NEWS

PRAM

Announce new album, Across the Meridian, out July 20^th 2018

Share new track ‘Shimmer and Disappear’ –Watch and Listen HERE

Domino is pleased to mark the return of Pram.  Across The Meridian, released on Friday the 20^th of July, is a celebration of Pram’s unique vision, focused into a beautifully constructed and tautly produced soundworld.  Across The Meridian is their first album since 2007’s The Moving Frontier. 

As with their previous albums, Across the Meridian mixes instrumentals and songs, weaving a gleeful path through the musical territory of film scores, 30s jazz, sun-drenched pop, electronica, and post-punk experimentation. Haunting and wistful vocals are set to a variety of soundscapes, sometimes appearing as a snatched fragment of the subconscious and dreamlike, at others crafting a story of longing or regret, drawing the listener into Pram’s uncanny world through the mirror. Newcomers to Pram will find a richly detailed collage of influences ranging from exotica, Krautrock and the forgotten film soundtracks that went on to inspire contemporaries Stereolab & Broadcast.

The band convened at the remote Foel studios in Wales to improvise on ideas and record some bases for tracks, before finishing them in their studio in Birmingham. Pram have a working process that has developed over many years and reflects shifts in band personnel and technological advancements. Across The Meridian is a testament to the band embracing these new approaches without losing any of their original allure.

The band line up now consists of Matt Eaton, Sam Owen, Max Simpson and Harry Dawes.

Tracklisting

Shimmer and Disappear

Thistledown

Electra

Wave of Translation

Shadow in Twilight

Ladder to the Moon

The Midnight Room

Footprints Towards Zero

Mayfly

Sailing Stones

Where the Sea Stops Moving

Doll’s Eyes

Across The Meridian will be available on deluxe edition silver LP, standard LP, CD and download.

Pram will play at London's The Lexington on Sunday 22nd July. Tickets are available here. 

Always restless and inventive while always true to the power and glory of songwriting and melody, Conor O’Brien has made another great leap forward with Villagers’ fourth studio album, The Art Of Pretending To Swim, released by Domino on Friday 21^st September. 

Following the exquisitely sparse, intimate aura of 2015’s Darling Arithmetic, O’Brien’s new record reconnects with the multi-faceted approach of Villagers’ 2010 album debut Becoming A Jackal and 2013’s {Awayland} while adding a new-found soulfulness, rhythmic nous and dazzling panoply of sonic detail, both analogue and digital, creating feverish moods while writing effortlessly accessible tunes. Balanced with subtle aspects and lyrical themes that embrace existential fears and hopes in this desperate, technologically-centred dystopian age, The Art Of Pretending To Swim is the most brilliantly realised Villagers album to date.

The album was written, produced, mixed and primarily performed by Conor O’Brien in his Dublin studio.

Watch the video for 'A Trick of The Light' below.

The video for ‘A Trick of the Light’, the first single from the album, was directed by Bob Gallagher. Conor says of the collaboration:

“Myself and Bob got together and discussed the song thematically and came to the conclusion that there was no other option but to make a short film in which we follow a dishevelled shamanistic protagonist who mysteriously triggers an altered state of consciousness in everyone he meets, or at least believes that he does. We also wanted lots of dancing and to inspire a general feeling of "what the hell did I just watch?" in the viewer.” 

O’Brien has a string of accolades under his belt including two Ivor Novello Awards (the most recent being 2016’s Album Award for Darling Arithmetic), two Mercury Music Prize nominations and is also a previous winner of Ireland’s Choice Music Prize. 

Additionally, Villagers’ music recently featured in the high profile HBO drama ‘Big Little Lies’, Conor has collaborated with the composer Nico Muhly (that track featuring in the forthcoming Paulo Sorrentino Berlusconi biopic ‘Loro 2’) and Villagers’ Spotify session of ‘Nothing Arrived’ has hit over 100 million streams.

Tracklisting:

1. Again
2. A Trick Of The Light
3. Sweet Saviour
4. Long Time Waiting
5. Fool
6. Love Came With All That It Brings
7. Real Go-Getter
8. Hold Me Down
9. Ada

The Art Of Pretending To Swim is available to pre-order on Domino Mart-exclusive deluxe LP (includes 10” of a 12-minute version of ‘Ada’ and B-side ‘This Is The Art Of Pretending To Swim’ plus signed lyric booklet), Deluxe LP (includes ‘Ada’/’ This Is The Art Of Pretending To Swim’ 10”), Standard LP, CD and Digitally. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Master And Everyone - Streaming Now

I SEE A DARKNESS and EASE DOWN THE ROAD sessions had ultimately proceeded well, and so Will Oldham mapped out a third full-length recording session with a similar process concept in place.  This new record would be made over the course of a month in Shelbyville at Paul Oldham’s Rove Studios with musicians coming and going for their respective tracking sessions.  For basic tracking, NY-based guitarist Alan Licht, Baltimoron bassist Drew Nelson and Belgian drummer Thomas Van Cottom were flown in and recording began.  To ease into the session and get good sounds down, a cover of Glen Campbell’s “Less of Me” (learned from Roger Miller’s TENDER LOOK AT LOVE LP) was tracked.  A few originals were attempted, but the results didn’t feel right to Will, and he reluctantly pulled the plug on the whole session, sending this amazing ensemble back to their respective homes scratching their heads.  What was wrong with the proceedings?  Probably Oldham missed having a collaborator at the helm with him, looking at the big picture.  EASE had been a very satisfying experience with David Pajo co-overseeing the shaping of the record.  A conversation with David Berman persuaded Will to call producer/engineer Mark Nevers in Nashville to see if something could be done about saving the record.  Nevers had time available at his Beech House studio, so Will and Paul drove down to Music City, USA to start fresh.  Nevers brought in Paul Burch to play drums.  After a couple of days’ worth of recording, Will again felt that the songs weren’t coming together correctly.  Burch was dismissed, and the tracking began again from scratch with just brothers Will and Paul (on bass) playing the songs.  It was rudimentary, but the songs were coming across and so all proceeded until the ten songs were on tape.  Paul Oldham went home, and Nevers began to introduce Will to some of his intimate musical community, as well as to methods of studio recording in Nashville.  Nevers and Oldham would discuss arrangements, and then Nevers would get on the horn and bring in one pro or another.  Most significantly, Nevers introduced Oldham to keyboardist Tony Crow and guitarist William Tyler.  Oldham wanted a woman to sing on the record.  Nevers asked Oldham to describe what he was looking for, and Oldham said he wished for someone who combined the timbre and expressiveness of Dolly Parton and Sandy Denny.  It was up to Nevers to explain this to the singer’s union over the phone.  They recommended Marty Slayton, so Nevers called her and she came and threw down.  Watching Slayton work, Oldham realized what he wanted to be when he grew up.

With Nevers doing the heavy lifting, he and Oldham mixed the record in a few days.  It was done, but it had been an awkward and jarring experience overall for Oldham.  The songs and their recording had not been easy.  For months, Oldham listened to the mixes, convinced that they weren’t releaseable.  He thought to pare the collection down to six songs and release it as an EP titled IT’S EXPECTED I’M GONE, after the Minutemen song (which Oldham later recorded with Tortoise).  He’d become acquainted with Marianne Faithfull through Matt Sweeney.  Oldham sent Faithfull the full ten songs, and she encouraged him to release the record as a full-length. 

He was still on the fence.  When the session was slated to go down in Shelbyville at Rove, Sarah DeVincentis was scheduled to come in and sing.  She’d joined the Bonny band for it’s first of three annual tours with RainyWood (who transmogrified into Brightblack by the third tour), an all-camping venture down the west coast of the USA (a 7” was recorded during this tour, “Barcelona” b/w “We All, Us Three, Will Ride”).  A couple of months after the Nashville session, Oldham joined DeVincentis and her family on a surfing excursion in Biarritz, where the cold and rain and generally poor surfing conditions kept everyone indoors.  Oldham played DeVincentis the MASTER AND EVERYONE recordings, and her positive (or at least non-negative) reaction pushed Oldham towards the decision to put out MASTER AND EVERYONE as the full ten-song record it is.

The front cover of the record is a photograph by Steve Gullick taken in a London hotel room.  Oldham commissioned his mother Joanne to make the back cover.  He asked her to render a blue jay.  She had just been to Alaska and was inspired by Russian iconographic works in the churches there, and so she rendered her jay in stylized two-dimensionality with a golden halo around its head.  Sammy Harkham painted a work for the record as well.  Harkham worked up pieces based on paltry notes provided by Will, coming up once again with inspired brilliance.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Happy Child / Forest Time - Streaming Now

A couple of little orphan songs were birthed in 2002, and Will Oldham felt strongly that they would be well-served by a release through channels familiar with Bonnie Prince Billy and Palace Musics.  One of these was “Forest Time”, commissioned as musical accompaniment to a small pressing of photographs by artist Erik Wesselo.  The song was recorded on home multitrack hard drive thingamajig at Oldham’s Baltimore house.  The other song, “Happy Child”, was released on a record by Tweaker.  Oldham had been approached by Tweaker’s Chris Vrenna to write lyrics and vocal melody for an instrumental bed that Tweaker had created.  The singing was recorded by Paul Leary in Austin Texas.  The cover art for the release of these two songs as a CD single was culled from paintings that Sammy Harkham had made for MASTER AND EVERYONE.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Greatest Palace Music - Streaming Now

Recording engineer/producer Mark Nevers had introduced Will Oldham to the wonderful community of Nashville session musicians during the sessions for MASTER AND EVERYONE.  Nevers noted how impressed Oldham was with how things could work at a Nashville session and suggested to Oldham that they reconvene for a future record for which Nevers would book a whole crew of A-team musicians.  Oldham first conceived of bringing in a pile of cover songs culled from the breezy pop charts of the 1970s; songs from Meat Loaf, Journey, Elton John, REO Speedwagon.  He figured to pare the fat off of the popular arrangements and build them back from the ground up, inspired in part by Dolly Parton’s cover of “Time For Me to Fly” on her WHITE LIMOZEEN record.  As the months passed, this idea transmogrified into the concept of covering Oldham’s own “hits”, bringing repertoire from Palace records formally into the Bonnie Prince Billy arsenal.  Oldham had learned that names can be confusing and misleading to the listening public, and thought he ought to record the evolution of the songs, introducing them to the BPB audience for now and future.  Drag City asked audiences to submit their favorite Palace jams for possible inclusion in this endeavor.

True to his word, Nevers assembled a mighty crew of seasoned pickers at the notorious Castle recording studio in Franklin, Tennessee.  Eddie Bayers played drums, Hargus Robbins played piano, Stuart Duncan played fiddle and mandolin.  Union rules were observed, with a few songs allowed per 4-hour session.  Things went fast.  Oldham’s head spun, gleefully.  After three days, 18 songs had been tracked with bass, drums, fiddle, mandolin, piano, and guitars, along with all of the lead vocals (except for “New Partner”, which vocals Oldham would re-sing later).

The next step, overdubbing, took months.  Oldham wanted to bring in many of the musical forces who had been crucial to the life of these songs. He brought the recordings to Milwaukee so that Colin Gagon could throw down some accordion and trombone parts; Anomoanon members Jack Carneal, Ned Oldham, and Aram Stith were recorded remotely.  Sessions occurred at Paul Oldham’s Rove Studios and at Nevers’ Beech House.  Cynthia Hopkins, of Gloria Deluxe, played and sang.  Duets of a sort were recorded; David Berman joined in on the singing of “No More Workhorse Blues” (a song inspired by Berman) and Marty Slayton helped turn “Agnes Queen of Sorrows” into a functioning duet.  A few songs were scrapped from the final running order.  Oldham had been unhappy with the singing he did on “New Partner” in the initial sessions  He asked Berman to coach him for the vocal retake, which Berman did with aplomb.  Matt Sweeney came to Nashville and recorded his inimitable guitar moves and even sang a bit here and there.  William Tyler and Tony Crow were back, Bobby Bare Jr. joined in on some singing, Ned Oldham played and sang, Andrew Bird fiddled and whistled, DV DeVincentis blew his sax.

Loathe to travel and/or endure video production days, Oldham videotaped himself singing a few of the songs from the collection and sent the resulting clips to film-maker friends Harmony Korine and Braden King (he’d also sent the sole copy of his duet-with-a-puppet clip for “Agnes” to Geoff McFetridge but the tape was lost in the mail).  Korine conceived of and shot his short film for “Pushkin”. When Oldham saw it, he was both blown-away and inspired.  He asked Korine to re-fit the piece to “No More Workhorse Blues” instead of “Pushkin”.  Korine did so, and truly a mighty work is the final result.  Braden King shot an epically playful piece for “Horses” which remains vibrant and loved.

The front cover for GREATEST PALACE MUSIC is dominated by a painting by McLean Stith.  The back cover is a close-up photograph of Bonny Billy taken in a Montauk motel room.  The inside artwork was rendered by Patsy Desmond.  The vinyl edition featured three sides of playable music, with side four featuring a vinyl etching by Savage Pencil.  Bob Arellano wrote the liner notes.

Artist Kyle Field created artwork for the promotional poster.

Two physical singles were released, one for “Agnes”(again with art from Kyle Field) and one for “No More Workhorse Blues”.  Bonus tracks on these singles included a Mariah Carey cover, a Judee Sill cover, a new collaboration with Tweaker, and an outtake from the GREATEST PALACE MUSIC session.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Matt Sweeney - Superwolf - Streaming Now

Smoke was clearing for Will Oldham from the elaborations of GREATEST PALACE MUSIC.  Digging into the older songs had a left a brain free and wandering.  For Matt Sweeney, a separate kind of smoke was dissipating, as a years-long musical collaboration with David Pajo and Paz Lenchantin had come to a close.  Sweeney had been string-tickling in another’s wheelhouse, and his own was getting restless.  Oldham had a solo show booked in London (England) and came up with a kernel of an idea, in the form of an email with the subject of “Challenge”: would Sweeney be able and willing to collaborate on some new songs in time to debut them at this London gig together, as a two-man effort? Say, three songs? So they woodshedded separately and came up with “Beast For Thee”, “What Are You” and “I Gave You” in time to perform them at Shepherds Bush Empire together. They were late getting to the show due to stopping to see their colleague David Blaine who was weeks into being suspended in a box without food for 44 days- Steve Gullick’s photo of Oldham re-stringing a guitar last minute in the taxi was no pose. Both men felt good about what they had done at the concert and figured to pursue this process further.  They met up again in New Orleans, performing many old songs and some new at the El Matador and holing up for days at the Frenchman Hotel to hash out more songs.  Days and weeks wore on, they scheduled a session with Paul Oldham at the farmhouse studio in Shelbyville, KY.  They toured their way to Shelbyville from New York, playing shows at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn and Baltimore’s Ottobar.  Landing in Kentucky, they got down to business.  Pete Townsend was brought in to throw down drums on a few of the songs.  Friend Nicky Katt had strongly recommended that they watch the Vietnam vengeance movie ROLLING THUNDER, a suggestion that proved creatively crucial to “Blood Embrace”.  Artwork was rendered by Matt and his cousin Spencer Sweeney.  The poster for SUPERWOLF is a wax painting made by Brian “Babyleg” Deran.  A Calabasas-located music video was made by Mike Piscitelli for “I Gave You”.  The week of the album’s release saw two-man Superwolf shows at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, 2 sold out nights at Big Sur’s Fernwood Inn and an in-store performance at Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco. A CD single for “I Gave You” was released with an outtake from the SUPERWOLF session, “My Circle”, along with two new songs, “Birch Ballad” and “Four Screams”.  On tour, the ensemble would also perform a cover of the Walker Brothers’ “Inside of You”. The European tours around the album featured Alex Neilson on drums, Azita Youssefi on keyboards, Ben Chasny on guitar and Paul Oldham on bass. A psychedelicized headlining show at the Montreux Jazz Festival in The Miles Davis theater happened. There was a BBC session at the end of the tour with the Chasny lineup.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Summer in the Southeast - Streaming Now

In the early 2000’s, a band from Alabama called Rainywood contacted Will Oldham, expressing an interest in playing some shows.  It was agreed upon to undertake a tour of the west coast of the USA, Rainywood and Bonnie Prince Billy, an all-camping, all-swimming, all-surfing and/or hot springing journey from Washington state to Solana Beach, CA.  A good time was had by all, and it was agreed that the following summer a similar trip be undertaken, this time through the mountains and deserts to the east of the previous year’s trek.  Rainywood morphed into Brightblack (and ultimately Brightblack Morning Light), the Bonny Billy band rotated musicians in and out and back again, and once again a good time was achieved.  It was on the first of these trips that Oldham came into contact with the musics of Faun Fables and Joanna Newsom, and it was on the second of these trips that Newsom and Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables joined the bill for many of the tour’s shows.  2004 brought the third annual trip of this kind, this time rolling along the southern states of the USA from west to east, beginning in Texas and ending in North Carolina.  A split EP was recorded by Brightblack and Bonny Billy, called PEBBLES AND RIPPLES.  Brightblack gave Bonny three songs to cover and Bonny returned the challenge.  The Bonny band on this stretch featured David Bird and Matt Sweeney on electric guitars, Ryder McNair playing all keys, b singing and playing an acoustic guitar, with the powerhouse I SEE A DARKNESS rhythm team of Paul Oldham (bass) and Peter Townsend (drums).  Pink Nasty had arranged and recorded Bonny’s “May It Always Be” previously, and it was this rendition that she performed during this tour. Paul Oldham had to miss the final two shows and Aram Stith filled in on bass for those.  The previous years’ outings had been so fine and rollicking that Oldham invited engineer Kris Poulin along to record the shows, with the idea of making a live record out of the resulting recordings.  Will and Paul pored over the recordings for months after.  Will had thought to assemble the record from multiple shows, stitching the songs together into one flowing set.  Originally he’d thought to approach the piece like GET YER YA-YAS OUT (and most big live records from the previous decade or two), taking liberties with the idea of “live” by adding overdubs when the recording just didn’t translate.  However, they found the collection worked without more recording.  All of the manipulations had to do with selecting and sequencing songs from different shows to accommodate the new context.  The photographs on the cover of SUMMER IN THE SOUTHEAST come from a trip that Oldham took with Todd Brashear to Argentina.  Drawings inside were by Able Brown.  The record came out on Drag City’s ‘bootleg’ label, SEA NOTE.

Hunter, the third long player from from the BRIT award and double Mercury Music Prize-nominated Anna Calvi, will be released on 31st August 2018 via Domino.

Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman) at Konk Studios in London with some further production in LA, the album was recorded with Anna's band - Mally Harpaz on various instruments and Alex Thomas on drums - with the addition of Adrian Utley from Portishead on keys and Martyn Casey from The Bad Seeds on bass. It has a new rawness, a primal energy into which Calvi pushes the limits of her guitar and voice beyond anything she’s recorded before. 

Hunter is the embodiment of the feeling of truly letting go. For the songwriter and virtuosic guitarist, it was a catharsis, an opportunity to be more truthful than ever. The first new music since 2014’s collaborative release with David Byrne, Strange Weather EP, her self-titled debut album and the 2013 follow-up One Breath, Hunter is a visceral album exploring sexuality and breaking the laws of gender conformity. A queer and a feminist record, it is galvanising in its hunt for freedom. It was important to Calvi that it was as vulnerable as it is strong; as beautiful as it is harsh; as much about the hunted as it is about the hunter. But she’s careful not to characterise any of these traits as “masculine” or “feminine” – the whole point is that one person, of any gender, can be both. The power is in the contrast itself; in the way she oscillates between extremes, sounding freer than ever before. She wanted to express herself while being “free from the story that either gender is given, free from worrying how people would judge me on what I want to do with my body and myself. For me, that’s quite a utopian vision.”

In conjunction with today’s announcement, Calvi shares a video for the album’s first single, "Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy”. A battle cry with a rousing chorus, the song was partly written while thinking about how young children are when they’re conditioned to follow gender roles – in particular, the “heartbreaking” process through which small boys are taught not to cry or show emotions. Speaking about the track, Anna said the following: “It’s a song about the defiance of happiness. It’s about being free to identify yourself in whichever way you please, without any restraints from society.”

Directed by rising star and recent Kendrick Lamar collaborator, William Kennedy and choreographed by Aaron Sillis (FKA Twigs), the video is available to watch and share below.

Anna Calvi said the following about Hunter:

“I'm hunting for something - I want experiences, I want agency, I want sexual freedom, I want intimacy, I want to feel strong, I want to feel protected and I want to find something beautiful in all the mess.

I want to go beyond gender. I don’t want to have to chose between the male and female in me. I’m fighting against feeling an outsider and trying to find a place that feels like home.

I believe that gender is a spectrum. I believe that if we were allowed to be somewhere in the middle, not pushed to the extremes of performed masculinity and femininity, we would all be more free. I want to explore how to be something other than just what I've been assigned to be. I want to explore a more subversive sexuality, which goes further than what is expected of a woman in our patriarchal heteronormative society. I want to repeat the words “girl boy, woman man", over and over, to find the limits of these words, against vastness of human experience.

I believe in the female protagonist, who isn’t simply responding to a man’s story. I go out into the world and see it as mine - I want something from it, rather than just being a passive product of it. I'm hungry for experiences. Sometimes things seem clear, and other times I feel lost. I feel strong and yet vulnerable; I wear my body and my art as an armour, but I also know that to be true to myself is to be open to being hurt.

The intent of this record is to be primal and beautiful, vulnerable and strong, to be the hunter and the hunted." 

- Anna 

Hunter will be available on DIG, CD, LP and via all DSPs. It will also be available on limited edition deluxe LP 180g red vinyl with exclusive signed print, encased in a high gloss gatefold sleeve (with download code).

The physical pre-order and stream link is here. The album’s tracklist is as follows: 

1. As A Man 


2. Hunter 


3. Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy 


4. Indies Or Paradise


5. Swimming Pool 


6. Alpha 


7. Chain


8. Wish


9. Away


10. Eden

Anna will perform her captivating new live show on an extensive UK and European headline tour this autumn and winter kicking off in Belfast on 27th September 2018. The tour will culminate in her biggest show to date at The Roundhouse in London on 7th February 2019. These dates will follow her first live shows in four years this month with three special performances in Berlin (Berghain), Paris (La Gaîté Lyrique) and London (Heaven) on 19th June, which are now all sold out. Full live dates are as follows and all tickets are available here:

Tue      12 June 2018  Berlin, Germany                       Berghain [SOLD OUT]

Fri        15 June 2018  Paris, France                            La Gaité Lyrique [SOLD OUT]

Tue      19 June 2018  London, UK                             Heaven [SOLD OUT]

Thu      27 Sep 2018    Belfast, Northern Ireland          The Belfast Empire

Fri        28 Sep 2018    Dublin 8, Ireland                       The Tivoli Theatre

Sun      30 Sep 2018    Glasgow, Scotland                               St Luke’s

Mon     01 Oct 2018     Manchester, England               O2 Ritz

Wed     03 Oct 2018     Newcastle, UK                          The Boiler Shop

Thu      04 Oct 2018     Birmingham, UK                       Town Hall

Fri        05 Oct 2018     Brighton, UK                            All Saints Church

Sat       06 Oct 2018     Bristol, UK                                SWX Bristol

Mon     08 Oct 2018     Lille, France                             Le Splendid

Tue      09 Oct 2018     La Rochelle, France                             La Sirene

Wed     10 Oct 2018     Nantes, France                                    Stereolux

Sat       13 Oct 2018     Valencia, Spain                        La Rambleta

Sun      14 Oct 2018     Barcelona, Spain                                 Cruïlla de Tardor @ Razzmatazz 2

Tue      16 Oct 2018     Madrid, Spain                           Chango

Wed     17 Oct 2018     Santiago, Spain                       Sala Capitol

Fri        19 Oct 2018     Porto, Portugal                                     Hard Club

Sat       20 Oct 2018     Lisbon, Portugal                       Capitolio

Mon     22 Oct 2018     Lyon, France                            Le Radiant

Tue      23 Oct 2018     Strasbourg, France                  La Laiterie

Wed     24 Oct 2018     Utrecht, Netherlands                Tivoli Vredenburg, De Helling

Thu      25 Oct 2018     Brussels, Belgium                                 Botanique

Sat       27 Oct 2018     Odense, Denmark                    Posten

Mon     29 Oct 2018     Oslo, Norway                            Parkteatret

Tue      30 Oct 2018     Stockholm, Sweden                 Nalen

Thu      01 Nov 2018    Helsinki, Finland                                   Tavastia Club

Sat       03 Nov 2018    Lund, Sweden                         Mejeriet

Sun      04 Nov 2018    Copenhagen, Denmark                        Vega

Mon     05 Nov 2018    Aarhus, Denmark                     Voxhall

Wed     07 Nov 2018    Warsaw, Poland                                   Niebo

Thu      08 Nov 2018    Prague, Czech Republic           Lucerna

Fri        09 Nov 2018    Leipzig, Germany                                 Conne Island

Sat       10 Nov 2018    Weissenhäuser Strand, Germany             Rolling Stone Weekender

Mon     12 Nov 2018    Bratislava, Slovakia                              Nova Cvernovka

Tue      13 Nov 2018    Budapest, Hungary                              A38 Ship

Thu      15 Nov 2018    Vienna, Austria                                    Simm City

Fri        16 Nov 2018    Rust, Germany                                     Rolling Stone Park

Sat       17 Nov 2018    Fribourg, Switzerland                Le Nouveau Monde

Sun      18 Nov 2018    Zurich, Switzerland                   Plaza Club Zurich

Tue      20 Nov 2018    Ljubljana, Slovenia                               Kino Siska                       

Wed     16 Jan 2019    Munich, Germany                     Freiheiz

Fri        18 Jan 2019    Berlin, Germany                       Astra Kulturhaus

Sat       19 Jan 2019    Hamburg, Germany                  Kampnagel

Tue      22 Jan 2019    Cologne, Germany                   Gloria Theatre

Wed     23 Jan 2019    Amsterdam, Netherlands          Melkweg

Fri        25 Jan 2019    Nancy, France                          L'Autre Canal

Sat       26 Jan 2019    Nimes, France                          Paloma

Sun      27 Jan 2019    Toulouse, France                                 Le Bikini

Tue      29 Jan 2019    Bordeaux, France                                Le Rocher de Palmer

Thu      31 Jan 2019    Reims, France                          La Cartonnerie

Thu      07 Feb 2019    London, UK                             The Roundhouse

Sorry today shared their new single ‘Showgirl’ on Domino. The track and its accompanying video was unveiled as part of Sorry’s latest feature, with i-D Magazine here. The video, shot by Johnny Goddard, splices footage of the band performing the ferocious ‘Showgirl’, which was produced by Frank Ocean and James Blake collaborator Sean Oakley - who also helmed the band’s 2017 debut single, ‘Wished’. Watch the video below.

The band have already aired ‘2 Down 2 Dance’ and Home Demo/ns Vol II -the second release from their visual mixtape series - in 2018. This year, the band also landed a spot in the ‘Dazed 100’ in April; Dazed magazine’s annual list of new and emerging young creative figures with the potential to influence culture this year and beyond.

Following a string of U.K. tour dates with New Yorkers Sunflower Bean, Sorry have now announced their next hometown headline show at the Courtyard Theatre on 26 June - tickets are on sale now here.

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Centred around Asha Lorenz & Louis O'Bryen, two 20 and 21-year-old childhood best friends, Sorry were signed by revered indie Domino after developing a reputation as the most visceral new band on London’s underground circuit. Joined by Lincoln Barrett (drums) and Campbell Baum (bass) the band have already won fans in Dazed (‘100’), The FADER (‘U.K. artists you need to listen to in 2018’), NME (‘The NME 100’), DIY (‘Class Of 2018’), Dork (‘New bands of 2018’), i-D, Loud And Quiet, Noisey, Another Man, The Line Of Best Fit, and more.

Watch the video for ‘Showgirl’ here:

smarturl.it/ShowgirlVid

Showgirl Pre-Order

Pre-order: Dom Mart

Sorry 2018 Tour Dates:

05/17 — Coalition, Brighton (The Great Escape w/ i-D)
05/18 — The Haunt, Brighton (The Great Escape w/ So Young)
05/26 — Courtyard Theatre, London
06/02 — All Points East Festival, London
07/13-07/15 — Latitude Festival, Southwold
07/21 — Truck Festival
08/04 — Visions Festival, London
08/17-08/19 — Green Man Festival, Brecon

The Marquis de Tren & Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Get On Jolly - Streaming Now

GUARAPERO session success notwithstanding, Will Oldham’s connections with the Dirty Three’s Mick Turner and Jim White continued to strengthen.  All three participated in the European tour by the Boxhead Ensemble in support of the documentary film DUTCH HARBOR.  Later, Turner sent Oldham some recordings he’d been working on.  These were solo recordings done on guitar and organ, using loops in an organic fashion still pretty much unique to Mick Turner.  The pieces were meditative, organic, and inspiring.  Turner asked Oldham if there was anything he could contribute to the pieces.  Oldham took the challenge, even as he was daunted by the task of potentially marring these transcendent musical creations.  Eventually, Oldham thought it best to triangulate, finding a third, passive, collaborator in the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.  Using Tagore’s GITANJALI collection of poems and meditative mini-stories as a lyric basis, Oldham built lyrics and melodies to complement what Turner had brought to the table.  Oldham’s voice parts were recorded by Paul Oldham at Rove Studios in Shelbyville, KY, and the results were became the EP GET ON JOLLY, credited to the Marquis de Tren (Mick Turner) and Bonny Billy.   Bonny and the Anomoanon were still operating outside of the Drag City system (though still within the Domino system for Europe), so the artwork was laid out by Louisvillian-cum-Baltimoron Jeremy Devine and featured a painting by Turner. A tour was undertaken and Jim White (drums) and Paul Oldham (bass) joined Oldham and Turner.  A couple of new pieces were created to flesh out the set; all eight pieces were recorded live in the studio in Baltimore and released as a CD-only called GETTHEFUCKONJOLLY.  Turner and White, around this same time, began recording and performing as the Tren Brothers. 

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Guarapero - Will Oldham - Streaming Now

Continuing in the Colonel Parker model, the powers that bleat saw fit to collect a patchwork of Palace Musics and Will Oldham songs for a follow-up to LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.  Mostly it was an act of gentle rebellion against the failure of the GUARAPERO session in Cotati, California, which cost a lot of effort and money.  There were great performances recorded at that session, two of which, “Call Me a Liar” and “The Sugarcane Juice Drinker” are collected on this LOST BLUES 2/GUARAPERO assemblage.  Will Oldham rescued the title from the unreleased record, guarapero being a loose translation of the phrase “sugarcane juice drinker”.  It is b-sides and unreleased songs collected here, including “O Lord Are You in Need” from a Peel session; “Big Balls”, inspired by the AC/DC jam of the same name and commissioned by the label Skin Graft for a series of AC/DC tribute singles.  “The Risen Lord” and “Boy, Have You Cum” are recordings of arrangements built for a US tour with the band Run On.  There was a single copy of a 7” of these two songs preseed and given to Steve Albini.  “Gezundheit” is an early 4-track recording referencing early Oldham hero Phil Ochs.  “Let the Wires Ring” is a handheld-cassette-player recording of a demo intended for the Palace Brothers record THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.  Also featured in a hidden track on the CD (you need to skip backwards from the beginning of the disc to hear it, a mechanism which confused many who listened to CDs on their PCs), “Apocalypse, No” with productions and arrangements by Jim O’Rourke and Sean O’Hagan.  The front cover was a collage by Dianne Bellino, the back a photo by Cynthia Kirkwood.  A with the first LOST BLUES collection, painter Steve Keene was called upon again to create supplemental imagery for the campaign to spread the word about LB2, which Keene responded to with enthusiasm and breathtaking result.

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All Most Heaven - Rian Murphy and Will Oldham - Streaming Now

In early 1997, Rian Murphy had worked with a group including Jim O'Rourke in Chicago for the production of Edith Frost's Calling Over Time. In the months that followed, Oldham suggested they do a production involving himself, Murphy and O'Rourke, in which Oldham would demo the songs and hand them over to Murphy and O'Rourke, who would create productions to be sung over with all-star singers to be determined later. A cassette with four songs was delivered, and based on the unusual, sometimes onomatopoeiac nature of the lyrics,  O'Rourke made musical arrangements with an eye towards a certain chamber-pop lushness. He and Murphy tracked the four songs at the now-defunct Solid Sound studio in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates, with a band including Jed Bishop, Michael Colligan, Kevin Drumm, Darin Gray, David Grubbs, Thymme Jones, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joan Morrone, Julie Pomerleau, Rick Rizzo and Neil Rosario. Rian and Jim supplied scratch vocals and the songs were rough mixed in preparation for distribution to selected singers. Names like Eddie Vedder and Lucinda Williams were suggested, but nothing more than initial contact was made. This part of the process stretched over many months, and in the following year or so, lead vocals were solicited from Bill Callahan and Laetitia Sadier and recorded at Electrical Audio. During this time, Oldham also sang a set of leads for the tunes, and mixes were dispatched to a film project he'd availed several of the tracks to. Additional overdubs by Murphy, with a drum performance from Rich Shuler, were added at the also-now-defunct Airwave Studio (home to one of the city's last old-school acoustic echo chambers) in Chicago's Roscoe Village. At this point, the project was two years old and two of the four songs didn't have finished lead vocals, according to the original plan - or all four songs had Oldham singing lead, depending on how it was regarded. In the interest of finishing the EP before yet another year passed, mixes were prepared with Oldham's vocals and the leads of Callahan and Sadier reduced in scale - Callahan in "duet" with Oldham and Sadier relocated to the harmony choir. Final overdubbing and mixing was undertaken back at Electrical Audio. Archer Prewitt added a variety of things including a vocal trio arrangement sung by Archer, Edith Frost and Kelly Hogan. Then it was done! For the cover art, a photo session involving a truckload of antiques and 18th-century costumes was executed in the what is now called the Cortelyou Common building on the campus of DePaul University, where Murphy's father taught theatre. Oldham supplied the title and that was all she wrote. Murphy and Oldham subsequently played the songs together on a midwestern tour in the late summer of 2001.

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Ease Down The Road - Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Streaming Now

The I SEE A DARKNESS session had gone well; not a lot of panic, all of the desperation in the lyric instead of in the room in which it was recorded.  As he had done before and would try to do again, Will Oldham attempted to re-create some of the circumstances that helped DARKNESS come to be for the next full-length recording session.  By this time, Oldham had moved to Baltimore where his brother Ned lived with his family.  Houses were inexpensive there too, and there’s an international airport.  He met drummer Jon Theodore there, and invited him down to Paul Oldham’s Rove Studios in Shelbyville, KY for a week of basic tracking.  Mike Fellows was asked to play the bass.  Oldham had gotten to know Fellows first through the Royal Trux (for that matter, that’s how he’d first heard Theodore as well), and had gotten to know him better in New York City.  The plan this time was to head to Shelbyville for a month, bringing in musicians two or three at a time.  Along with engineer Paul Oldham, the crucial co-conspirator on this session was co-producer David Pajo.  Oldham and Pajo billed themselves as the Continental OP when they worked as a collaborative duo, named for the Dashiell Hammett character.  It was summer time, and the corn surrounding the house in Shelbyville was high.  Fellows nailed all of the bass parts but one, the part for what would be the title song, “Ease Down the Road”.  For that, Ned Oldham was brought in.  Ned stayed to lay some gorgeous vocal harmonies down.  Non-musicians Bryan Rich and Harmony Korine were brought in to beef up the ambience, and beef it up they did.  Oldham had met Matt Sweeney on the streets of New York and they became fast friends and collaborators.  Sweeney came to the sessions and ended up opening the entire record with his electric guitar lick for “May It Always Be”.  Catherine Irwin, of Freakwater and the Dickbrains, drove over from Louisville to sing sweet high and clear.  Todd Brashear and Paul Greenlaw made great reappearances, singing and playing both.  The last musical collaboration with Oldham for both had been THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.  Matt Everett came down from Providence, RI to play violin.  In all, Oldham was gathering friends and forces from the first decade-plus of his professional life-in-music to make this record; the title points to an understanding of a place in motion.  Pajo and Oldham used auto-tune for the first time here, always on the backing voices, creating surreal soundscapes in the midst of evidently ‘real’ spaces.  Oldham, Fellows, and Theodore recorded two warm-up covers: the Ramones’ “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” and  Tommy Collins’ “Carolyn” (written for Merle Haggard, this was the first of many Haggard-associated songs for Bonnie Prince Billy; the relationship culminated in the big BPB Haggard tribute BEST TROUBADOR from 2017).  The cover of EASE DOWN THE ROAD is a photo by Oldham of a mown path in the state of Maine, echoing and contrasting the stark black-and-white roadway from the back cover of THERE IS NO-ONE.  The back cover of EASE shows Pajo and Oldham on the front porch of the Rove house in Shelbyville.  Sammy Harkham once again illustrated the lyrics, and Dianne Bellino and Joanne Oldham each painted a small color piece for the interior artwork.  There was a poster for the record with a photo by Natasha Tylea of Oldham playing live at the Second Story in Philadelphia.  For the initial European CD release, Domino included a second, bonus disc containing songs from a BBC Peel session recorded during a Bonnie tour, performed by Oldham with Matt Sweeney (on guitar), Mike Fellows (on bass) and James Lo (on drums).  Songs included “Stablemate”, “What’s Wrong With a Zoo?”, and “I Send My Love to You”.

Domino are honoured to introduce Devotion; the hugely anticipated debut album from one of London's most exciting underground talents, Tirzah. Arriving on the back of a lauded run of releases on Greco Roman, Devotion shines a brilliant new light on Tirzah's unique experimental pop, exquisitely soulful voice and potent contemporary lyricism.

Written and produced in collaboration with long-time friend and collaborator Micachu, Devotion's hallmarks are rooted in a fresh, raw emotion and feeling. The first track taken from Devotion comes in the form of ‘Gladly’, along with new video directed by Hannah Perry which is ready to watch below.

The Essex-born performer has been at the centre of the vital post-grime and UK garage sound of London for the better half of a decade but it’s only now that her work has come to full fruition, delivering what feels like a landmark debut LP.

Recorded mostly in the shared houses and makeshift studios of her South London crew of artists and friends, all while life – and love – happened in the meantime, Devotion is written and produced with musician, composer and childhood friend, Micachu, and it’s a downbeat excursion into the moody inner life of an unusually talented lyricist.

Songs about the complexity and conflict of a very human, very confusing feeling come through in listless lines like “I thought that I would call you but I never could do it,” while a faltering bass line carries it through a tumbledown assemblage of samples and vocal cutups. Track titles like ‘Gladly,’ ‘Guilty’ and ‘Reach’ reveal their emotional tone with a single word, while the deconstructed beats underscore the brittle nature of desire and romance. It is on tracks such as ‘Go Now’ where you can really hear the soul and gospel influences of Tirzah’s surprising inspirations in Al Green, Barry White and D'Angelo. There’s an understatement, though, a vulnerability that is unique to her own songwriting, where a simple four syllables, like “I want your arms,” can speak volumes on loss and longing.

Devotion is very much a journey, positioning Tirzah as a unique contemporary soul voice. It’s a deeply personal hallucination of British RnB at its best, very much its own peculiar construction, built on the sad streets and gloomy days of a forever breaking heart.

Devotion tracklist

Fine Again

Do You Know

Gladly

Holding On

Affection

Basic Need

Guilty

Devotion (feat. Coby Sey)

Go Now

Say When

Reach

Devotion (WIG394) will be released on deluxe LP, standard LP, CD and digitally.

Pre-order Devotion now:

Deluxe LP / LP / CD / Digitally

Tirzah Live Dates

3^rd May – London – Bermondsey Social Club [SOLD OUT]

19^th May – Brighton – Bau Wow, The Great Escape

Today Protomartyr announce a new release called Consolation E.P., which they recorded in part with friend Kelley Deal and will be released June 15th via Domino. Two of the four songs feature Deal on vocals alongside singer Joe Casey, including ‘Wheel of Fortune’, which receives a video today directed by Yoonha Park (who directed the band's video for ‘Don't Go To Anacita’).  The EP was recorded by Deal's R.Ring bandmate Mike Montgomery.

Joe Casey and Kelley Deal had this to say of the collaboration and EP:

“Early 2017 proved to be a productive time for the band. We were writing songs right up to recording Relatives In Descent and wanted to keep that momentum going right after. Making 2015's split single "A Half Of Seven" with R. Ring was one of our favorite recording experiences, so the decision to head down to Dayton, Kentucky and spend a weekend in May recording the four songs that became the Consolation E.P. was an easy one.” Joe Casey

“For Mike and I, working on this EP with Protomartyr was a re-kindling of the tender spark that was struck upon our first encounter with them years ago in Texas. They were graciously tolerant and receptive to my production ideas on the songs and the project quickly grew beyond our private orb. We have cello from Lori Goldston, viola from Jocelyn Hach and even bass clarinet from Evan Ziporyn, and I do some singing with Joe. There's a lot of trust involved when an artist places their songs in your hands, and we were very mindful of that while intentionally trying to take the songs in new directions. Candyland in Dayton, KY is home-base for R.Ring recording, and it's close enough that the Proto-men could make it down to lay the tracks down. This is the second project like this we've done with them, so we're ready to flip the tables and have them produce and record some of our songs!” Kelley Deal 

Watch the video for ‘Wheel of Fortune’ here.

Stream ‘Wheel of Fortune’ here.

Tracklisting:

1. Wait

2. Same Face In A Different Mirror

3. Wheel of Fortune (feat. Kelley Deal)

4. You Always Win (feat. Kelley Deal)

Consolation E.P. is available to pre-order now on limited pressing yellow/white starburst vinyl via Domino, and limited pressing gold vinyl via your local independent record store. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital

Protomartyr kick off their UK tour tomorrow before a summer of European festivals and live dates including China, South Korea, Hong Kong and North America. Additionally, Ana da Silva, Gina Birch and Vicki Aspinall of seminal post-punk band The Raincoats will be joining Protomartyr at London’s Rough Trade East for a Q&A on May 10^th before Protomartyr’s Scala show that evening.

Upcoming tour dates

Thurs 3^rd May – Kortrijk, Belgium @ Wilde Westen Tickets

Fri 4^th May – Bristol, UK @ Thekla Tickets

Sat 5^th May – Leicester, UK @ Handmade Festival

Sun 6^th May – Glasgow, UK @ Stag & Dagger Festival

Tues 8^th May – Hull, UK @ Fruit Tickets

Wed 9^th May – Birmingham, UK @ Mama Roux's Tickets

Thurs 10^th May – London, UK @ Rough Trade East – In Conversation with The Raincoats Info

Thurs 10^th May – London, UK @ Scala Tickets

Sun 3^rd June - Seattle, WA @ Upstream Music Festival

Sat 9^th June - Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere (Brooklyn Vegan Northside Party)

Wed 13^th June - Hong Kong, HK @ MOM Livehouse

Fri 15^th June - Beijing, CN @ Yue Space

Sat 16^th June - Shanghai, CN @ YYT

Sun 17^th June - Seoul, KR @ V-Hall

Wed 20^th June - Kuala Lumpur, MY @ Live Fact

Thurs 21^st June - Jakarta, ID @ Rossi Musik

Sat 23^rd June – Athens, Greece @ Ejekt Festival

Fri 6^th July – Modena, Italy @ Arti Vive Festival

Sat 7^th July – Chiusi, Italy @ Lars Rock Festival

Sat 21^st July - Los Angeles, CA @ FYF Fest

9-11^th August - Haldern, Germany @ Haldern Pop Festival

Sun 12^th August - Luxembourg, LU @ Rotondes

Mon 13^th August - Dusseldorf, DE @ Zakk

Tues 14^th August - Bremen, DE @ Tower Musikclub

Thurs 16^th August – Nijmegen, Netherlands @ Doornroosje Tickets

Fri 17^th August – Biddinghuizen, Netherlands @ Lowlands

Sat 18^th August – Hasselt, Belgium @ Pukkelpop

Sun 19^th August – St. Malo, France @ La Route du Rock

Tues 21^st August - Dudingen, CH @ Bad Bonn

22^nd August – Zurich, Switzerland @ Mascotte Tickets

Fri 24^th August - Schorndorf, DE @ Club Manufaktur

Sat 25^th August – Charleville-Mézières, France @ Cabaret Vert

Sun 26^th August – Ramsgate, UK @ Ramsgate Music Hall Tickets

Tues 28^th August – Sheffield, UK @ Picture House Social Club Tickets

Wed 29^th August – Hebden Bridge, UK @ The Trades Club Tickets

Thurs 30^th August – Liverpool, UK @ O2 Academy 2 Tickets

31^st Aug – 2^nd Sept – Wiltshire, UK @ End of the Road Festival

31^st Aug – 2^nd Sept - Vlieland, NL @ Into the Great Wide Open

Protomartyr Online:

Website | Facebook

With the release of their new album, Sparkle Hard, heading our way on May 18^th on Domino, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have shared another taste of what’s to come with their new single ‘Refute,’ a country-tinged reflection on marriage and infidelity, featuring guest vocals by Kim Gordon.  Per Malkmus, the idea was to “queer the duet”, by messing with “Nashville tropes in light of current trends in evolutionary psychology” and reversing “the classic He Said/She Said narrative, where in this case the ‘wife’ is the cheater, and the omniscient narrator enters at the end to offer cold comfort.”

Stream ‘Refute’ here.

Stream the previously shared ‘Shiggy’ and ‘Middle America’.

Watch an acoustic version of ‘Middle America’ here.

Additionally, you can calculate your “sparkle level” by taking the Buzzfeed-style Sparkle Hard rejected album art and playlist generator quiz with absurdist questions penned by the band and with corresponding playlists featuring rejected album art that didn’t make it past legal www.howharddoyousparkle.com

Modesty and plain good manners might prevent them from saying so themselves, but the fact that Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have thrived, rather than simply endured over 17 years and delivered six albums of buzzy, sub-cultural significance, constitutes an impressive legacy. The challenge with album number seven is one that any successful band with integrity faces: how to safeguard that legacy and hold on to their identity without rehashing old ground (unthinkable), and also say something meaningful while (crucially) having fun doing it?

Meeting that issue head on in the run up to The Jicks’ seventh record involved some “navel gazing”, according to singer, songwriter, and guitarist Malkmus and not only in terms of what it means to be releasing music in 2018. If, like him, you’re a voracious consumer of all kinds of culture and feel the need to interact with it, rather than just react, then inevitably “there’s a world that prompts you to put your best foot forward”. With Sparkle Hard Malkmus, Mike Clark (keyboards), Joanna Bolme (bass) and Jake Morris (drums) do exactly that. And they hit the ground running – on air treads.

It’s light ’n’ breezy, head-down heavy, audacious, melancholic and reflective, goodtime and bodacious, and it pulls off the smartest trick: it’s both unmistakeably The Jicks and – due to the streamlining of their trademark tics and turns, plus the introduction of some unexpected flourishes (Auto-Tune, a fiddle, one seven-minute song with an acoustic folk intro) – The Jicks refashioned. If 2014’s Wig Out At Jag Bags balanced the lengthy prog workouts of Pig Lib with Mirror Traffic’s sparky pop moments, then Sparkle Hard bears less obvious direct relation to what’s come before. It also has turbocharged energy and enthusiasm by the truckload.

Self-indulgent escapism has never been The Jicks’ bag, but on Sparkle Hard, the reality of modern life sits closer to the surface, communication cutting to the chase whether it’s a proto-punk grind or a back-porch country duet doing the talking. A cleaner burn for dark and complex times.

Sparkle Hard is available to pre-order on LP (heavyweight vinyl with insert), indie-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl with insert), Dom Mart-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl, insert and 12x12” sticker sheet with 12 individual die cut designs for each of the songs on the album by the creative genius Turbo Island), CD and digital.

Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital

UK & European Tour Dates:

Wed 17^th October – Albert Hall, Manchester Tickets

Thurs 18^th October – SWG3, Glasgow Tickets

Fri 19^th October – Vicar Street, Dublin Tickets

Sun 21^st October – SWX, Bristol Tickets

Mon 22^nd October – The Asylum, Birmingham Tickets

Wed 24^th October – Hackney Arts Centre, London Tickets

Thurs 25^th October – Concorde 2, Brighton Tickets

Mon 29^th October – Lido, Berlin Tickets

Tues 30^th October – Stadtgarten, Cologne Tickets

Wed 31^st October – Melkweg, Amsterdam Tickets

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks Online:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Franz Ferdinand have shared the amazing video to Glimpse Of Love (Version), a re-working of the track from Always Ascending, their much-acclaimed fifth album which was released on Domino in February of this year.

The brilliantly entertaining video was shot just outside Paris and directed by acclaimed film maker / artist Alice Kunisue (https://alicekunisue.com)

Using the album original as a foundation the band returned to the studio, adding the kick and punch of their live arrangement, before handing the trackto master mixer Serban Ghenea (Rihanna, Lorde) building upon it to give an even more urgent & thrilling sound.

The album was recorded at RAK Studios, London and Motorbass in Paris, with the help of French producer extraordinaire Philippe Zdar (Cassius, Phoenix, The Beastie Boys). Nothing short of a rebirth, the album’s 10 songs are a triumphant recasting of the group, bursting with fresh ideas and vigorous sonic experimentation.

Watch the video for 'Glimpse Of Love (Version)' here. 

You can stream ‘Glimpse Of Love (Version) here and download the track here.  Additionally, having recently completed a sold-out U.K. tour, including a performance at London’s Brixton Academy, Franz Ferdinand have announced details of a headline show at London’s Roundhouse on Wednesday 26^th September 2018.

Tickets for the show are on and general sale now via www.seetickets.com

Having just completed their European tour, the full worldwide dates are as follows:

24.04 – Mexico City – Pepsi City

27.04 – Minneapolis – First Avenue

28.04 – Kansas City – The Truman

30.04 – Milwaukee – The Rave

02.05 – St Louis – The Pageant

07.05 – Dallas – House of Blues

08.05 – Houston – White Ok Music Hall

11.05 – Phoenix – The Van Buren

12.05 – Santa Ana – The Observatory

13.05 – San Diego – North Park @ The Observatory

15.05 – Los Angeles – The Wiltern

17.05 – Oakland – The Fox Theatre

09.06 – Moscow – Stadium Live

11.06 – St. Petersburg – Stereoleto 2018

13.06 – Kiev – Art Platforma

22.06 – Schessel – Hurricane Festival

22.06 – Neuhausen – Southside Festival

26.06 – Dublin – RDS Arena

28.06 – Santiago Compestela – O Son Do Camino

29.06 – Vilanova – Vida Festival

01.07 – Beuingen – Down The Rabbit Hole

04.07 – Tallinn – Ollesummer Festival

06.07 – Werchter – Rock Werchter

08.07 – Glasgow – TRNSMT Festival

10.07 – Rome – Roma Summer Festival

11.07 – Gardone Riviera – Tener A Mente Festival

13.07 – Madrid – Mad Cool

14.07 – Alges – NOS Alive

15.07 – Aix-Les-Bains – Musilac

19.08 – Landerneau – Fete du Bruit

28.08 – Bergen – USF – Rokeriet

29.08 – Oslo – Sentrum Scene

01.09 – Copenhagen – Store Vega

07.09 – Milan – Milan Rocks

09.09 – Portmeirion – Festival No.6

22.09 – Manchester – British Sound Project

26.09 – London- The Roundhouse

Tickets for all shows in Ireland, UK and Europe are available to purchase now. More information can be found on the band’s website: http://franzferdinand.com

The band also recently performed Feel The Love Go from the album with special guest James Chance on sax on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Watch the performance here.

Franz Ferdinand are Alex Kapranos, Bob Hardy, Paul Thomson, Julian Corrie and Dino Bardot.

Palace Music – Every Mother’s Son – Streaming Now

“Every Mother’s Son” is a Lynyrd Skynyrd song.  Brett Ralph had made a Skynard mix tape for Oldham, and for some reason this particular song made an impression.  Oldham changed a lyric in the song from “winning horse” to “winning pig”.  Michael Udris recorded the performance in a dark living room in Providence, Rhode Island.  Colin Gagon played the piano and Bob Arellano the guitar.  The group also recorded “No More Rides”, a song that Oldham had written for a Sally Timms recording session.  These two recordings were released as a 7” single.  The cover art was an engraving by Diane Radford; a limited edition of the sleeves were letter-pressed by hand by Radford. 

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Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Arise Therefore – Streaming Now

ARISE THEREFORE was the beginning of a new thing.  All of the Palace adventures were about discovery, maybe? And here with ARISE exploration begins.  Will Oldham once again asked Steve Albini to record the songs, this time in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.  It was to be an ensemble of Oldham’s mentor/hero/friends, with Ned Oldham playing bass, and David Grubbs playing piano.  Once again, Britt Walford was invited in but he demurred.  In Walford’s stead, Oldham invited a small dusty electronic box called a Maya-tone to play drums (it belonged to brother Paul Oldham).  And once again, Albini spent significant time pulling apart the tape machine at the studio and bringing it up to snuff.  There was rehearsal/prep built into the process; Ned and Will ran through all of the songs in Birmingham while Grubbs had a cassette of all of the songs with Maya’s beats in place.  A good time was had by all out there in the woods, in the winter.  Gene Booth made the drawing for the cover of the record.  The songs were all Oldham originals except for “You Have Cum in Your Hair and Your Dick is Hanging Out”, which was written by Bryan Rich with Oldham.  Rich had no title for the song, and during the recording sessions Albini told a joke with “You have cum...” as its punchline.

ARISE THEREFORE was released without an over-arching “artist credit”.  It’s necessary to have a recording attributed to an individual or group so that record stores (and now streaming services) have a way to organize their inventory.  All of the records that Will Oldham has overseen prior to and following ARISE have an ‘artist’ attribution attached for the sake of easing the record’s way through the systems and into the ears of listeners.  Though ARISE remains physically unattributed (there is no single artist given credit for the record on the artwork), it has been successively superficially (with a cover sticker) credited to “Palace Music”, then “Will Oldham”, and more recently “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy”.

At times, Drag City/Oldham/Palace would augment a new release with extra goodies for initial distribution to direct accounts.  A direct account is when a record store buys from the label rather than a distributor.  The catalog price for a store is slightly higher than for a distributor and the store has, ideally, a more intimate relationship with the eventual record-buying audience. Oldham had recorded songs and incidental music for an independent film called THE BROKEN GIANT (directed by Estep Nagy), and a CD of this music was included with the first shipments of ARISE to direct accounts.  Later this release was repackaged and retitled BLACK RICH MUSIC (the original title for the film had been THIS BLACK RICH COUNTRY; and one of the songs was written by Bryan Rich under the nom de guerre Roy Black).

As well, when licensing records to Japan in the 1990’s, it was not uncommon to add bonus tracks or otherwise to augment a release in order to make a record more attractive to Japanese buyers, since it was usually more expensive for Japanese music fans to buy Japanese release than it was for them to purchase imported CDs.  With this in mind, a bonus track was added to the ARISE CD, “Black Rich Tune”.

Fun Fact #1: the Arise design team of Osborn/Oldham/Booth was honored when the title sequence in the Shane Black comedy-thriller KISS KISS BANG BANG paid visual tribute to the ARISE cover.

Fun fact #2: The lead actor in THE BROKEN GIANT was a young Will Arnett.  He plays a conflicted man of God in the film.  At one point in the film, his character makes fire come from the palms of his hands (pictured in the artwork for the CD); at another point, he preaches at length from the Book of Job (text from which is printed on the CD face).  Both were signs of things to come when Arnett embodied, wonderfully, Gob Bluth in the television series ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

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Palace Music – Little Blue Eyes – Streaming Now

John Peel, you may know, was a brilliant music curator under the employ of the BBC for many many years.  As part of his duties, he commissioned recording sessions from musicians traveling through London.  On the first Palace Brothers trip through the UK and Europe, they were invited by Peel to record four songs at he BBC’s Maida Vale studios to be broadcast later on Peel’s show.  In 1996, Drag City released two of these four songs on a 7” single, “Little Blue Eyes” and “The Spider’s Dude Was Often There”.  Will Oldham was deeply inspired by cassettes of Peel sessions recorded by Pavement and Royal Trux, and prepared the four songs especially for the occasion. The ensemble was made up of Rian Murphy (drums), David Pajo (electric guitar), Paul Oldham (bass), and Henrique Prince (violin).  At the time, Sasha Jansen was a graphic artist renting office space in the same building as Drag City’s space.  Dan Koretzky was aware that she was of a different ilk than other artists DC had previously worked with and suggested to Oldham that a collaboration might prove interesting.  Hence the distinct visuals of the “Little Blue Eyes” sleeve.

Palace Music - For The Mekons, Et Al - Streaming Now

The go-to venue in Chicago in the mid-1990s was Lounge Ax.  It was there that the first Drag City Invitational occurred, where all active DC artists performed sets over multiple nights; the running order was determined by drawn lot.  It was easily Will Oldham’s favorite venue at the time.  It was decided that a 7” single containing two songs from a 1994 Palace Show would be released, in support of the venue that was now facing threats of having to close doors for permanent.  The band included Charlie Snell (drums), Pooh Johnston (keys), and Jason Stith (bass).  The recording was made by Steve Good.  The songs chosen were “For the Mekons, et al” (the ‘studio’ version of this song is on the compilation HEY DRAG CITY) and “Stable Will”.  The record came in a plain white sleeve and with a paper ID slip included in case a jukebox owner wanted to throw the single onto a machine.

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Palace Music - Lost Blues And Other Songs - Streaming Now

The 1990s were a time of transition in the music business; but then, what decade isn’t?  Vinyl was on its way out and compact discs were embraced by most buyers.  The 7” single already had a limited audience: a potential buyer needed to have access to a store that carried singles; the buyer had to have a functioning record player; the buyer needed the energy and dedication required to perform the act of putting a single onto her record player (possibly having t insert a wide-hole-to-small-hole vinyl adapter into the record or onto the player), changing the speed to 45 rpm, and then flipping the record 3-6 minutes later in order to the B-side.  Many folks were just giving up altogether, going with the flow and neglecting the vinyl format in favor of CDs.  It was with this in mind that Will Oldham and Drag City decided it might be time to assemble most of the Palace music that had been released over the previous years in one compiled album, LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.  Audiences had responded strongly to the material hitherto only available on 7” vinyl records, with “Ohio River Boat Song”, “Horses”, and “West Palm Beach” among the most-loved in the live repertoires of Oldham-assembled ensembles.  It wasn’t an all-inclusive compilation, as it was deemed to be more essential that the record work as a record rather than just as a document or collection.  It ought to reward the listener.  So songs (“Drinking Woman”) were left off, and unreleased material (“Valentine’s Day” and an early recording of “Riding”) were brought in.  The cover featured a big black rectangle that Oldham intended as a mershed Rothko reference.  The font was lifted from Madonna’s BEDTIME STORIES (which contained the Bjork composition “Travelling”, inspiring Oldham’s “(End of) Travelling”).  Oldham dedicated the comp to the Royal Trux and to Paul Greenlaw for their powerful inspiration.  Supplementary artwork was commissioned from the great Steve Keene.  Keene was asked to make full-color and monochromatic paintings that could be used in print ads and posters.  Keene, in exchange for a big box of Drag City records, painted over 50 amazing pieces, all coincidentally executed on (and dated) Oldham’s birthday.

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Will Oldham - Patience - Streaming Now

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Joya - Streaming Now

It was a twisted road that led to the record called JOYA.  Someone played a sweet trick on Will Oldham and on the Dirty Three: each was told that the other artist had expressed an interest in meeting and collaborating.  It was a nice gambit.  Oldham met Mick Turner in London and they hit it off right away.  Oldham suggested that the Dirty Three meet him in Cotati, California to make a record.  The Dirty Three agreed.  After the (artistic) success of ARISE THEREFORE, Oldham didn’t want to mess too much with a formula and so he invited Ned Oldham and David Grubbs back for the Cotati session, as well as Tiffany White from the Memphis “Lost Blues” recording session.  At the last minute, the Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis got separated from his passport and couldn’t make the beginning of the session.  That’s when the heavy lifting tends to get done.  Oldham mini-panicked and called in Colin Gagon to bring his accordion skills to the session.  Steve Albini was the recordist.  Once again, as had happened in Hueytown and Cannon Falls, Albini had to expend some serious effort getting the 2” tape machines up to acceptable working order.  Ellis was able to get a new passport in time to arrive during the overdub/mix part of the process.  Overall, there was a lack of an emotional center to the whole affair due to the scheduling chaos, and when Oldham played the finished record for Drag City, back in Chicago, he realized that the record wasn’t something that should be released.  He went back to the studio in North Liberty, Iowa where he had recorded BLACK RICH MUSIC and re-recorded all of the songs from the Cotati sessions, this time alone with a guitar.  It was from this recording that the songs “Patience” and “Take However Long You Want” were pulled for a 7” single release.

Over the following months, the rest of the songs from the Cotati session were worked and reworked.  All was not lost; about half of the recordings ended up on singles and an EP, and friendships were struck between Oldham and Jim White and Mick Turner that would bear fruit in years to come.  The rest of the songs were rebuilt and a further handful of songs came into being in the hope that Oldham could make a full-length record.  Oldham invited David Pajo to Birmingham, Alabama.  The idea was that the two of them would make a record, with Pajo engineering, at Ned Oldham’s house while Ned and his wife were out of town.  Things didn’t click.  Oldham felt like he was forcing the issue and decided to give the whole thing a rest, fooling himself into thinking that he was through with making music altogether.  Dan Koretzky from Drag City suggested that they give the record one more try, with Koretzky and Rian Murphy acting as producers.  Oldham again asked Pajo (drums), Gagon (bass and piano), and Bob Arellano (guitar) to join him at the Chicago Recording Company with the CRC house engineer at the board.  It was exciting to be on those premises; R Kelly had worked extensively there on his R record, and Slint’s SPIDERLAND was also made there. The session was booked last-minute over the 4^th of July holiday weekend.  Tracking and mixing were completed in four days.  A good time was had by all.  The front cover of the record features a photo by Bryan Rich of his pet goat “Chevre” in Bujumbura, Burundi.  Oldham visited Rich in Burundi and they ate the goat.  The back cover features a photo by Joe Oldham.  The LP sleeve was plain brown cardboard with the name of the record printed in black; the sleeve was die-cut to reveal the label artwork which was the above-mentioned photographs.  The CDs themselves were gold in color rather than the standard silver (inspired by early entries in Smithsonian-Folkways Music of Indonesia series), and the CD trays were made of a smooth shiny black plastic instead of the standard textured charcoal gray plastic.  The record was named JOYA and given the artist credit “Will Oldham” so that the stores and distributors would be able to find a place to put it.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Little Joya - Streaming Now

There was a song left out of the sessions for JOYA, called “Joya”.  The idea for the title of the song and the record was to pay tribute to the Minutemen’s 7” Ep “Joy” as well as to, well, just JOY, and then to augment both and all with an extra vowel.  After the JOYA recording, Will Oldham and Bob Arellano went to Mexico.  They landed in Monterrey and discovered that there was a soft drink factory there which mainly made and bottled a drink called “Joya”.  So they toured the factory.  They went to cockfights, to bullfights, and to the desert to feast on nature and her cactile offerings.  Upon the return to the USA, Oldham was very sick, struck by some long-dead phantom’s revenge in the form of amoeba or microbe broadcasting evil from the gut outwards.  A session had been booked in Chicago, with Rian Murphy overseeing and Liam Hayes and David Pajo playing.  Oldham was able to make it through the completion of just the one song, “Joya” before fading out all together.  Other songs were begun but left hanging on the line, never to be reclaimed.  To flesh out a CD-only release, Oldham recorded some electronic onanism on a digital sequencer. “Little Joya” became a three-track wonder.

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I See A Darkness - Streaming Now

In the wee world of Palace/Oldham doings, a seismic shift occurred in 1998.  The previous years of action and reaction had helped identify, for Will Oldham, what it was to be a worker in song.  There was a tour in Australia, with an ensemble featuring Mick Turner, Liam Hayes, and Jim White.  How was it billed? We don’t know; you’d have to look up fliers or other show info to say.  On the return flight, home to America, Oldham came up with the idea of “being” someone, of embodying, officially, a singer upon whom both audience and creator could project character and intention.  He thought to name the singing thing “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy”, after R.L.Stevenson’s fictionalized Bonnie Prince Charlie vitamixed with Nat “King” Cole and William “Billy the Kid” Bonny.  He started work immediately, on the plane, on the first three Bonny jammers: “One With the Birds”, “Southside of the World”, and “Banana Blood”.  The songs were songs, with verses and choruses and middle-eights, and were intended to span the chasms between devastation and melodrama, horror and humor, honesty and constructed pretense; as authentic as any vaudevillian or thug crooner ever aspired to be.

Oldham had begun to grasp what it was to be an identified and identifiable recording and performing voice.  Rather than hide under the table, he opted to crawl furiously into the bull-ring and own the newly-created musical being.  There was a burst of singles: “I Am Drinking Again”/“Dreaming My Dreams”(a cover of the song by Ireland’s Cranberries), “Black Dissimulation”/“No Such As What I Want”, “One With the Birds”/“Southside of the World”, and “I Confess”/“Sun Shines Down”(these last two are covers of songs from Kevin Coyne’s BABBLE record, which was later covered in full by the Babblers, a band made up of Ben Boye, Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly, Danny Kiely, Will Oldham and Angel Olsen).  Rather than confuse his community, Oldham struck out with the Anomoanon (Ned Oldham, Jack Carneal, Aram Stith, Jason Stith, Willie McLean) to create an (even more) independent Palace Records.

Paul Oldham had gone to university to study audio engineering, working towards the same recording degree at Indiana University that Todd Brashear and Grant Barger had earned years before.  Paul and Will moved into an old farmhouse in Shelbyville, KY and Paul set up his Rove Studio there. 

The sessions for I SEE A DARKNESS were longer than any previously undertaken by Will.  He blocked out a month to make the record, first doing basic tracking with Pete Townsend (drums) and Paul Oldham (bass).  Lead voice and rhythm guitar were tracked live with bass and drums.  Paul was the engineer.  After basics, Colin Gagon came for a few days and played the piano, and Bob Arellano came for a few days and played lead guitar.  David Pajo played guitar on “Song for the New Breed”, the lyrics for which were written by Dianne Bellino.

The front cover was made by Joanne Oldham.  She had developed a practice of making self-referential symbolic collages, and one in particular resonated with Will as a potential cover for this record.  He asked Joanne to make a new version of the piece, extricating the personal references and leaving only the drawn skull layered over by tissue paper.  Sammy Harkham illustrated the lyric sheets and painted the back cover.  Joe Oldham took the photograph of Will wearing a leather hat.

I SEE A DARKNESS was the beginning of Bonnie Prince Billy.  The credits call the record “a Will Oldham record”.  It’s a singular piece of work masquerading as a collection of songs by an individual recording artist.  After a few years of super-independence, the Palace Records releases were brought back under the Drag City manufacture/distribution umbrella and none was the worse for the journey.

Anna Calvi will be playing her first live shows in four years this June 2018 with three special performances in Berlin (Berghain), Paris (La Gaîté Lyrique) and London (Heaven). This will be the first time to hear new material and to also witness the captivating brand new live show from the BRIT award and double Mercury Music Prize-nominated artist.

Anna Calvi last released music in 2014, Strange Weather, a collaborative EP with David Byrne, which followed her album One Breath and her eponymous debut.  

Tickets for the June shows are on general sale from Wednesday 25th April at 11am and will sell out fast. Dates with ticket links are as follows:

12th June - Berlin, Germany: Berghain

15th June - Paris, France: La Gaîté Lyrique

19th June - London, UK: Heaven

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy recently released Wolf Of The Cosmos, a cover version of Susanna’s Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos album in full. During the making of the record, Oldham was immersed in Susanna’s music. 

Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal Ales asked Oldham if he was down for another collaboration (the previous one got Bonny and Louisville jammers Watter together for a demonic dirge ‘The Devil is People’).  They started talking Norway, and fortitude, and mysticism; then they retreated to their respective corners to roll up their sleeves and do their own dirty worx. 

Oldham found Susanna’s original for ‘Wild is the Will’ on her Flower Of Evil record.  The ensemble from Wolf Of The Cosmos (Emmett Kelly, Cheyenne Mize and Chris Rodahaffer) was reassembled.  Joining them were two proper Norsemen, Frode Haltli and Vegar Vårdal.

Stillwater will be releasing a beer of the same name.  The beer is a rustic sour ale aged on cedar; it pairs excellently with horse meat.

The artwork is a watercolour by close Bonny compatriot Oscar Lee Riley Parsons.

There is a wonderful video clip to accompany the music made by Amin Eshraghi-Yazdi called “A Baby Listens to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy”.

Watch the video for ‘Wild Is The Will’ here.

Stream ‘Wild Is The Will’ here.

Buy Wolf Of The Cosmos on vinyl and CD here.

Today, Washington, DC trio Flasher announce their debut album, Constant Image, which will be released June 8th via Domino.  They've also shared a new single and video, ‘Pressure’. Recorded in 2017 at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, NY, Constant Image was produced by Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, War On Drugs) and crackles with invention. This isn’t the sound of a band finding their feet, it’s the rare sound of three people – Taylor Mulitz on guitar, bassist Daniel Saperstein and drummer Emma Baker - who know exactly what they want to achieve from the start.

From their hometown of Washington, DC, with its rich history of idiosyncratic underground music, Flasher has emerged at the forefront of a vibrant musical present. The Sister Polygon label (which Mulitz helps run with former bandmates Priests) is a vital element in this moment of local cultivation and political confrontation. With their new LP, Flasher is helping to define a new generation of music in the city set apart from Dischord or any other storied DC past.

First single ‘Pressure’ gives you a perfect example of what to expect. It’s a song that zeroes in on feelings of mania and alienation but is buoyed by a darting B-52s swagger. There’s weight and lightness here. It’s not often a debut album arrives in so complete a form but when it does you know you’ve got something special on your hands.

Says the band on ‘Pressure’ and its’ video:

“’Pressure’ is a song that treads the line between queer delight and delirium, and crushing isolation and survival. The video for ‘Pressure’, made in collaboration with Weird Life films and featuring designer and Chicago based artist An Authentic Skidmark, is a compliment to the paradox of the song itself and an invitation to that world in between.”

Watch the video for ‘Pressure’ here.

Stream ‘Pressure’ here.

Tracklisting

1. Go

2. Pressure

3. Sun Come And Golden

4. Material

5. XYZ

6. Who’s Got Time?

7. Skim Milk

8. Harsh Light

9. Punching Up

10. Business Unusual

Head here to pre-order the deluxe edition LP available exclusively through the Domino Mart. The deluxe features the album on 150g starburst pink and yellow vinyl. Constant Image is also available as a standard LP, CD, and digitally. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital 

Flasher North America tour dates

Thu. Apr. 19 - Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater w/ The Breeders

Fri. Apr. 20 - Norman, OK @ The Opolis
Wed. Apr. 25 - Birmingham, AL @ Iron City w/ The Breeders
Mon. Apr. 30 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel w/ The Breeders

Wed. June 6 - Philadelphia, PA @ Everybody Hits w/ Dehd

Fri. June 8 - Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere w/ Dehd, Public Practice

Sat. June 9 - Providence, RI @ Columbus Theatre w/ Dehd

Sun. June 10 - Allston, MA @ Great Scott w/ Dehd

Mon. June 11 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House w/ Dehd

Tue. June 12 - Montreal, QC @ Brasserie Beaubien w/ Dehd

Wed. June 13 - Toronto, ON @ The Baby G w/ Dehd

Thu. June 14 - Detroit, MI @ El Club w/ Dehd

Fri. June 15 - Chicago, IL @ Schubas w/ Dehd

Sat. June 16 - June 16 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry w/ Dehd

Mon. June 18 - Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon w/ Dehd

Tue. June 19 - Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop w/ Dehd

Thu. June 21 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl w/ Dehd

Fri. June 22 - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook w/ Dehd

Sat. June 23 - Washington, DC @ Black Cat w/ Dehd
Fri. July 20 - Seattle, WA @ Capitol Hill Block Party

Flasher Online:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp

Following news of their forthcoming album ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’, which will be released on Friday the 11^th of May, Arctic Monkeys today announce a number of arena shows in September.

‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ is available to order now via the AM Store

Tickets for the September shows go onsale at 9am on Friday the 13^th of April, go to www.arcticmonkeys.com for more details.  Dates are as follows:

JULY

1          Sun      Glasgow                        TRNSMT Festival

SEPTEMBER

6            Thu       Manchester                     Manchester Arena

7            Fri          Manchester                     Manchester Arena                 

9            Sun        London                             The O2

10          Mon      London                             The O2                                        

15          Sat         Birmingham                     Arena Birmingham

18          Tue        Sheffield                           FlyDSA Arena

19          Wed      Sheffield                           FlyDSA Arena                                          

24          Mon      Dublin                               3Arena

27          Thu       Newcastle upon Tyne     Metro Radio Arena

The Lemon Twigs will be special guests on the September dates. 

Age restrictions: standing - 16+, seated – U14 accompanied by an adult for Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle, U15 accompanied by an adult in London and U16 accompanied by a parent or guardian in Dublin.

Arctic Monkeys return with their sixth album, entitled ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ on Friday the 11^th of May 2018.  Produced by James Ford and Alex Turner, the album was recorded in Los Angeles, Paris and London. 

Their first release since 2013’s ‘AM’ finds the band intent on continuing to explore new musical terrain with each album. ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ ups the ante in a big way; it is a bold and brilliant album reflecting Turner’s ever more comprehensive creative vision.

The LP comes with a gatefold sleeve, lyric and photo booklet and exclusively via the AM Store, on silver vinyl. It will also be available on standard CD, vinyl and digitally.  You can pre-order and pre-save the album here.

The tracklisting for ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ is as follows:

1. Star Treatment
2. One Point Perspective
3. American Sports
4. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
5. Golden Trunks
6. Four Out Of Five
7. The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip
8. Science Fiction
9. She Looks Like Fun
10. Batphone
11. The Ultracheese

The band will be playing the following headline shows and festivals:

HEADLINE SHOWS

MAY

5          Hollywood Forever Cemetery, LA          Sold Out

22        Columbiahalle, Berlin                           Sold Out

23        Columbiahalle, Berlin                           Sold Out

26        Cavea, Rome                                         Sold Out

27        Cavea, Rome                                        Sold Out

29        Zenith, Paris                                         Sold Out

30        Zenith, Paris                                         Sold Out

JUNE

4          Mediolanum Forum, Milan                   Sold Out

16        Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh NC        Sold Out

18        Ascend Amphitheater, Nashville TN            

19        Coca Cola Roxy Theatre, Atlanta GA        Sold Out

26        Mitsubishi Electric Halle, Dusseldorf      Sold Out

27        Royal Arena, Copenhagen          

JULY

10        Les Nuits De Fourviere, Lyon                 Sold Out

24        Forest Hills Stadium, NY                        Sold Out

27        TD Garden, Boston MA                              

28        Anthem, Washington DC                       Sold Out

31        Petersen Events Centre, Pittsburgh PA

AUGUST

1          Masonic Temple Theatre, Detroit MI     Sold Out

5          Air Canada Centre, Toronto

FESTIVALS

JUNE

2          Primavera Sound, Barcelona

8          Best Kept Secret Festival, Netherlands

15        Firefly Festival, Dover DE

22        Southside Festival, Germany

24        Hurricane Festival, Germany

JULY

1          TRNSMT Festival, Glasgow

4          Oper’er Festival, Poland

6          RockWave Festival, Greece

8          Rock Wrechter, Belgium

12        NOS Live, Portugal

13        Mad Cool Festival, Spain

AUGUST

2          Lollapalooza Festival, Chicago Il

4          Osheaga Festival, Montreal, Canada

8          Oya Festival, Norway

9          Way Out West Festival, Sweden

11        Flow Festival, Finland

14        Sziget Festival, Hungary

Melody’s Echo Chamber (aka Melody Prochet) has confirmed her second album Bon Voyage will be released on June 15^th. Made up of seven expansive tracks, Bon Voyage marries Melody’s breathless soprano to the wildest sonic excursions, always pinned to an emphatic, clattering groove as she delivers her fables of spiritual search and emotional healing in multiple tongues (French, English and Swedish).

Bon Voyage is a collaborative record between Prochet and Dungen’s Reine Fiske and The Amazing’s Fredrik Swahn with Melody sculpting and producing the sessions as well as encouraging the players around her to experiment, often with instruments that might be less familiar to them. It also features special guests Gustav Esjtes and Johan Holmegaard (both from Dungen) and Nicholas Allbrook (Pond).

Today, Melody is pleased to share ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ from the forthcoming album.  Having gone back to her childhood music conservatory to learn drums aged 30, ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ is the first song Melody played drums on. Prochet adds about the track “It’s a special one. I’m used to recording with masters of drums and accepting my drum playing as not perfect but with the right intention was a big deal to me”.

Watch the video for ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ here.

Stream ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ here.

Directed by Daniel Foothead, the animated video invites us into a mystical and magical universe as we follow a pilgrim trying to reunite with his source of inspiration and light, his muse.

A musical journey of discovery, Bon Voyage delves deep into the collective musical psyche of Melody and her Swedish fellow travellers, who she met one serendipitous summer’s afternoon in Angers back in 2015. Prochet describes the members of Stockholm’s premier neo-psychedelic overlords Dungen as “soulmates and extreme beings, uncompromisingly intense and sensitive.” These kindred souls daydreamed about making music together, and then Prochet took matters into her own hands and moved to Sweden in the winter of 2016 to begin their adventure. Working in the woods of Solna, Melody says: “Swedish nature helped me to breathe and soothed me in times of anxiety. I had a majestic forest with a lake three minutes’ walk from my home. Recording sessions were a break in our lives, an escape from our frustrations as young adults, parents, musicians and embittered life jugglers. What transpired was a kind of modern fairytale full of duality: beautiful and disenchanted, happy and painful, internal and external, childish and mature, but also violent and measured. We had no structure and no limits and we stepped out of our comfort zones.”

Bon Voyage arrives more than five years after Melody’s Echo Chamber’s debut, and it is the soundtrack to a trip back from the brink, the sound of spiritual renewal, and a pilgrimage to the sonic outer limits.

Tracklisting:

1. Cross My Heart
2. Breathe In, Breathe Out
3. Desert Horse
4. Var Har Du Vart
5. Quand Les Larmes D’un Ange Font Danser La Neige
6. Visions Of Someone Special, On A Wall Of Reflections
7. Shirim

Bon Voyage is available to pre-order on LP (heavyweight vinyl with printed inners featuring lyrics and bonus phenakistiscope insert), Indies exclusive LP (heavyweight violet coloured vinyl with printed inners featuring lyrics and bonus phenakistiscope insert), Dom Mart exclusive LP (heavyweight violet coloured vinyl with printed inners featuring lyrics, bonus phenakistiscope insert and 12” colour-in poster), CD (with booklet featuring lyrics and artwork) and on digital download. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital

Melody’s Echo Chamber Online:

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Palace Music - Ohio River Boat Song / Drinking Woman - Streaming Now

It was the summer of 1992 and Todd Brashear invited his friend Will Oldham to come live with him in Bloomington, Indiana where Brashear was in the Audio Engineering program at IU.  Oldham moved into a house with Brashear and his schoolmate Grant Barger, and soon they began working on music all together.  They set up a weekend session at the house with Barger at the controls, using his 8-track cassette recording machine (not to be confused with the crappy 8-track tape format popularized in the 1970s).  They invited David Pajo to come up from Louisville to play on the session.  There were three songs to tackle: “For the Mekons et al”, “Two More Days”, and “Drinking Woman”.  Brashear played drums and lap steel and sang harmonies, Barger played bass and Pajo played lead guitars (both acoustic and electric).  Oldham sang and played acoustic guitar.  The house was an older house with high ceilings and wood floors, and Barger’s engineering was impeccable so that everything sounded good and felt in line with an aesthetic that felt like a true realization of what was in Oldham’s mind.

Around the same time, Brashear and Oldham scheduled a session in the IU studios, with Brashear as engineer.  Britt Walford and Brian McMahan came up from Louisville and, there in the fancy studio using 16-track 2” magnetic tape, the group recorded “Ohio River Boat Song” and “Riding”, with McMahan playing drums, Brashear playing bass and Walford playing electric guitar.  This sound was big and clean and the songs had a polish to them that differed significantly from the house recording with Barger.  Beautiful, though maybe not quite the kind of recordings Oldham was beginning to want to be a part of.  The Barger session was all about assembling people and getting the takes right together as an ensemble, while the Brashear session was more about studio craft.  One could listen to “Drinking Woman” and hear the musicians clearly, almost imagine one is in the room as the song happens. “Ohio River Boat Song” has more of an out-of-time-and-place vibe happening.  Brashear and Barger were both great engineers, and the methods and technology used for the two sessions differed significantly.

The cover of the single was designed by Paul Greenlaw, a great visual and musical artist from Rhode Island.  Greenlaw used an archival aerial photograph of some unnamed coastline over which he superimposed lettering fashioned from a photograph Oldham had taken of Mekons violinist Susie Honeyman (when Greenlaw started the design, the idea was still for “For the Mekons et al” to be the A-side).  The lettering spelled out “palace songs”.  In the lower-right corner of the front cover was a sad yellow bird that Greenlaw had drawn.  The back cover featured a Greenlaw elephant, a “Palace Brothers” banner, a fleur-de-lis (symbol of Louisville, KY) and a photo from the “Drinking Woman” session of me, Brashear and Pajo.  There’s an alphabetical listing of contributors to the existence of the record, as Oldham was still figuring things out and didn’t know how best to attribute the existence of any fraction of the whole.  Only black and yellow inks were used on the sleeve in order to keep costs down.  The label design was a throwback to old-school labels: royal blue with metallic silver ink.  Dan Osborn is the Drag City graphics admiral and he executed the label design beautifully.

Oldham shot a video for “Ohio River Boat Song” on 16mm black-and-white film using a wind-up Russian camera.  The footage centered around the early morning horse exercises at Churchill Downs in the spring.  Osborn and Oldham edited the footage at Osborn’s office in the HARPO compound.

“For the Mekons et al” came out later on the compilation HEY DRAG CITY.  “Two More Days” came out on a compilation called LOVE IS MY ONLY CRIME, released in Europe.  “Riding” was re-arranged and re-recorded for the record THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.  The recording of “Riding” from the Bloomington session was included on LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.

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Palace Brothers - There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You - Streaming Now

Once the “Ohio River Boat Song” single went into production, the Palace Brothers were asked for a full-length record.  Over the summer in Bloomington, Oldham had been writing songs and was thrilled to find that these songs might have a welcome place in the world, at least when it came to there being a label willing to release them.  At the end of summer, Oldham moved back to Providence, Rhode Island, where he was ambivalently pursing a college degree in semiotics.  He went to ethnomusicology professor Jeff Titon and suggested an independent study class, supervised by Titon, in which Oldham would work on a set of songs derived in many ways from a variety of historical styles, forms and sources.  Oldham worked on  many of the songs with musicians Matt Fanuele, Paul Greenlaw, John Davis, Mark Cummins, and Colin Gagon.  Davis introduced Oldham to the records of the Royal Trux, and at one point during the fall the Trux came through Providence on tour.  The band stayed over at the house Oldham shared with writer Bob Arellano.  

Oldham and Brashear scheduled the recording session for December of 1992 in Kentucky.  Grant Barger would engineer, using his 8-track cassette rig.  There were two recording locations: a house on Ohio Street (which street has since lost its name to the larger Frankfort Avenue, of which it is effectively an extension) owned by Steve Driesler and a cabin outside of Brandenburg, KY, called “Merciful”.  Brian McMahan and Britt Walford would play on the record, along with Barger, Brashear, Oldham and Paul Greenlaw.  Brashear, Barger, McMahan and Walford traded off instruments (inspired, in part, by the Bad Seeds records of the 1980s), while Oldham stuck to singing and playing the guitar and Greenlaw played the banjo.  Greenlaw was a deeply inspired and unique banjoist; it was the sound of Greenlaw, as opposed to the sound of a banjo, that made Greenlaw’s presence crucial.

The record was mixed by Brashear, Barger, and Oldham at Brashear’s parents house in east Louisville.

There were fifteen songs considered for the recording.  A cover of the Rolling Stones “Hand of Fate” was dropped at the last minute.  The full-length record ended up with twelve songs.  The outtakes were “Don’t I Look Good Today”, which came out on a double 7” comp called LOUISVILLE SLUGGERS 3, released on Mike Bacayu’s Self Destruct label; and “Valentine’s Day”, which came out eventually on the Palace Music comp LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.  The rest of the songs were new originals Oldham began during the previous summer in Bloomington, except “Riding”, which was begun a year or two earlier, and a cover of Washington Phillips’ “I Had a Good Mother and Father”

Auspiciously, David Berman and Bob Nastanovitch of the Silver Jews passed through Louisville and stopped by the session at Driesler’s house.  It had been the Silver Jews 7” Ep that had inspired Oldham to send out the first Palace Brothers recordings.

Greenlaw painted and/or the covers for THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.  Oldham had asked him to render the fable of the mouse and the lion and requested that Greenlaw use bright pink and yellow.  Greenlaw worked on the cover intensely, ultimately coming up with four powerful variations.  Ultimately, all four were utilized, each for a different format or pressing.  The back cover is a black and white photograph of a road in northern Scotland taken by Oldham during a hitch-hiking trip. 

The record was licensed, via a connection made by Nastanovitch, to the British label Big Cat.  The relationship with Big Cat lasted only for the one release, after which all Palace and Bonnie Prince Billy records were licensed through Domino.

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Palace Music - Come In / Trudy Dies - Streaming Now

It was 1993 and the musical ideas were flowing. Oldham wrote two songs for a 7”, “Trudy Dies” and “Come In”.  There was a live-to-DAT session done in Louisville and/or Chicago that was deemed unsuccessful.  Meanwhile, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux were establishing themselves as freelance record producers under the noms-de-guerre Adam & Eve, and it was decided that they should guide the recording of these two songs.  The studio was King Size, in Chicago, run by Dave Trumfio.  Mike Fellows tracked the drums but Hagerty erased those drum tracks and replayed the kit himself.  Liam Hayes played the Mellotron.  Adam & Eve expressed a desire to bring out the inner Springsteen in Oldham’s songs.  The front cover of the record sleeve featured a drawing by Jeff Mueller of a bird embryo.  The back cover held a photograph by Oldham of land outside of Madison, Virginia.  Lyrics to “Trudy Dies” were included on an insert with drawings by Dianne Bellino.  There was a video made for “Come In” featuring animation by Bellino and 16mm footage of music rehearsals in the basement of David Pajo’s parents’ house.

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Palace Songs - Horses / Stable Will - Streaming Now

It was a silver age of 7” singles in the early 1990’s.  The third single attributed to a Palace conglomerate was the equine-themed “Horses”/”Stable Will”.  “Horses” was recorded by Steve Good, who has recorded live underground shows in Louisville for decades.  The session took place primarily at a house shared by Bob Nastanovitch, Will Oldham, and Britt Walford.  Photographs from the session show Brian McMahan playing the drums, Walford playing bass, and Todd Brashear playing the lap steel guitar.  Oldham sang and played a rhythm guitar.  Oldham asked David Pajo, who was away from town when the session went down, to overdub an electric guitar part including a ripping solo for the end of the song.  Pajo recorded the solo once and then called Oldham a day later saying that he hadn’t quite understood what was being asked of him the first time; he’d like to try it again.  The songwriting is credited to Timms/Langford.  Oldham heard it on Sally Timms’ solo record SOMEBODY’S ROCKING MY DREAMBOAT and had been performing it for a few years.  Jon Langford has subsequently said that Brendan Croker contributed significantly to the composition.

Hardly a “B-side”, “Stable Will” has a full life of its own.  The song was written mostly by Bryan Rich (under the pseudonym ‘Roy Black’).  The ensemble realizing the song was made up of the Pale Horse Riders with Will Oldham singing lead and playing an electric guitar.  The Pale Horse Riders were a wild and awesome noise group made up of Chris Layton, Bob Nastanovitch, Paul Oldham, and Pete Townsend.  The recording took place in the abandoned old Galt House building in downtown Louisville.  Engineer Eric Stoess had access to the building, which was supposedly haunted by a nun.  Layton smudged the room with sage smoke prior to the recording to keep evil spirits away and warned the others to “just keep playing” if the nun appeared during the session.  The musicians shot bottle-rockets at prostitutes on the street below, which was unfair and hardly laudable.

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Palace Music - Days In The Wake - Streaming Now

Towards the end of 1993, Will Oldham found himself in Moscow, staying in the small apartment of Bryan Rich.  Rich was there exploring television reporting and production opportunities.  Oldham and Rich worked out a couple of songs while Oldham was there, and Rich sold Oldham his Marantz stereo cassette recorder for a couple hundred dollars.  Once back in the USA, Oldham continued to work on the set of songs that would be recorded for the second full-length under a Palace name.  Grant Barger had moved to Chicago, and Oldham booked time with Barger to begin recording.  However, things didn’t cohere as they might have (some results ended up on the DRAG CITY HOUR release a few years later), and Oldham retreated to Louisville in frustration.  Todd Brashear had moved to Nashville and was working at a mastering studio.  Oldham began to conceive of the record as an unadorned collection, and furiously rehearsed the songs in hopes of making them fit and function together.  He used the Marantz that he’d bought from Rich (along with the microphone Rich had thrown into the deal) and began recording the record at his folks’ house.  The performances were mostly solo, with the exception of “I Send My Love to You” and “Pushkin”, which featured Paul Oldham on second guitar.  Oldham hauled the Marantz with him when he travelled to Birmingham, Alabama to visit brother Ned Oldham.  There he recorded “No More Workhorse Blues” during a thunderstorm, and “Come a Little Dog”.  On the latter song, overdubbing was made possible (percussion, barking, Jennie Oldham’s flute) by playing the cassette of the original tracking on the Oldham’s home stereo while recording the new parts onto the Marantz.  The record was mastered by John Kampschaefer in Louisville; Dianne Bellino contributed a drawing to the artwork, and the front cover is a photo taken in an Irish pub a few years earlier (on the same trip that yielded the back cover photo from THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU).  Oldham was inspired by the economy exhibited in the artwork for the then-current Royal Trux record, CATS AND DOGS.  Drag City pays artists based on profit-split (no advances), thus it made sense to deliver inexpensive package concepts if one was to hope to make a living from one’s music.  When the record was released, it had no title.  After a few months, a title occurred to Oldham, DAYS IN THE WAKE, and it was applied to subsequent pressings.  The record was licensed to Domino for Europe, beginning a relationship between Oldham and Domino that continues to this day.

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Palace Songs - Hope - Streaming Now

DAYS IN THE WAKE was made with somewhat of an urgent desperation, and feelings of fear and loss are abundant in the result.  Will Oldham then felt compelled to oppose such darkness with an expression of gratitude for what he was being allowed to do and make.  He asked Rian Murphy to oversee production of a four-song session at Acme studios in Chicago with Liam Hayes featured prominently on piano and organ.  Four songs were recorded; two of Oldham’s, one Leonard Cohen song (“Winter Lady”) and one song written by Bryan Rich (again under the name Roy Black) and Steve Baker (“Christmastime in the Mountains”).  Technologies were changing, and all of the songs were mixed from 2” tape down to ¼” tape and DAT. The formats have inherently different qualities and in the end, the ¼” mixes of the two Oldham songs were used, while the DAT mixes of the two covers were used.  Oldham wrote two more songs to be recorded in London.  Domino arranged for a session at the Stone Room with Sean O’Hagan playing piano.  Oldham had hoped that Heather Frith, a singer from Bermuda, would be able to sing on the sessions.  She was not available, so Domino introduced Oldham to Brianna Corrigan, formerly of the Beautiful South.  Corrigan joined the session, along with drummer Rob Allum.  Oldham was particularly thrilled to be working in the Stone Room, since the Mekons’ CURSE OF THE MEKONS had been recorded there.  “All Gone, All Gone” and “Werner’s Last Blues to Blokbuster”, both written in Jamestown, RI, were recorded at this session and completed what was then to be the HOPE EP.  Konrad Strauss mastered the record.  The front cover featured a photograph by Nicole Vitello of  boats docked in Essaouira rendered in the vibrant colors of modern color-copying machines.  The back cover was dominated by a photo of Liam Hayes’ magical hands.  There was also a photo of Oldham with Dianne Bellino taken by Steve Gullick.

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Palace Music - West Palm Beach / Gulf Shores - Streaming Now

Palace Music - The Mountain Low - Streaming Now

Palace Music - The Mountain - Streaming Now

The “Palace Brothers” were invited to open the 2^nd stage of the Lollapalooza tour for a couple of weeks in the summer of 1994.  At the end of that run a recording session was booked at producer Kramer’s home studio in New Jersey.  The band was Will Oldham, Aram Stith (guitar), Jason Stith (bass) and Jack Carneal (drums) and Ned Oldham (guitar).  The Trux had done their “Back to School” 7” with Kramer, and it excited Will to think of going in and seeing how the notorious producer twiddled his knobs.  The two songs were “West Palm Beach” and “Gulf Shores”.  The band had not heard the songs prior to the session.  Will had written the songs in the weeks leading up to the summer road stretch.

Will Oldham moved to Birmingham, Alabama to live near brother Ned and family.  Birmingham was quiet and inexpensive and a few degrees warmer than Louisville in general.  Will wanted to make a record in Birmingham and looked around (the phone book) for a recording studio.  He came upon Bates Brothers Recording in nearby Hueytown and decided to do a test session with Ned and drummer Charlie Snell.  They recorded “O How I Enjoy the Light” and “Marriage”.  Eric Bates was the engineer.  The Bates’ studio was well-stocked with keyboards: piano, mellotron, Hammond b-3.  The sounds were tight and dry, reminding Oldham of tones obtained in 1970’s Serge Gainsbourg recordings.  The photographs on the cover of the single were taken by Bryan Rich.  Rich claimed that the back cover photograph was of the ruins of Mikhail Bulgakov’s house.  This record was the first under the Palace Records imprint; Oldham had begun to be able to afford to pay for recording sessions, lessening the pressure that comes with spending other people’s money. 

The test session at Bates Brothers had been a success.  Will Oldham felt comfortable inviting Steve Albini to Alabama to make a full-length record (what would become VIVA LAST BLUES).  The Bates’ ample supply of beautifully-maintained keyboards made inviting Liam Hayes to the session a no-brainer.  Oldham spoke with Britt Walford about playing drums but eventually Walford formally balked.  Instead, Will was encouraged by brother Paul Oldham to ask Jason Loewenstein to come drum.  Loewenstein (of Sparkalepsy and Sebadoh) was living in Louisville at the time.  Ned Oldham played the bass.  Bryan Rich played “lead guitar”; questions still get asked about where said guitar was leading.  Oldham has said that Stevie Wonder’s MUSIC OF MY MIND and Cat Stevens’ CATCH BULL AT FOUR were sonic influences, though such influence is hardly notable in the final product.  Albini did some significant maintenance work on the 2” tape machines at the Bates studio in order to get things properly up and running.  The record was titled VIVA LAST BLUES, in patial tribute to the movies of Russ Meyer.  The “last” aspect had to do with Oldham feeling like he was coming to the end of a certain trajectory of discovery.  The cover featured a drawing of a cheetah by Dianne Bellino.  The LP came with a poster featuring a painting by Cynthia Kirkwood; the CD featured a different Kirkwood painting in the booklet’s center spread.  A video was made by Aaron Woolf for the song “Old Jerusalem”; actress Chloe Sevigny starred in the video.

Around this time, folks (Pavement, King Kong) were going to Easley Studios in Memphis to make their records.  Oldham didn’t like the inherent sounds of these records but figured he would take a first-hand look at Easley by recording two songs there.  These two songs were “(End of) Traveling” and “Lost Blues”.  Oldham asked brother Paul along with Jason Hayden (presently of One Beat Off) and Pete Townsend (not of the Who) to come to Memphis for the session.  These were ¾ (at the time) of the great Louisville band Speed-to-Roam.  Memphis’ Tiffany White sang “Lost Blues” with Will as a full duet partner, the first of many.  Studio owner/engineer Doug Easley played the pedal steel guitar.  It was decided that “The Mountain” from VIVA LAST BLUES would be released as a single with “(End of) Traveling” as a b-side.  Two mixes were run of “(End of) Traveling”.  The mix with a “dry” pedal steel was included on the 7” record.  The cover of the “Mountain Low” single was a photo that Oldham had taken in Glen Lyon, Scotland, in the shadow of Ben Lawers.  “Lost Blues” was later released on the Palace Music compilation LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.

As with the 7” comp AN ARROW THROUGH THE BITCH the previous year (and the Royal Trux DOGS OF LOVE EP), it was decided to compile the “Mountain” 7” and the “West Palm Beach” 7” onto one four-song EP for release overseas on Domino.  The mix of “(End of) Traveling” used on this EP had a “wet” pedal steel.  The cover art was made by Nolen Otts.  Otts intended the art to resemble classic Cuban cigar box art. 

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Palace Music - Viva Last Blues - Streaming Now

Palace Music - O How I Enjoy The Light - Streaming Now

Oldham’s Palace Records came into being in 1995.  The twin intentions at the time for Palace Records were to formalize the new model of self-funding recording sessions and artwork commissions and to release great musics that Oldham was hearing that he figured might be a hard sell to the folks at Drag City.  Three 7”s were released in 1995 on Palace Records that were non-Palace/Will Oldham endeavors.  The first was by E/Or, a Louisville group made up of Steve Good (clarinet), Norman Minogue (drums), George Wethington (short wave radio), and Martin Williams (guitar).  The two songs are epic abstracts, “Mike” and “Martin Found a Jealous Cop...”, each stretching the limits of the physical format to its outer boundaries.

The other two Palace Records non-Will-Oldham singles released in 1995 were both by the Broadcast Choir.  From the ashes of the Pale Horse Riders came this experimental trio made up of Paul Oldham, Peter Townsend and Chris Layton.  The records were “The Chapel Song”/“Down the Liver” and “Lights Out”/“Deflective War”.  Both singles are harrowing, awesome complements to any playlist.

“So long as he lives, Stephen Malkmus may never run out of hooks” Pitchfork

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’ new album Sparkle Hard will be released on May 18^th via Domino Records.

In February, the band shared its twangy single ‘Middle America,’ the first new music to surface from the group since 2014. As a follow up, the band today shares another taste of the new album with the song, ‘Shiggy,’ an insanely gleeful, old-school four-chord stomper.

Stream ‘Shiggy’ here.

Modesty and plain good manners might prevent them from saying so themselves, but the fact that Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have thrived, rather than simply endured over 17 years and delivered six albums of buzzy, sub-cultural significance, constitutes an impressive legacy. The challenge with album number seven is one that any successful band with integrity faces: how to safeguard that legacy and hold on to their identity without rehashing old ground (unthinkable), and also say something meaningful while (crucially) having fun doing it?

Meeting that issue head on in the run up to The Jicks’ seventh record involved some “navel gazing”, according to singer, songwriter, and guitarist Malkmus and not only in terms of what it means to be releasing music in 2018. If, like him, you’re a voracious consumer of all kinds of culture and feel the need to interact with it, rather than just react, then inevitably “there’s a world that prompts you to put your best foot forward”. With Sparkle Hard Malkmus, Mike Clark (keyboards), Joanna Bolme (bass) and Jake Morris (drums) do exactly that. And they hit the ground running – on air treads.

It’s light ’n’ breezy, head-down heavy, audacious, melancholic and reflective, goodtime and bodacious, and it pulls off the smartest trick: it’s both unmistakeably The Jicks and – due to the streamlining of their trademark tics and turns, plus the introduction of some unexpected flourishes (Auto-Tune, a fiddle, guest vocalist Kim Gordon, one seven-minute song with an acoustic folk intro) – The Jicks refashioned. If 2014’s Wig Out At Jag Bags balanced the lengthy prog workouts of Pig Lib with Mirror Traffic’s sparky pop moments, then Sparkle Hard bears less obvious direct relation to what’s come before. It also has turbocharged energy and enthusiasm by the truckload.

Malkmus started writing Sparkle Hard in 2015. He’d upgraded his home-recording equipment and bought some electronic drums and had been working on the Netflix series Flaked (he penned the incidental music and the end theme song). Demos were done in one day in April of 2017 and then in May, The Jicks started recording at a new studio in Portland called Halfling, which is managed by multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk of The Decemberists, who produced the album.

Self-indulgent escapism has never been The Jicks’ bag, but on Sparkle Hard, the reality of modern life sits closer to the surface, communication cutting to the chase whether it’s a proto-punk grind or a back-porch country duet doing the talking. A cleaner burn for dark and complex times.

Tracklisting:

1. Cast Off
2. Future Suite
3. Solid Silk
4. Bike Lane
5. Middle America
6. Rattler
7. Shiggy
8. Kite
9. Brethren
10. Refute
11. Difficulties / Let Them Eat Vowels

Sparkle Hard is available to pre-order on LP (heavyweight vinyl with insert), indie-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl with insert), Dom Mart-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl, insert and 12x12” sticker sheet with 12 individual die cut designs for each of the songs on the album by the creative genius Turbo Island), CD and digital.

Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital

UK & European Tour Dates:

Wed 17^th October – Albert Hall, Manchester Tickets

Thurs 18^th October – SWG3, Glasgow Tickets

Fri 19^th October – Vicar Street, Dublin Tickets

Sun 21^st October – SWX, Bristol Tickets

Mon 22^nd October – The Asylum, Birmingham Tickets

Wed 24^th October – Hackney Arts Centre, London Tickets

Thurs 25^th October – Concorde 2, Brighton Tickets

Mon 29^th October – Lido, Berlin Tickets

Tues 30^th October – Stadtgarten, Cologne Tickets

Wed 31^st October – Melkweg, Amsterdam Tickets

On sale Wed 28^th March at 9am

Domino Recording Co. is seeking an organized and motivated individual for a Digital Accounts Coordinator position based in the Brooklyn, NY office.

• Generate analytics and reporting including global and territory-specific sales and streaming reports, analysis of new releases and catalog trends. 
• Assist with weekly account pitch process globally, centralizing outward communication from Domino to all digital accounts and international partners.
• Tracking, analyzing and communicating campaign visibility across digital storefronts and playlists.
• Participate in the strategy development with Global Head of Digital Sales and UK Senior Manager of Digital Accounts to optimize all campaigns across the digital partners. 
• Assist with day-to-day updates of artist and playlist properties across all DSPs.  
• Deliver weekly label updates to all digital account contacts.

• Bachelor’s Degree required.
• Preferred 1-2 years music industry experience.
• A working knowledge and passion for digital technology, including music and video streaming platforms, content management platforms and emerging technology trends.
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Office, particularly in Microsoft Excel.
• An analytical and data-driven mindset.
• Excellent written and verbal communication / interpersonal skills.
• Superior organizational skills, attention to detail, and ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks. 
• Experience with industry reporting tools preferred, including Nielsen Soundscan, BuzzAngle, iTunes Connect, Spotify Analytics, Spotify For Artists, YouTube Analytics, Chartmetric, and Next Big Sound.
• Most importantly, a passion for music and understanding of the Domino catalogue.