British / North American post-punk outfit Tantrum Zentrum present their new single‘Don’t Be A Fascist‘, which is both well-timed and thematic given the crazy state of affairs in the world at the moment. The most unlikely love story ever – this song is about falling head over heals… with a fascist!
Based in London, Tantrum Zentrum’s members draw from the UK, Canada and the USA, music having brought them together like a magnet while living in London. Inspired by early 70s krautrock and late 70s New York no-wave bands, they deliver sonic dissonance and poppy hooks with great energy and style… imagine Killing Joke on happy pills.
This is the second of three songs recently recorded with renowned producer Steve Evans (Robert Plant, Siousxie Sioux, Goldfrapp). The earlier-released single ‘Der Leiermann’ is performed in German. And while the new single is performed in English, it contains a few Bosnian and corrupted German words for emphasis.
Made up of Vaat Dafuq (vocals, guitar), Sabine de Rousseau (guitar, vocals), Valhalla Schimmer (bass guitar) and Kur Putchnik (drums). Tantrum Zentrum makes hi-energy post punk interlaced with funk, goth and krautrock influences.
“‘Don’t Be A Fascist’ is a wartime love story. Inspired by the 80s Yugoslavian pop hit ‘Fa Fa Fašista’ (performed by Sarajevo’s Plavi Orkestar), the song tells a story as old as time itself: boy meets girl, and they fall in love. Then their country gets occupied by the German forces of the Third Reich, and the girl falls for the tall, handsome enemy soldier in a magnificent uniform. Needless to say, the boy is furious!” says Vaat Dafuq.
“We chose a bombastic title that may resonate with many even now. The release is accompanied by a humorous ‘explainer’-style video that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.”
With analogue synths, distortion and hypnotic drums played with Devo-esque precision, the band’s music shares elements of Krautrock pioneers Neu! and Faust, along with goth and no-wave experimentalists such as Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca and Theoretical Girls.
Tantrum Zentrum creates memorable live performances loaded with good energy, humour, excellent musicianship and in several languages. Always happy to play for their audience, they aim to get people moving, while fostering genuine connections and a sense of community. The band will be playing a number of club shows in the UK in support of this release.
I didn’t hesitate to buy my tickets when I found out that Love and Rockets were touring for the first time in about fifteen years. I’d wanted to see them since I was in high school. I almost got to see them as Bauhaus with Peter Murphy, but the pandemic cancelled that. The closest I’d come was seeing bassist and co-vocalist David J do a solo acoustic show at Levitation Austin.
Opening for Love and Rockets was Vinsantos, a friend of David J who played an interesting mix of torch songs and gothic synth-rock. I described him to a friend as “a drag queen scarecrow who sang piano ballads about death.” So, yes, really interesting.
Vinsantos (right) and a friend who played guitar and sang backing vocals for him.
Love and Rockets came out, looking like the rock stars they are, and proceeded to level the place. They were smart to start with the mellow “I Feel Speed” before launching into the heavy, sexy “No Big Deal.” They then stomped the gas for “The Kundalini Express” and had the place jumping.
All aboard!
They sounded great. Daniel Ash still shreds on guitar and Kevin Haskins did a great job of handling both percussion and synths (often played on drum pads on his kit while putting down beats).
The raw power of Ash’s guitar work was evident on “Judgement Day,” and things got psychedelic on “An American Dream” before they rolled into “No New Tale to Tell” and the audience went nuts.
Then, they played “So Alive” and the place really went crazy.
Hearing “The Light” live nearly caused me and others to transcend. It felt like being inside power lines stretched across the Mohave Desert. “Mirror People” crushed it, and my friend, Leimomi, and I headed into the pit for the first encore, which included their great cover of “Ball of Confusion,” which was as stunning as I’d hoped it would be.
Rap on, rap on, brother.
The second encore was “Sweet F.A.,” sending us out the way we came in – with a mellow track to float us to the ceiling.
It was a stunning show and worth the wait. Thanks for giving us this gift, Love and Rockets. We all missed you.
Stuck in the middle of a global pandemic shutdown with plenty of material and energy, and nowhere to go to promote it or expend it, All Them Witches decided to record and livestream a full concert during that weird time and bring fans together in their living rooms. The result was Live on the Internet, the title of which is a play on their song “Internet” (Opening lyric: “Guess I’ll go live on the internet.”) from their excellent album, Sleeping Through the War.
Having no time restraints set by a venue or local ordinances, ATW start their live set with “Blood and Sand / Milk and Endless Waters,” which is nearly ten minutes long…and all of it is amazing. “Dirt Preachers” is fuzzy and raw, like a bison shaking frost of its body before it prepares to charge across a meadow. Ben McLeod‘s guitar work on “Saturnine & Iron Jaw” ranges from metal shredding to Helmet-like chugging to psychedelic mind trips. “41” rumbles with the pent-up energy we all had during lockdown.
This energy is unloaded with all the subtlety of a cannon on their classic track “When God Comes Back,” and their equally classic “Alabaster” (all seven-plus minutes of it) rolls in afterward like charging cavalry. It has to be the most aggressive version of it I’ve heard. “Diamond” has a brooding menace to it that seeps under your skin. Robby Staebler‘s drums on “1×1” sound like the crushing feet of a mastodon.
“I am focused!” yells lead singer / bassist Michael Parks, Jr. on “3-5-7,” making you think he’s either lying to himself…or he is so damn focused that he’s terrifying. “The Marriage of Coyote Woman” highlights their love of Black Sabbath. “Charles William” grows like a wildfire until it threatens to consume everything in its path.
“Rats in Ruin,” often a closer of their shows, drips with mind-warping vocal effects and subtle bass that purrs like a large cat. Parks takes over on guitar for “Open Passage,” and for a moment it feels like the lights are dimming are we’re about to fall into REM sleep…
Then comes “Enemy of My Enemy” with Parks yelling, “Behold my power!” as McLeod plays like he’s trying to summon something at Stonehenge and Staebler unloads drum fill after drum fill. The brief instrumental “Everest” drifts into the always lovely (and heavy) “Bulls” to close out the session with powerful riffs, beats, and vocals that hit you like sporadic thunderstorms that break out on a hot summer day.
All Them Witches are one of the best live bands around, and their catalogue doesn’t have a weak spot. Live on the Internet continues that trend.
Today, Austin, Texas band Holy Wave continue to push their historically psychedelic sound in an airy, ‘90s-indebted direction on the single “Bog Song”. The dream-poppy track is accompanied by a retro futuristic visual, put together by band member Ryan Fuson and animator Joshua Kirk Ryan. It follows psych-tinged single “Happier” which features Mint Field’s Estrella del Sol. Both songs taken from their upcoming new album Five of Cups, out August 4, 2023 on Suicide Squeeze Records. The band also have select upcoming US tour dates this summer.
On the track, Fuson offers: “Bog Song is a recounting of a trip I took with my dad in Idaho while he was guiding some elk hunters. I was both in awe of the landscape and wildlife while also feeling conflicted about our reasons for being in the mountains. I would sit in the dark, before the sun would come up, and look into the mountains and hills for elk. Sometimes seeing headlights cruising along some mountain road and I would wonder what their drivers intentions were and if the animals in those mountains ever watched headlights like those and wondered the same.”
In Tarot readings, the Five of Cups card signifies loss and grief. Depicting a cloaked figure with a bowed head looming over three spilled chalices while ignoring two remaining vessels, the Five of Cups is generally interpreted as representing a forlorn dwelling on the past and an inability to appreciate the positive things in the present. It was this card that struck a chord with vocalist/guitarist Ryan Fuson, member of the Austin TX subversive subterranean pop outfit Holy Wave, during a Tarot reading at the height of the pandemic. “I was really sure that the music world was finished and it seemed like internet aggression and, well, aggression in general was at an all-time high, so I was ready to stop playing music,” Fuson says. “It could be so easy to become jaded and pessimistic and I had to really decide what perspective I was going to take.”Rather than abandon music, Fuson and his compatriots chose to immerse themselves in their work. Fittingly, the Tarot card became the muse for Holy Wave’s sixth full-length album—Five of Cups.
Back at the beginning of their fifteen-year career, Holy Wave leaned into a tranquil realm of psychedelia, eschewing long-form jams and guitar heroics for a dreamy pop-oriented approach. As the band evolved, the early Sgt. Peppers-meets-the-Velvets sound yielded to more sophisticated melodies and tripped-out instrumentation, effectively steering their music away from sun-bleached nostalgia to a color-saturated dimension where sounds of the past, present, and future intermingled.
The childhood friends of Fuson, Joey Cook,Kyle Hager, and Julian Ruiz grew up in El Paso, where they cut their teeth in the local DIY scene. Hungry for more music and broader perspectives, the members made frequent road trips across the Southwest to catch touring bands who opted to skip West Texas markets. That wanderlust eventually prompted their relocation to Austin, but it also permeated in their adventurous songwriting and love for touring. No small surprise then that these aural explorers felt that a whole way of life was taken from them with the onset of the pandemic. But on Five of Cups, it sounds as if the physical limitations of quarantine life prompted Holy Wave to wander even deeper into new sonic territories.
Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.
Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.
As with the Tarot card from which it got its name, Five of Cups is an acknowledgement of hardship and a reminder to embrace the joys available to us. And like early ‘70s Pink Floyd, Holy Wave have figured out how to conjure a sense of profound exhilaration out of pathos, filtering dark elements through a lens and bending them into a kaleidoscope of light.
Suicide Squeeze is proud to present Holy Wave’s Five of Cups on CD/LP/DSP on August 4, 2023.
Live Dates Aug 8 – Andy’s – Denton, TX Aug 9 – Opolis – Norman, OK Aug 11 – Back Alley Ballyhoo – Indianapolis, IN Aug 12 – JJs Bohemia – Chattanooga, TN Aug 13 – Upstairs at Avondale – Birmingham, AL Aug 15 – Alabama Music Box – Mobile, AL Aug 16 – Continental Club – Houston, TX Aug 17 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
“The ice melts and reveals the New Spring. The neon forest comes alive, a lush environment with a mind of its own. This bubbly psych-bop has hypnotic layers of acoustic and electric guitars that guide you deeper into the dense atmosphere. Instruments like bugs, scatter and shimmer panning through your sonic spectrum. Harp sparkles with whimsy while crystal singing bowls+tongue drum is the moss. Explorative and playful drums+auxiliary percussion have you skipping deeper into the mind-mending journey, while saxophone wails in the distance. Only a few words are understood, like overgrown ideologies that you run into the ground. The Few who walk here are explorers of the known and unknown.” – Kali Horse
Kali Horse (formerly Kaleidoscope Horse) is a psychedelic art-rock band from Toronto, ON. Their sound is theatrical and dreamy – bouncing between highly melodic and rhythmic, groovy sections. Driven both by strong song-writing and abstract sound-play, the band creates dimensions that are often jarring in comparison to one another, playing on tension and release. The contrast between Desiree Das Gupta’s (*Das Gupta all one last name) powerful alto, and Sam Maloney’s feathery vocal timbre creates a balance of light and heavy, backed by full band harmonies.
Kali Horse’s world is an immersive world that they invite the audience into. Kali Horse are storytellers, their music is about telling a story with sound rather than a specific genre. The band are queer, multi-instrumentalist performers whose friendship is the bond of the band.
Sam and Des have been best friends for a decade and have been making music together for 7 years under different names, they are a huge part of the Toronto music community. In the live band, Sam and Des are joined by Cassandra Ellen (Synth/ Vocals/Percussion), Cameron Kirk (bass) and Brandon Bak (drums).
Guest players on New Spring include Luna Li (Hannah Bussiere-Kim) on harp.
TOUR DATES 2023 June 30 – Maud’s Variety, Sarnia ON July 01 – Cole’s Bar, Chicago IL July 03 – Raccoon Motel, Davenport IW July 14 – Entrepot 77, Montreal QC July 21 – Pinball House, Guelph ON
Chicago’s beloved Ratboys announce their fourth studio album, The Window, out August 25th via Topshelf Records with lead single/video “It’s Alive!” and a North American tour. After more than ten years and four studio albums, The Window finally captures Ratboys as they were always meant to be heard—expansive while still intimate, audacious while still tender—the sound of four friends operating as a single, cohesive unit. The album is sonically diverse, shifting wildly from track to track and flexing everything from fuzzy power pop choruses to warm country twang to mournful folk.
Lyrically, The Window sees Julia Steiner at her most personal, reflecting on love and grief with occasional humor and levity. She frequently leans on windows as a theme—the idea of an interrupted connection, the feeling of being near someone without being fully present—like on the pounding lead single, “It’s Alive!” Opening with Steiner’s honeyed vocals, “Outside my window the birds dance alone // I sit back and take it in // Like some sort of medicine,” it’s a bright and vivacious track that, in Steiner’s words, captures “the overarching feeling of the world spinning on beneath you while you’re stuck in one place.” In the video, directed by John TerEick, Ratboys play in an empty house, as its owners slowly start to move in.
The Window marks a number of firsts for the band. Throughout the last few years, Sean Neumann (bass) and Marcus Nuccio (drums) became full-time members alongside Julia Steiner (vocals, guitar) and Dave Sagan (guitars), making The Window the first album Ratboys have written collaboratively from start to finish. It was also the first time they’d ever traveled outside their home base of Chicago to record an album, journeying to Seattle to work with producer Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) for three weeks. The group worked on the arrangements together over the course of a year and half, so by the time the band showed up to the Hall of Justice Recording Studio in February 2022, The Window’s songs were well rehearsed and airtight. “We spent 2020 demoing the songs, and spent 2021 practicing them,” says Steiner. “We practiced twice a week for six months, exploring the songs and developing them. We’d send early versions to Chris and he’d give us notes. It went like that for weeks. It was such a dedicated and intentional process.”
But while The Window was nearly fully formed going into the studio, the band also left some space for experimentation with Walla. The sessions struck the perfect balance between preparation and experimentation. Walla’s studio sensibilities pushed Ratboys to stretch and expand their vision, adding unexpected elements and instruments like rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles. Hunting for sonic inspiration, Walla and the band sometimes spent hours just listening to their favorite albums, spinning everything from Sloan to Brainiac to The Roches. “The language Chris uses when speaking about music comes from a very emotionally centered place, and that’s something that resonated with us. He would say things like, ‘This cymbal hurts my feelings,’ or ‘This song is like a cat,’” says Nuccio. “It was such a disarming thing,” adds Neumann. “We didn’t get bogged down in technical terms, and he never placed pressure on us in that way. With Chris steering the ship, we were free to go off on little creative expeditions and come up with parts and ideas we’d never imagined.”
As Paste lauds, “Ratboys has had all of our hearts for 10 years…[and] a live chemistry that remains unparalleled and irreplaceable.” This fall, they’ll bring their incredible live show across North America. A list of dates can be found below and tickets will be on sale this Friday, June 9th at 10am localat the band’s website.
Ratboys Tour Dates Fri. Aug. 25 – Chicago, IL @ Schubas Tavern Thu. Sep. 21 – Champaign-Urbana, IL @ Pygmalion Festival Fri. Sep. 22 – Columbus, OH @ Rumba Cafe Sat. Sep. 23 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd Tue. Sep. 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s Wed. Sep. 27 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom Thu. Sep. 28 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall Fri. Sep. 29 – Montreal, QC @ POP Montreal Sat. Sep. 30 – Toronto, ON @ Monarch Tavern Mon. Oct. 2 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Bottlerocket Social Hall Tue. Oct. 3 – Cleveland, OH @ No Class Wed. Oct. 4 – Ferndale, MI @ Magic Bag Fri. Oct. 6 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club Sat. Oct. 7 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Back Room at Colectivo Coffee Thu. Oct. 19 – Omaha, NE @ Reverb Sat. Oct. 21 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall Sun. Oct. 22 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court Tue. Oct. 24 – Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s Wed. Oct. 25 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios Fri. Oct. 27 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe du Nord Sat. Oct. 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Highland Park Sun. Oct. 29 – San Diego, CA @ The Loft at UC San Diego Mon. Oct. 30 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room Tue. Oct. 31 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar Thu. Nov. 2 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger Fri. Nov. 3 – Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room & Garage Sat. Nov. 4 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
The Clientele — the cherished UK outfit composed of vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Alasdair MacLean, bassist James Hornsey, and drummer Mark Keen — presents “Dying in May,” the new single from their forthcoming album, I Am Not There Anymore, out July 28th on Merge. On “Dying in May,” Keen’s live drums weave around programmed drum and bass samples, creating something polyrhythmic and avant-garde. Following the serene lead single “Blue Over Blue,” “Dying in May” elucidates the range of genres The Clientele explore on I Am Not There Anymore, a 19-track journey that extends from light bossa nova beats to the band’s classic chamber pop.
Of the track, MacLean says: “I think ‘Dying in May’ is the first Clientele song with no guitar. It also has no chords, as such — it’s a drone, with french horn, cello and Mellotron. So the rhythm does a lot of the work — the drums and percussion are in 9/8, but the singing and instruments are in 4/4, so as each bar goes past, there’s a slightly different rhythmic emphasis. This was a complete accident, but I loved it when I heard it — the patterns are a bit disorientating, but there’s a pulse that goes through it. I almost feel I could dance to this, but not quite. It’s based on an Arabic flamenco rhythm.
“The words are all fragmented too — simple images repeating, like someone in a high fever. I took some inspiration from cante jondo, Spanish flamenco — there tend to be two or three very focused, repetitive images in the words. There was no way in hell I could play guitar along with these rhythms, so I scored out a simple melody which would leave space for the drums, and be something the bass could latch on to. By the end, the words go over and over, like someone beside themselves with grief. Hence the title. It’s a harrowing subject, but I think it’s presented with love — the song hopefully opens it out and lets some air in. It feels like an exorcism for me.”
Listen to The Clientele’s “Dying in May” I Am Not There Anymore regularly evokes what MacLean calls “the feeling of not being real.” A lot of the lyrics were inspired by MacLean’s memories of the early summer in 1997, when his mother died. Though the album functions as MacLean’s way of mourning, he notes that he’s not the kind of songwriter who ever sits down with a theme in mind. It’s more that “the music will bring images and then those images link of their own accord.” It’s a general mood he’s chasing with these loosely connected recollections.
The previous Clientele album, 2017’s Music for the Age of Miracles, arrived after a seven-year hiatus and featured the band’s familiar wistful melodies and haunting echo. Recording for I Am Not There Anymorebegan in 2019 and continued piecemeal until 2022 — in part because of the pandemic, but also because the band wanted to experiment. “We’d always been interested in music other than guitar music, like for donkey’s years,” MacLean says. This time out, the trio incorporated elements of post-bop jazz, contemporary classical and electronic music. According to MacLean, “None of those things had been able to find their way into our sound other than in the most passing way, in the faintest imprint.”
Over The Clientele’s 32-year career, critics and fans have often described their songs with words like “ethereal,” “shimmering,” “hazy,” “pretty” and “fragile.” MacLean, though, has his own interpretation of the effect his music creates. “It’s that feeling of not being there,” he says. “What’s really been in all the Clientele records is a sense of not actually inhabiting the moment that your body is in.” I Am Not There Anymore, as MacLean says, is all about “the memory of childhood but at the same time the impossibility of truly remembering childhood… or even knowing who or what you are.”
This August, The Clientele will embark on a U.S. tour, featuring stops at Bowery Ballroom in New York City, Lodge Room in Los Angeles, Lincoln Hall in Chicago, and more. All dates are listed below and tickets are on sale now.
The Clientele Tour Dates: Fri. July 28 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East Wed. Aug. 9 – Somerville, MA @ Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre Thu. Aug. 10 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom Fri. Aug. 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts Sat. Aug. 12 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd Sun. Aug. 13 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall Tue. Aug. 15 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall Thu. Aug. 17 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Fri. Aug. 18 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet’s Sat. Aug. 19 – Big Sur, CA @ Fernwood Tavern (inside) Sun. Aug. 20 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel Tue. Aug. 22 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios Wed. Aug. 23 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
