemporary Composition, Jazz and Minimalism with startling results while remaining true to the eternal principles of volume, density and weight.

O’Malley and Anderson are reissuing the WHITE albums this summer, coinciding with Southern Lord’s 20th anniversary. For these reissues they took the original full length unedited premasters/final mixes to Matt  Colton at Alchemy Mastering in London for a complete high resolution 88K/24bit mastering and, crucially, cut the lacquers using Alchemy’s half-speed method on their Neumann SX 74 cutterhead. The outstanding results allow the original full length mixes to be pressed at high fidelity on the vinyl format. The new masters reveal a broader frequency response, the bottom end is deeper and more intense, low mids are lusher, high frequencies are smoother and the stereo image is vastly improved, seeming more three dimensional spatially and more dynamic.

The sound is clearer, sharper, more direct.

Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson originally conceived the two albums to be “acoustic” but the sessions at Fontanelle’s Magnetic Park studios in Portland Oregon quickly took a far different route toward the psychedelic and the electronic/synthetic, with trance and drone experiments.

WHITE1 was originally released in 2003 by Southern Lord as a CD and very limited 3-sided LP edition of 540 copies (in a white sleeve with a sticker, packaged in an embroidered pillowcase and containing a sleeping pill). The WHITE1 album was a great step forward into the experimental and highly collaborative area which SUNN O))) has metamorphosed via since. Together withguest artists Julian Cope, Joe Preston, Rex Ritter, Ulver and Runhild Gammelsaeter the concept of SUNN O))) was taken into different sonic areas.

WHITE2 was originally released in 2004 by Southern Lord as a CD and limited double LP edition of 1000 copies (in a tip on gatefold sleeve in various vinyl colours). The WHITE2 album was notably the first collaboration with the Hungarian  singer Attila Csihar.  With the WHITE albums SUNN O))) took another bold step in the experimental and highly collaborative path the group has traveled since. Together with Attila, WHITE2 featured  special guests Joe Preston, Rex Ritter & Dawn Smithson.

Southern Lord are offering each these reissues on 180g White vinyl, housed in Stoughton Printing old style gatefold tip-on sleeves. Each includes an A1 poster with classic portraits of the band from the period by Kerry O’Sullivan & Glynnis McDaris. T-shirts and other exclusive packages are also available. Limited to 1,000 copies, are made available exclusively via http://www.sunn.southernlord.com/products and http://www.sunn.bandcamp.com. Other vinyl colours will be available through all outlets later in July.

Photo by Kerry O’Sullivan

Thanks to Lauren Barley at Rarely Unable

KEN mode trail their new album with an intense video

KEN mode have announced their seventh full-length album “Loved” which will be released via Season Of Mist/New Damage Records on August 31st. As an early indication of the album, the band have shared the video for the opening track “Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should”.

The album represents yet another pivot point in the group’s sound, a departure from the indie/noise punk focused songs on their previous album, Success. Drawing from the noise and industrial sonics of the 80’s and 90’s, KEN mode has mixed in the decidedly more extreme tone and presence of death and black metal to their sound.

ABOUT THE BAND

Kill Everyone Now mode. KEN mode: an ethos legendary Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins would use to describe the band’s state of mind while taking the stage for the endless touring cycle of their genre-defying classic album ‘My War’. This proved to be the psychological foundation/attitude for the project brothers Jesse and Shane Matthewson would form in 1999 in their home of Winnipeg, MB, Canada that would see them produce a manic form of metal and hardcore infused with noise rock.

Cutting their teeth in the early 2000s with a pair of records – 2003’s Mongrel and 2006’s Reprisal – on Philadelphia’s Escape Artist Records, the group would find breakout underground notoriety with their JUNO award-winning album, 2011’s Kurt Ballou produced Venerable. This marked a decided shift for the band, embarking on an unrelenting touring schedule for the following 5 years. This included releasing two additional full-lengths 2013’s Matt Bayles produced Entrench and 2015’s Steve Albini produced Success (both JUNO nominated and highly critically acclaimed) and seeing them hit a multitude of major festivals and doing live sessions for institutions such as BBC Radio and Daytrotter.

With such a heavy schedule burnout was inevitable, and in 2016 the band took a step back to regroup: core members, Shane and Jesse, formed their own music business management services company, MKM Management Services – who now maintains a who’s who of Canadian metal, punk, and hardcore bands as its clientele; Jesse went to Thailand to study Muay Thai full time; while bassist Scott Hamilton released records with his other bands Adolyne and Greylight District and managed film programming at the Broadway Theatre at his home in Saskatoon. In 2017 the band began writing with a newfound focus and desire, in the most collaborative effort they have ever put together.

Pre-order link