Advance, the Glasgow based dystopian electronica project of Tom Perrett and Kimberly Copland exploded onto the electronic music scene in 2014 with the release of their debut album Deus Ex Machina.
Drawing the absolute best from such influences as Depeche Mode, Assemblage 23 and Ludovico Einaudi to name but a few, Advance have continued to win new fans across the world with their infectious sound, prescient social commentary and inimitable live performances across the UK including the infamous Slimelight club in London and the legendary Resistanz Festival in Sheffield.
Anthemic in every sense of the word and arguably their most accomplished output to date, A Sign of Things to Come showcases four brand new tracks including larger-than-life futurepop monsters ‘Calm Before the Storm’, ‘The One’ and ‘Trying to Live’, plus the emotive, piano-driven ballad ‘Grey Dawn’.
A Sign of Things to Come has been mixed by CYFERDYNE’s production mastermind Andy McBain and mastered by the iconic Jan Loamfield of X-M-P MUSIC PRODUCTION. The digital version of the EP includes bonus remixes from crossover titans Biomechanimal and Advance’s label-mates, synthpop-heroes Nature of Wires.
A Sign of Things to Come is officially released on the 10th of June 2016 and is available from all good digital outlets and in a strictly limited, 12” heavyweight vinyl edition. A new full length album is due in 2017.
Zeal Records has its fifteen anniversary this year, and to celebrate this, the Belgian indie label released the compilation Zeal Records: 15 Years The Essence Of Music including all bands that can be found in Zeal’s catalogue.
Zeal Records has given us 10 CD's to give away.
Do you want to have such a CD, just answer the question on our contest page.
Zeal Records viert dit jaar zijn vijftienjarige bestaan en om dit te vieren heeft het Belgische indielabel de knappe compilatie Zeal Records: 15 Years The Essence Of Music uitgebracht met daarop alle bands die je in de catalogus van Zeal kan terugvinden.
Zeal Records heeft ons 10 CD's gegeven om te verloten.
Wil je zo’n cd in je bus, beantwoord dan onze vraag.
Garbage (Shirley Manson, Steve Marker, Duke Erikson and Butch Vig) have unveiled their new single “Empty” from their forthcoming album Strange Little Birds, due out on June 10th on the band’s own label STUNVOLUME.
“Empty is just exactly what it says it is. A song about emptiness,” said the band’s Shirley Manson.
Strange Little Birds, Garbage’s sixth studio album, was recorded and produced by the band in Los Angeles and is the follow up to 2012’s heralded Not Your Kind of People.
In addition to previously announced festivals and headlining shows taking place across Europe this summer, later this week Garbage will announce a run of headlining U.S. live dates that will take them to Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, and more. See below for confirmed dates and stay tuned for additional live dates to be announced in the coming weeks.
LIVE DATES
May 24 - La Cartonnerie – Reims, France
May 26 - Rock im Revier Festival – Dortmund, Germany
May 27 - Women Of The World Festival – Frankfurt, Germany
May 28 - Rockavaria Festival – Munich, Germany
May 30 - The Paradiso – Amsterdam, Holland
May 31 - Den Atelier – Luxembourg, Luxembourg
June 1 - Caribana Festival - Nyon, Switzerland
June 3 - Le Radiant – Lyon, France
June 4 - Montereau Confluence Festival - Montereau, France
June 5 - La Belle Electrique – Grenoble, France
June 7 - Center Urbane Kulture Kino Siska – Ljubljana, Slovenia
June 8 – Fabrique – Milan, Italy
June 10 – Nova Rock Festival - Nickelsdorf, Austria
June 13 – Troxy – London, UK
June 14 - Rock City – Nottingham, UK
June 16 – Mad Cool Festival – Madrid, Spain
June 18 – 101WKQX PIQNIQ - Chicago, Illinois
July 6 – Summerfest – Milwaukee, WI
August 8 - Lokerse Feesten- Lokeren, Belgium
August 10 - A Summer's Tale - Luhmühlen, Germany
August 12 – Fête du Bruit, Landerneau, France
August 14 – Kubana Festival, Riga, Latvia
The first single taken from An Pierlé’s new album ‘ARCHES’ is now available to listen to:just click here!
An Pierlé gaat ter kerke. Niet voor het eerst, trouwens. In 2012 ging ze als stadscomponiste voor in de hoogmis van Odegand en blies ze heilige huisjes nieuw leven in tijdens de Strange Days/Strange Ways tour.
Dit keer worden er vooral huisjes omvér geblazen: er wordt geroepen, gehuild en gebriest in de kerk.
En gedanst, jazeker. Want Arches – het eerste deel van het tweeluik ‘Arches/Cluster’ - is zowaar een popplaat geworden. Pop met pijpen. En met stevige verwijzingen naar de jaren ’80, de periode waarin zowel An Pierlé als producer Koen Gisen hun muzikale aufklärung kenden.
Zelf verwijst Pierlé onder meer naar ‘Avalon’, de plaat waarop het schisma tussen Bryan Ferry en de rest van zijn Roxy Music zich nadrukkelijk begon af te tekenen. De geest van Robert Wyatt’s ‘Maryan’ waart rond in ‘Arches’ en ook The Human League is een nadrukkelijke invloed.
De in de Gentse Sint-Jacobskerk opgenomen plaat valt op door haar - excusez le mot - organische live sound, altijd al een van de handelsmerken van producer Koen Gisen.
De ‘son-seul’ - elke stilte heeft haar eigen geluid - is ook hier nadrukkelijk aanwezig. De kerk en het orgel kraken en piepen zachtjes, met het gezucht van de Gentse binnenstad in de verre achtergrond.
Een hoofdrol is - hoe kan het ook anders - weggelegd voor orgelfluisteraar Karel de Wilde. Hij legt het nukkige Sint-jacobsorgel z’n wil op en laat het afwisselend zuchten, treuren, swingen en vloeken.
De haast brutale grandeur en de wijdsheid van het orgel nopen Pierlé tot stevig vocaal weerwerk en opvallend hoge uithalen. ‘Het deed ook deugd om nog eens flink te kunnen uithalen, heel hoog en heel krachtig te zingen. En om me eens kwaad te maken in bepaalde songs ook, ja.
Tussen al die passie zorgen Loesje Maieu en Kaat Hellings voor de nodige en juiste interpunctie.
Het orgel overweldigt, maar een zwàre plaat is ‘Arches’ niet geworden…
“Het is vooral een sensuele plaat’, zegt Pierlé zelf. ‘Een popplaat waarop veel onbestemde gevoelens worden vertolkt. Liefde, onrust, maar ook verontwaardiging en kwaadheid, inderdaad. Die gevoelens hebben niet noodzakelijk te maken met dingen die uitsluitend dicht bij huis gebeuren’.
‘De nummers op ‘Arches’ gaan niét over de wereldbrand. Maar dat de wereld in brand staat, daar kan je niet naast kijken. En die gebeurtenissen mee bepalen hoe ik me voel of tegen dingen aankijk, dat is zeker’.
I, Gemini is the debut album from Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, A.K.A. Let’s Eat Grandma. Recorded in the former nuclear bunker turned analog paradise, Old School Studios in Norwich, under the watchful eye of Will Twynham (Hand Of Glory Records), I, Gemini will be released on 17th June 2016 via Transgressive.
Today, LEG share their new single, ‘Eat Shiitake Mushrooms’, with an impact date of 17th June. An organ, synth and glockenspiel bass-music-pop-banger complete with rap breakdown, ‘Eat Shiitake Mushrooms’ concerns itself with people’s ability to surpass expectations and surprise everyone.
As thick as thieves, as sharp as knives, as like-minded as twins, wildly imaginative multi-instrumentalists and talented putative pop stars Rosa, 16, and Jenny, 17, met aged four in their local infant school in Norwich and have been inseparable ever since.
Let’s Eat Grandma was formed in 2013 when Rosa was given a second hand acoustic guitar for her birthday and Jenny adopted a battered old ukulele. Influenced by playing jazz and classical music both in and out of school and their own desire to explode the pop formula, they started writing a series of uniquely structured compositions. On a month by month basis their repertoire of instruments expanded and expanded to include the saxophone, the piano, mandolin, drums, synthesizers, harmonica, recorders and whistles, even if their audience initially was only each other.
Their bewitching album not only features an epic centrepiece track called ‘Welcome To The Treehouse (I & II)’ but a drawing of one of their tree houses graces the cover art. The sleeve (“it’s designed to sum up our imaginary world”) also features the constellation Gemini in the night sky and the album title refers to the star sign - the sign for twins.
‘Deep Six Textbook’ – their debut single which has already caused a stir on the internet refers to the old maritime phrase meaning to throw something overboard and sets out LEG’s desire to throw the rulebook away. By their own standards the song is both lush and sepulchral and is intended to be the “calm before the storm” as the opening track. Chocolate Sludge Cake’ and ‘Chimpanzees In Canopies’ both relish in thrusting together seemingly incompatible genres such as R&B with cosmic synth psych; and stark minimalism with freak folk. They reclaim children’s fairy tales back from vacuous “Disneyfication” on ‘Rapunzel’, re-injecting the story with a dark sense of gothic unease. And ‘Sax In The City’ is a dystopian nightmare of people rendered robot slaves by smartphones and tablets - all the more striking for its jaunty lo-fi pop setting.
The name Let’s Eat Grandma was chosen in a rush the night before their first ever gig, from an old grammatical joke which highlights the usefulness of a well placed comma. The name is ideal for a band that can sound quite sweet and poppy on first listen but who also have deeper, darker undercurrents.
