Chicago-based band Bnny, led by Jess Viscius alongside her twin sister Alexa Viscius, plus best friends Tim Makowski and Matt Pelkey, is Fire Talk’s newest signing. In conjunction with their signing announcement, they present their new single, “Time Walk.” The song is featured in the finale of the new season of Shrill, which drops in its entirety tomorrow.
Jess Viscius started Bnny in the moment, after someone’s guitar had been left at her apartment. After teaching herself a few chords, she quickly found songwriting to be therapeutic in ways visual art couldn’t touch. Eventually, her sister Alexa and former Bnny drummer Drew Ryan persuaded Jess to start a band, and it ultimately stuck, along with a newfound community and friendships.
Their new song, “Time Walk,” is a taste of Bnny’s crackling energy, clocking in at just over a minute and a half. It layers in quick succession with plucky bass, uncomplicated drums, and jumpy guitar lines. Throughout, Viscius’ half-whispered vocals are cool to the touch. It was produced by fellow Chicago musician and Fire Talk artist, Dehd’s Jason Balla. The video, which features Jess, was partly shot on the Lake Michigan coastline. It offers a glimpse of Bnny’s strong visual aesthetics.
“‘Time Walk’ is about the clarity you find when in motion—walking, driving, running,” says Jess. “It’s about a friendship ending, but still feeling connected to the person. It’s about looking back while moving forward in slow motion. Time walk is a wake-up call.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard proudly announce their second album of 2021, Butterfly 3000, which will be released on June 11th via the band’s own KGLW label. The band have decided to play this one close to the vest, and will drop the album in its entirety on June 11th without any advance singles, or sharing the album artwork, which will be a cross-eyed autostereogram created by long-time collaborator Jason Galea. The countdown to Butterfly 3000 begins today.
Their 18th studio album, Butterfly 3000 might be their most fearless leap into the unknown yet; a suite of ten songs that all began life as arpeggiated loops composed on modular synthesisers, before being fashioned into addictive, optimistic and utterly seductive dream-pop by the six-piece. The album sounds simultaneously like nothing they’ve ever done before, and thoroughly, unmistakeably Gizz, down to its climactic neon psych-a-tronic flourish. This is undoubtedly the most accessible and jubilant album of their career.
Museum Of Love – the New York-based duo of Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany – shares the new single/video, “Marching Orders,” from their forthcoming album, Life Of Mammals, out July 9th on Skint Records. It follows lead single/video “Cluttered World” and their “Cluttered World / Marching Orders (Remixed)” EP featuring remixes by Parrot and Cocker Too and Justin Van Der Volgen. “Marching Orders” starts with an irresistible cowbell driven rhythm track. It builds with a propulsive bass riff, a casually whistled melody, and a whole studio load of chaos. Combined together, it’s a hypnotic musical invitation to join Museum of Love’s carnival procession that’s part Blackstar, part NYC block party and part after hours smash up at Mardi Gras.
The video, featuring footage deconstructed and edited by Shaun MacDonald, “is a hallucinogenic dreamscape describing the collective feelings everyone went through over the last year of the pandemic,” says Museum Of Love. “All of us feeling crammed in our tiny apartments like an elephant in a tiny tea house. Time and reality, not computing for many of us.”
Life Of Mammals is a dizzying swirl of chaotic art rock and metronomic dance music. The creative process for Life Of Mammals was approached like an art project while the lyrics throughout are delightfully elliptical, with a thousand valid interpretations. The album was recorded in bursts between Mahoney’s LCD Soundsystem touring commitments. It has been mixed in its entirety by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem/DFA) and features guest appearances from legendary saxophonist and Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Gordon (The Love of Life Orchestra) and Matt Shaw.
If you’ve ever imagined what a band influenced by Scott Walker, John Cale, Jonathan Richman, dub, Robert Wyatt, post-punk and Krautrock might sound like, then you might finally have your answer – Museum Of Love. Weird, perhaps, but also enormous knockabout fun, at times approaching their song craft with the bombast of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the outlook of the Marx brothers and matched with the production knowledge of a Basic Channel record. A bewitching combination that rewards repeat listens, it’s doubtful anyone will release a more compelling and beguiling album this year.
The Reverb Appreciation Society has announced the return of the Levitation Austin music festival this year, and it’s on Halloween weekend just to make it weirder.
The festival will take place at various downtown Austin venues (Stubb’s, Mowhawk, Empire Garage, Hotel Vegas, and more) and coming in early for the Thursday night shows is well worth your time and money. Lineup announcements and ticket sales will start this summer, so keep your eyes peeled, book your travel, and plan your Halloween costume.
Clutch has just announced a string of Winter 2021 headline tour dates celebrating 30 years of rock and roll starting on December 27th in Baltimore, MD. Supporting the tour will be STONER, the brand new band featuring Brant Bjork (Kyuss) and Nick Oliveri (Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss).
The run will also include Detroit natives and “thrash grass” pioneers, The Native Howl.
“We are incredibly excited to hit the road again” states Clutch. “We’ve missed the shows, the fans, the venues and the opportunity to watch the other bands we share the stage with. It’s going to feel like our first show all over again and we can’t wait! Come out and let’s make some Rock and Roll!.”
Tickets will go on sale to the general public Friday, May 21st at 10:00 am at www.ClutchOnTour.com.
CLUTCH Celebrating 30 Years of Rock N Roll Winter Tour Dates: Dec. 27 – Baltimore, MD – Rams Head Dec. 28 – Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom Dec. 29 – Cleveland, OH – Agoura Theatre Dec. 30 – Detroit, MI – Filmore Theatre Dec. 31 – Cincinnati, OH – The Icon
The Pitchfork Music Festival will return to Chicago’s Union ParkFriday, September 10 through Sunday, September 12. Today, the Festival announces the full 2021 lineup, including headliners Erykah Badu,St. Vincent, and Phoebe Bridgers.
The Festival opens on Friday with Phoebe Bridgers, Big Thief, Animal Collective, Yaeji, The Fiery Furnaces (their first show in over a decade), black midi, Hop Along, Kelly Lee Owens, Ela Minus, DEHD,The Soft Pink Truth, DJ Nate, Dogleg, and Armand Hammer.
Saturday features St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon, Ty Segall & Freedom Band, Waxahatchee, Jay Electronica, Jamila Woods, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Faye Webster, Amaarae, Maxo Kream, Divino Niño, Bartees Strange, and Horsegirl.
On Sunday, the Festival hosts Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Danny Brown, Cat Power, Andy Shauf, Caroline Polachek, Yves Tumor, The Weather Station, Mariah the Scientist, oso oso, KeiyaA, Special Interest, and Cassandra Jenkins.
For 15 years, the Pitchfork Music Festival has delivered an eclectic musical lineup, singular in its ability to place contemporary, cutting-edge acts alongside some of the most revered artists of our time. It’s this unique blend of discovery and tradition that makes the Pitchfork Music Festival stand out as one of the most celebrated weekends of the year.
“We are unbelievably excited to celebrate the return of live shows, our music community, and, most importantly, the artists and events crews who have made this year’s festival possible,” says editor in chief of Pitchfork, Puja Patel. “I know this will be a cathartic weekend for all of us, and that it lands right before the 25th anniversary of the publication makes it all the more special.”
Pitchfork Music Festival tickets are on sale now. Three-day passes are $195 and single-day passes are $90. The Pitchfork PLUS upgrade, including a range of exclusive amenities, is $385 for a three-day pass and $185 for a single-day pass. If the festival is postponed or rescheduled due to COVID-19, ticket buyers can keep their passes for the new dates or request a refund. More details are available here.
To ensure the health and safety of guests, artists, and staff, the Pitchfork Music Festival will adhere to the city of Chicago’s COVID-19 protocol, and will keep attendees updated as federal, state, and local regulations evolve. For the latest safety guidelines, visit Pitchfork Music Festival’s FAQ page, and follow @PitchforkFest on Instagram and Twitter.
COVID-19 regulations currently include:
● Attendees aged 12 and older will be required to provide proof of a COVID vaccination or a negative PCR test within the past 24 hours, each day of the festival. Visit the city of Chicago’s website for a list of local COVID-19 test providers (here), and vaccination providers (here). ● In accordance with current IDPH and CDPH guidelines, masks will be required throughout festival grounds. Masks may be removed when eating and drinking. Pitchfork is working closely with local health officials and will continue to update this policy as local guidelines become available.
FRIDAY Phoebe Bridgers Big Thief Animal Collective The Fiery Furnaces Yaeji black midi Hop Along Kelly Lee Owens Ela Minus DEHD The Soft Pink Truth DJ Nate Dogleg Armand Hammer
SATURDAY St. Vincent Angel Olsen Kim Gordon Ty Segall & Freedom Band Waxahatchee Jay Electronica Jamila Woods Georgia Anne Muldrow Faye Webster Amaarae Maxo Kream Divino Niño Bartees Strange Horsegirl
SUNDAY Erykah Badu Flying Lotus Thundercat Danny Brown Cat Power Andy Shauf Caroline Polachek Yves Tumor The Weather Station Mariah the Scientist oso oso KeiyaA Special Interest Cassandra Jenkins
Scottish producer Sam Gellaitry announces his new EP, IV, out May 14th (digital) and June 11th(vinyl) via the new home to Sam’s own Viewfinder Recordings, FFRR Records/Parlophone, and shares the lead single/video, “Duo.” Between 2015 and 2017, Sam put out three EPs as a series – Escapism, Escapism II, and Escapism III. He’s always used instruments to convey voices – high pitched flute sounds to evoke falsetto sounds and female vocals, for example, or top lines made from melodics. But after taking a break for a few years since the release of his Escapism series, he decided the time was right to start singing on his own music. You can hear this for the first time on IV. Produced, written, vocalized, mixed and mastered by Sam, its name is a subtle nod to the Escapism trilogy and the work he’s released so far. More literally, it’s also called IV because it’s a collection of four songs and four emotions.
Born far away from key electronic music hubs like LA, Glasgow and London, Sam, now 24, grew up in Stirling – an old town in central Scotland that’s rich in medieval history and visually stunning views. Living here led Sam’s older brother to happy hardcore – a kind of hard dance music born from the UK and Europe’s breakbeat and rave scenes – which in turn lead to Sam learning to produce. YouTube granted unfettered access to the world’s electronic scenes, with the array of sounds pushing Sam to pick up production in his early teens. He dove into Daft Punk’s robotic space realm where looped up disco samples reigned supreme and LA producers Samiyam and Flying Lotus were early inspirations. But no matter the genre, one thing remained constant: the idea that music can take your imagination on a voyage through color, place and sound, via combinations of notes.
Sam views the world through palettes of vivid color. A C minor scale becomes purple, plum and grape. C-sharp minor is cool and blue. Night time is best evoked in dark F minor reds and D minor induces rich forest green. His music is a journey through experience, circumstance and surroundings, told through his impressive, synesthesia-informed knowledge of different musical tones. For him, songwriting and producing has always connected to a process of pairing and contrasting different tones – “using the notes to create different sensations – like tension or relief in your head.” In practice, this technique has seen him experiment with high definition club music, crisp hip hop production, dabs of orchestral instrumentation and more.
Lead single “Duo” hones in on the French house music Sam discovered in his early teens. It’s the first track ever that features his voice. Presented with high octane and eclectic visuals, the video directed by Ethan + Tom, transitions rapidly through a scene of animated and inverted clips of Sam before it takes a psychedelic-feeling thrill ride. “It feels like I’m dropping my first ever song. It’s a crazy feeling to go from hiding behind instrumentation to finally finding my voice. It’s super liberating being able to explore more refined soundscapes by using my vocals as the glue. I return to my roots with ‘Duo’ by venturing into a more funk oriented sonic and I’m going to continue to showcase all my past and present tastes that have brought me to this point musically.”
This new phase of Sam’s career is an embrace of his unparalleled and unadulterated passion for creativity. “I’m at an age now where I feel ready to talk and tell people what I’ve experienced in life. It’s perfect timing in that sense,” says Sam. “I’ve done three EPs. I’m at the point now where I’m like – I want all the smoke. Now I’m comfortable singing on my songs, I want to go back to each point in my musical journey and tap into it. I’m using the voice as my anchor, then tapping into other sonics that have influenced me.”
Margate-based, Australian multi-instrumentalist Jorja Chalmers will release her new album ‘Midnight Train‘ on May 28th via Italians Do It Better. The first single from the record “Bring Me Down” is streaming online now.
Speaking about the first single “Bring Me Down”, Jorja said “It’s about the fragility of the perfect housewife.It’s basically about a woman that’s trying to be everything, and is cracking psychologically. It’s got a very haunting melody. There’s something there that’s a little bit beautiful and disturbing about it.”
The accompanying video is a piece of Lynchian performance art, an unsettling one-shot clip that shows a person on the edge. It’s all theatre however, Jorja Chalmers relishes in inhabiting a persona, one that may be entirely divorced from her own experiences. “There can be a healthy separation from using your creativity to make something that is almost like a duplicate of yourself, that you don’t necessarily associate with. If you make something dark, then it’s not necessarily your personality. It can be the opposite sometimes.”
Jorja Chalmers enjoys a quiet life. The Australian born mother of two lives in Margate, the Kent coastal town that is turning into something of a cultural hub. Yet there’s another, shadow version of Jorja Chalmers, one that resides in a liminal realm; a saxophonist and composer, a brooding, vampiric, twilight soul who yearns for some sense of aesthetic transformation.
New album ‘Midnight Train’ comes close to severing the two. Constructed during the long winter lockdown, Jorja would put her kids to bed before closing the door in the spare room, building lengthy, undulating passages of cinematic terror, patching together European art-pop glamour with outsider electronics. It’s composed, intense, and challenging – but it’s also utterly exhilarating.
It’s not been a straight-forward path. Burned out following years of classical studies in her native Sydney, Jorja travelled half-way round the world looking for an escape. Settling for some ad hoc office jobs in London, she started kicking around in bands, playing saxophone for a friend’s new wave project. Someone from Bryan Ferry’s team spotted her at some flea-bit bar, and was infatuated – soon Jorja started touring the world with Roxy Music.
Jorja’s 2019 debut album ‘Human Again’ was sketched in hotel rooms across Europe and North America, ideas punched out on down-time between shows. This time round, however, things are a bit more defined. “A lot of those songs were one take jams, it was improvised. This is more refined,” Jorja insists. “It’s a natural progression, this second album. It feels more mature in that way.”
Mixed by Dean Hurley, David Lynch’s music engineer, ‘Midnight Train’ is a treasure trove of ideas. Indeed, it could well be the album Jorja had waited her entire life to make – aspects of minimalism sparked by a teenager who spent countless hours memorising Michael Nyman’s seminal film score for The Piano, set against cinematic electronics and swathes of huge, enveloping, classical dynamics.
“I want it to sound immersive, like it’s wrapping you in a blanket,” she says. Indeed, she cites Rachmaninoff’s epic work The Rock as a key touchstone on the new record. “It’s something that my parents used to blast out of their stereo when I was a kid. I heard it a million times. It’s strange to be hearing a song that is so dramatic when you’re that young. It’s a beautiful piece. It’s one of those things that leaves an imprint on you.”
At times, ‘Midnight Train’ gets very dark indeed. ‘Rabbit In The Headlights’ is a squirming piece of jet-black avant-pop, while ‘Boadicea’ is draped in the blood of the ancient British warrior queen. ‘The Wolves Of The Orangery’ was sculpted after a Roxy Music show in the Palace of Versailles, and it’s haunted by the oppression meted out to the servants, and the bloody revenge exhibited on the French regal classes. There’s light in those murky depths, however; take her brooding version of The Doors’ classic ‘Riders On The Storm’ – a blood-thirsty slice of dystopian electronics, it doubles as a salute to her father, who built himself colossal speakers to both entertain his daughter and terrify his neighbours.
A finessed, contoured vision of Jorja Chalmers’ undaunted creativity, ‘Midnight Train’ bristles with ideas. Breathy saxophone undulates on ‘Nightingale’, her homage to Yellow Magic Orchestra founder Haroumi Hosono, while mournful closer ‘Underwater Blood’ echoes the intensity of Goblin’s work on the Suspiria score, or even John Carpenter’s cinematic endeavours. “I grew up watching lots of movies. I was obsessed with the Terminator soundtrack. I remember hearing that for the first time, and just knowing my tastes were going to be changed forever.”
‘Midnight Train’ feels concise, sharpened, ready to pounce. Cannibalising her influences, Jorja Chalmers has been able to pursue her creative appetites to their most extreme. Yet even at its most challenging, her bold new album revels in the sheer joy of creation. “Making this album was really freeing,” she explains. “I loved writing this album. I always write in the same way, but I think that lockdown provided me with lesser distractions. Writing is such a personal thing for me – being in your little cave, and creating. That’s the beautiful moment for me.”
A solitary creation, a lockdown triumph, ‘Midnight Train’ is the moment Jorja Chalmers truly achieves transcendence.
Midnight Train track list: 1. Bring Me Down 2. I’ll Be Waiting 3. Rabbit In The Headlights 4. Boadicea 5. Love Me Tonight 6. Nightingale 7. Riders On The Storm 8. Rhapsody 9. The Poet 10. The Wolves Of The Orangery 11. On Such A Clear Day 12. Midnight Train 13. Underwater Blood
Babehoven is the nomadic project of Topanga, CA-raised Maya Bon. Today, she announces her Nastavi, Calliope EP, out July 9th, and presents its lead single, “Bad Week.”
Nastavi, Calliope is the follow-up to Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height (2020) and Yellow Has a Pretty Good Reputation (2021). Nastavi, Calliope was built after a cascade of losses, and is a vessel into which Bon poured two years of heartache, humor, and rage, then growth. It’s largely motivated by reconnecting with her father in Croatia after being apart for 16 years, immersing herself in her ancestral culture, and the passing of the beloved family dog, Calliope. Throughout the EP, Bon untangles universal emotions through specific experiences, poignant writing, and a lacquered DIY aesthetic.
Since its inception in 2017 when Bon was a college student in Portland, OR, Babehoven has spanned geographies—Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia— and now, the tiny town of Arlington, VT, where Bon and collaborator Ryan Albert recorded the Nastavi, Calliope EP in their home studio. Their newfound home gave the duo the space and freedom to transform the EP’s seven tracks into lush, fully-formed compositions. After Bon drafts a new piece (typically with vocals and guitar), the two parse through the track and deconstruct its instrumentals, later adding new elements to replace/embellish the existing sound. In Bon’s words, “we try to dismantle and recreate the song, creating an open space for the song to morph and grow as we explore.” The resulting EP is an instrumental layer cake, stacking drums, then bass, then guitar and vocals, and finally gilding them with unconventional elements like bowed guitars and the reverb of an 80s karaoke machine.
In the EP’s stunning opener “Bad Week,” Bon’s vocals reach out from beyond like a late night phone call from a friend. “It’s been a bad week for so many weeks now,” she sings, her voice glowing over strums of guitar and shuffling percussion. “This song is a hand reached inward to the swelling and amorphous cavities of grief,” says Bon. “As time keeps moving forward, I have found that it can feel as if the ‘bad days’ keep going, growing into ‘bad weeks,’ ‘bad years,’ into new levels of struggle that are hard to move through. Though this realization can feel staggering, it can also feel like an honest admission to self: these times are very hard and yet I want to move forward, I want to feel, I want to grow. ‘Bad Week’ is my attempt to commit to myself in these feelings.”
Evocative of Arthur Russell’s Love is Overtaking Me or Julia Jacklin’s Crushing, Nastavi, Calliope balances meticulously between the universality of emotion and the particulars that crack you open, that you carry alone. There is no containing grief, or rendering it sensible, or arranging it neatly, but Nastavi, Calliope lets us gaze into a fragment of it like a broken mirror—a sharp, incisive revelation.
Bon elaborates on the EP’s title: “’Nastavi’ means ‘keep going’ in Croatian, a language which carries a lot of weight for me. I am half Croatian and I often dreamt of what Croatia might be like as a child; it felt like a fictitious land, an inaccessible place where a piece of me lived, like a dismembered limb found itself on the Croatian shores. ‘Calliope,’ the name of my childhood dog, means ‘beautiful voice’ in Greek. It is also the type of organ that is placed at the center of a merry go round to provide that very specific type of music. The cyclical movement of the merry go round provides another element that I enjoyed including in this EP title; pain is cyclical, experiences are cyclical, and in a way we are constantly exploring new terrain while carrying our body memories with us that seem to go round and round and round in our heads.” – Maya Bon
Bordeaux, France post-metal sextet Year of No Light announce their forthcoming fifth studio album Consolamentum today, sharing the first single “Réalgar” via all DSPs. Hear and share “Réalgar” via Bandcamp, Spotify and YouTube.
Consolamentum is the band’s first album on Pelagic Records. To celebrate joining the label and Year of No Lights‘s 20th anniversary, they will release a limited edition deluxe wooden box set of the band’s entire discography, titled Mnemophobia on July 2nd. The handmade, hand-silkscreened wooden box features 12 vinyl LPs in 6 gatefold sleeves, exclusive colored vinyl variants, a slipmat, metal pin, patch and poster. For more information, see HERE.
Year of No Light’s lengthy, sprawling compositions of towering walls of guitars and sombre synths irradiate a sense of dire solemnity and spiritual gravity, and couldn’t be a more fitting soundtrack for such grim medieval scenarios. But there is also the element of absolution, regeneration, elevation, transcendence in the face of death. Consolamentum is dense, rich and lush and yet somehow feels starved and deprived. It comes as no surprise that ever since the beginning of their career, the band have had an obsession for the fall of man and salvation through darkness. The term “consolamentum” describes the sacrament, the initiation ritual of the Catharic Church, which thrived in Southern Europe in the 12th – 14th Century – a ritual that brought eternal austereness and immersion in the Holy Spirit.
“There’s a thread running through all of our albums”, says the band, collectively “an exploration of the sensitive world that obeys a certain telos, first fantasized (“Nord”) and reverberated (“Ausserwelt”), then declaimed as a warning (“Tocsin”). The deeper we dig, the more the motifs we have to unveil appear to us. Yes, it’s a bit gnostic. This album is invoked after the Tocsin, it’s the epiphany of the Fall.”
With debut album Nord (2006) and sophomore release Ausserwelt (2010), the band madethemselves a name in the European avant-metal scene. Extensive tours of Europe, North America and Russia in 2013 and 2014, including two appearances at Roadburn festival, Hellfest and a spectacular performance in a 17th Century fortress in the Carpathian mountains introduced them to a broader and quickly growing international audience.
With their seminal 3rd album Tocsin, released in 2013, Year Of No Light reached the peak of their career thus far – a logical decision that Consolamentum was made with the same team again: recorded and mixed by Cyrille Gachet at Cryogene in Begles / Bordeaux, mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side.
“We wanted this album to sound as organic and analog as possible”, comments the band. “All tracks were recorded live. The goal was to have the most natural, warm and clean takes possible, to give volume to the dynamics of the songs. We aimed to have a production with a singular personality.”
For the adept listener, Consolamentum seems to be venturing deeper into the dark and claustrophobic spheres explored on Tocsin – but the band doesn’t conceive of the evolution of their music in a linear way, as it would be apparent from looking at their discography.
“It’s more a matter of sonic devotion. Music against modern times. Year Of No Light” is above all a praxis. We wanted intensity, trance, climax and threat, all of them embedded in a bipolar and mournful ethos.”
Consolamentum is huge, poignant, frightening, sublime, smothering and cathartic – and, much like Decibel Magazine says of its predecessor, it’s “audacious, memorable and supremely confident.”
Consolamentum will be available on 2xLP, CD and digital on July 2nd, 2021 via Pelagic Records. Preorders are available HERE.
