Plattenbau check into the “Best Western” on their new single.

Photo Credit: Julio Cordey
Following the band’s second studio Album Shape / Shifting [Dedstrange Records 2022] comes their unforgiving 3rd album Net Prophet, releasing on Dedstrange September 8th 2023.
 
“Neural transmissions of crisis on the eve of WEB 3.0”
 
The band states, Best Western stumbles into the saloon we call ‘late capitalism’ and points its drunken finger at the ‘virtues’ of progress. Imagine line-dancing to the gun club at McDonalds with a thin deranged guitar creeping into your conscience.”
 
Net Prophet finds the band moving deeper into the vaporous territory of 21st-century excess, where power casually corrupts even more absolutely and the mental netscape is more deranged in the membrane than we ever knew possible. A world on the edge, where imminent ecocide and violent social upheaval lurk beneath every minute mental distraction. The doomscroll gets longer and the attention span shorter as a disconnected global internet life takes over with its scepters of promise and looming evasiveness.
 
The sound is rich in variety from the darkwave pulsing synths of “Lichtenberg Monologue” reminiscent of Shape / Shifting’s “Tomahawk” to the growling, slow-driving bass of “A New Dawn” which harks back to the band’s S/T 1st record, albeit with a synth instead of guitar. Even with the stark contrasts of murder-punk “AR-15” and jangle-pop “Purgatory Mall” the record never strays from the prime colors of the band: Vox, Drums, Bass, Guitar, Synth.
 
Recorded live in the Berlin studio Monoton, the record demonstrates the band in its prime – tightened up and influenced by their extensive touring, who have honed their sound from simple elements into a rich wall of noise.
 
Net Prophet will be released on September 8th, 2023 through Dedstrange Records.

“We didn’t have to go far to find the garish and incessant symbols of late capitalism, towering above our Berlin doorstep: The near-complete Amazon Tower, the East Side Mall, the luxury lofts lining the Spree. To complete the puzzle we cast the perfect urban cowboy: Loz, the frontman and mastermind of Dedstrange band The Pleasure Majenta. He performs a day in the life, waking up at sunset and sliding down the grimey alleys of Berlin, confined to the walls of this rising city skyline. Meanwhile Plattenbau perform the song on TV, broadcast from The East Side Mall. Who is well-adjusted? What is deranged? In the context, the Krishnamurti quote repeated throughout the song rings more true than ever: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Alex at Terrorbird Media.]