10/31/2013

Bleached shares "Love Spells" music video for Halloween

BLEACHED SHARES "LOVE SPELLS" MUSIC VIDEO VIA THE FADER

RIDE YOUR HEART AVAILABLE NOW VIA DEAD OCEANS

Watch: "Love Spells" - http://youtu.be/pULd8HpFAMY

Bleached are proud to share a new music video for "Love Spells" which they made in honor of Halloween. The band is fresh off a tour that included gigs with Best Coast, White Lung, and The Men, but they return to the road for dates that include London Calling Festival, Fun Fun Fun Fest, and The Weezer Cruise in the new year. Also, click here to visit The Fader for a picture of Jennifer and Jessie in Halloween costumes as children. Jennifer explains the concept of the video below. 

"Halloween and October are my favorite time of year so I was excited when I realized we had a month to put together a rad B-Horror style music video before Halloween gets here! So with the help of some amazing friends, and taking inspiration from our girl sunbathing in the graveyard shirt we got it all together. We made it past the obstacles like getting kicked out of our first filming location, leaving the next morning for our Europe tour, editing it on the road in the van, and keeping it all pretty DIY. Xoxo."  - Jennifer Clavin
  
Tour Dates:

10/30/13 - Paris, FR - La Fleche d'Or
10/31/13 - Lille, FR - La Peniche
11/01/13 - Groningen, NL - Vera
11/02/13 - Amsterdam, NL - London Calling Festival @ Paradiso
11/08/13 - Austin, TX - Fun Fun Fun Fest @ Auditorium Shores
12/14/13 - Pomona, CA - The Glass House
02/13/14 - Jacksonville, FL - The Weezer Cruise
02/14/14 - Jacksonville, FL - The Weezer Cruise
02/15/14 - Jacksonville, FL - The Weezer Cruise
02/16/14 - Jacksonville, FL - The Weezer Cruise
02/17/14 - Jacksonville, FL - The Weezer Cruise

Cate Le Bon - Mug Museum

Cate Le Bon - Mug Museum

Street Date, November 12th, 2013, Wichita Recordings



  
Cate Le Bon returns this Autumn with Mug Museum, perhaps her most beguiling and complete song cycle to date, which will be released November 12th on Wichita Recordings in North America and November 11th on The Elite Meat Supply (Turnstile) in the rest of the world.



Having finished live commitments for CYRK towards the end of 2012, Le Bon returned to Wales to write the songs that would become Mug Museum.The album is informed by a period of taking stock after a bereavement. "Following the death of my maternal Grandmother I felt a very palpable shift in the roles that we'd all become accustomed to within the female line of the family which, for the first time, had me mulling over the importance of my place and purpose within this female chain" says Le Bon "The album's theme emerged from and circulates around these maternal familial relationships and this period of a calm, lengthy, intent consideration in turn drew other relationships into the Mug Museum".

With Le Bon subsequently relocating to California, Mug Museum was recorded at the recently opened Seahorse Sound studios, Los Angeles. Produced by Noah Georgeson (who is perhaps best known for his work with Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart) and Josiah Steinbrick, Mug Museum is an album that lets in the sunlight and space and relocates the West Wales lilt in Le Bon's voice to an equally apposite West Coast setting. In the studio Le Bon assembled a band of friends from both continents such as multi-instrumentalists Sweet Baboo and H. Hawkline and Nick Murray from White Fence.

As well as describing the personnel involved in Mug Museum, 'Welsh - Californian' is a phrase that captures the album's sound: melodic, confident and wrapped in a hazy psychedelic gauze."I wrote the majority of the record in the home country but a few songs were finished out here in the run up to recording" says Le Bon "I'm sure Los Angeles has bled into the recordings somehow but exactly how I do not know".
Throughout Mug Museum Le Bon's voice changes register to both dramatic and emotional effect. This is beautifully exemplified on 'I Think I Knew', a duet with Perfume Genius, one of the album's most atmospheric tracks and one on which two distinctive personalities combine to produce a performance of rare alchemy. Click here to listen to and download the track from SoundCloud.

From the bewitching circular riff of the album's opener 'I Can't Help You' to the closing title track that sees Le Bon accompanied by piano and the occasional burst of double-tacked clarinet, Mug Museum's reflective song-writing weaves around a richly detailed framework. Like all museums it is a contemplative space, a personal world that is open to everyone.As these ten songs attest Mug Museum is also a unique and dreamlike edifice, created by an artist at the height of her powers.

Cate Le Bon
Mug Museum
Wichita / The Elite Meat Supply (Turnstile)
Release Date: Nov. 12, 2013
1. I Can't Help You 
2. Are You With Me Now? 
3. Duke
4. No God 
5. I Think I Knew 
6. Wild 
7. Sisters 
8. Mirror Me 
9. Cuckoo Through The Walls 
10. Mug Museum

10/30/2013

Sacred Bones celebrates 100 releases by unveiling lost LP

SACRED BONES CELEBRATES 100 RELEASES WITH LOST LP FROM NYC POST-PUNKS THE HUNT
STREAM A TRACK VIA PITCHFORK

Sacred Bones Records is proud to be celebrating 100 releases by unveiling the lost LP from The Hunt,The Hunt Begins
 
The first ever release on Sacred Bones was a 7" from The Hunt. The band was formed by Jasper McGandy & Christian Kount (both now members of Cult of Youth) in 2007. They crafted a unique style of post-punk influenced by The Southern Death Cult and New Model Army. The artwork for their first release depicted an androgynous wild banshee wearing warpaint, clad all in leather and animal bones, holding a sacrificial knife pointed at the sky. This debut single was The Hunt’s lone statement.
 
The Hunt played tons of shows including some of the first Wierd Records parties at Home Sweet Home in NYC, they did a few short tours and in then 2009 after multiple tumultuous attempts at recording a full length The Hunt decamped to their collective hometown, Boston, to record the ultimate document of their time on earth. Buses begat buses, couches begat couches, and slowly the songs began to come together as they should have all these passing years. On the edge of perfection their time was cut short and they disbanded. Leaving this document shelved for years. 
 
Now, four years after it was recorded & shelved, The Hunt Begins will finally see the light of day in honor of both the first and one hundredth release on Sacred Bones Records, we will finally see and hear the toils of New York’s most enigmatic post punk band of recent.  

The Hunt will play one final show in celebration of the release of "The Hunt Begins" on November 20th at Home Sweet Home in NYC for the Nothing Changes party. 

Stream "Fifteen Minutes" off of The Hunt Begins & pre-order the album below!

THE HUNT
THE HUNT BEGINS
SACRED BONES RECORDS

11/12/13

1 Mountains (3:24)
2 Fifteen Minutes (3:46)
3 Summer of Hate (3:04)
4 Set the Rising Sun (4:06)
5 Black and White (4:32)
6 Scripts (5:12)
7 Trainwreck (3:58)
8 When The Sky Turns Black (3:24)
9 One Thousand Nights (4:23)

10/29/2013

WILLIAM BASINSKI 'THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS' BOX SET



WILLIAM BASINSKI ANNOUNCES LIMITED EDITION CD+DVD VERSION OF DELUXE 'THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS' BOX SET

"I'VE OWNED MANY BOX SETS AND THIS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST GORGEOUS AND SUBSTANTIAL ONE I'VE EVER SEEN."
PITCHFORK 10.0 BEST NEW REISSUE

"THE MOST IMPORTANT MINIMAL COMPOSITONS OF THE PAST DECADE" - ARTINFO


To mark the 10-year anniversary of its original release - and its forthcoming induction into the 9/11 Memorial Museum this year - Temporary Residence Ltd. collaborated with renowned composer William Basinski to present The Disintegration Loops in a fashion truly befitting a library of music with such enormous cultural significance and enduring legacy. The set garnered astounding universal praise, including a perfect 10.0 score from Pitchfork, as well as features in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, ARTINFO, and many more. Due to overwhelming demand, Temporary Residence Ltd. are releasing a CD+DVD-only version of the set. Just like the original vinyl box, this version includes all four historic volumes of The Disintegration Loops, plus a pair of stunning live orchestral performances from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the 54th Venice Music Biennale, both previously unreleased. Remastered from the original recordings, this exquisite box set also includes the extremely rare 63-minute The Disintegration Loops film on DVD, and a 148-page full-color book featuring rare photos and liner notes by Basinski, AntonyDavid Tibet of Current 93Ronen Givonyof The Wordless Music SeriesJames Elaine, and Michael Shulan, Creative Director of the National September 11 Memorial Museum.


Black Lips release Middle East tour film

BLACK LIPS TO RELEASE KIDS LIKE YOU & ME, A MIDDLE EAST TOUR FILM
ANNOUNCE FILM SCREENINGS AND LIVE TOUR

In 2009, The Black Lips started investigating the possibility of a bridge building tour of the Middle East with stops throughout the region. After two years of planning, several uprisings, a civil war, the tour finally came to fruition in the fall of 2012. It wasn't easy either. Promoters in Jordan and Alexandria, Egypt backed out at the last minute because the band had played shows in Israel and a show in Erbil, Iraq had to be changed when an explicit video of the band was viewed by a government official. Suprisingly, It all worked out in the end though and the shows in Alexandria and Erbil turned out to be highlights of the tour.
  
Kids Like You & Me: A Middle East Tour Film documents this journey through one of the most exciting regions in the world including three groundbreaking stops in Egypt. (The last known American rock band to play Egypt being The Grateful Dead in 1978!) Get on the bus with The Black Lips and their good friends, Lebanese indie rockers, Lazzy Lung. See the people of the Middle East the way they really are. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners. Skaters, graffiti artists and musicians. Revolutionaries and dreamers. Kids like you and me. You'll never look at the Middle East the same way after seeing this film.  

The Atlanta Film Festival premiered the screening on October 27th. 


 

Kids Like You and Me TRAILER 
   

10/25/2013

GOLDFRAPP - 'TALES OF US' SPECIAL BOX SET



‘TALES OF US’ SPECIAL BOX SET

ALISON GOLDFRAPP CURATES LOWRY EXHIBITION

‘LATER WITH JOOLS’ & JIMMY FALLON PERFORMANCES

LIVE FROM MAIDA VALE

EUROPEAN TOUR


Goldfrapp have announced details of a very special box set version of their top five album ‘Tales Of Us’, which was described by The Guardian as a “mesmerising soundscape’, ‘intoxicatingly vital’ by Metro and ‘luxuriant’ by The Independent.

In addition to the regular version of ‘Tales Of Us’ the box set also comes with a bonus CD containing a selection of remixes and live performances of album tracks, including three tracks recorded at this year’s stunning Manchester International Festival, complete with orchestra and choir.

Remixes include one from Will Gregory (who has created a Moog version of Stranger). The bonus disc also contains an extract of the soundtrack to Sam Taylor Wood’s film about John Lennon, ‘Nowhere Boy’, written and performed by Goldfrapp.

The box also contains a DVD with Tales Of Us in 5.1 surround sound, a documentary of the making of Tales Of Us and the breathtaking short films for Drew and Annabel.  Watch the film for ‘Annabel’ here: http://youtu.be/-Vnk_j1iKMA

Completing the box is a beautiful 40 page hardback book compiled by Alison with exclusive images from ‘Tales Of Us’, the vinyl album with gatefold sleeve and poster plus a 12" lithographic print.

Goldfrapp have been performing tracks from ‘Tales Of Us’ live in a series of TV broadcasts around the world including ‘Later With Jools Holland’ on the BBC and ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’ on NBC in New York. Performances from ‘Later’ can be seen at www http://youtu.be/JfUE7y5A4Fg and ‘Fallon’ at http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2013/09/goldfrapp-performs-their-song-drew/

The TV performances precede the band’s forthcoming sold-out European tour, which includes a UK headline show at Hammersmith Apollo on 1 November.


In the interim the band have just performed for BBC 6Music ‘Live at Maida Vale’ in a live session for the Lauren Laverne show highlights of which can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/eqp8q9

Meanwhile Alison Goldfrapp has been busy curating her first ever art exhibition which opened at The Lowry gallery in Salford at the weekend and runs through to next March. This is the first exhibition within The Lowry¹s new ‘Performer As Curator’ series which sees artwork selected from international collections by Alison. The exhibition offers a glimpse into her personal inspirations - through the painters, filmmakers, illustrators and photographers who have shaped her inimitable artistic vision. This diverse and high profile selection of works will portray the artist¹s fascination with folklore and the noir through traditional and contemporary artworks by internationally renowned artists including Anna Fox, John Thezaker, Jan Pienkowski, Anya Gallaccio and Hans Bellmer. The Independent called the show an “opportunity to get inside the mind of an undeniably serious talent… Enjoyably disturbing.”

For more details please visit www.thelowry.com


Autumn Tour Dates (sold out):

25 Oct 2013               Le Trainon Hall                                Paris
26 Oct 2013               Kaufleuten                                        Zurich
1 Nov 2013                Hammersmith Apollo                       London

Washed Out’s “All I Know” Video

Watch Washed Out’s “All I Know” Video
The Sixteenth Installment In The UO Music Video Series
Late Fall & Winter Tour Expanded Through December 31st
 
Washed Out has premiered a new video for “All I Know,” the latest single from Paracosm, his critically acclaimed new album. The new visual follows the story of a broken hearted young man, who heads out on a chaotic road trip with his best friend in search of closure (see Pitchfork News Story October 25th). Paracosm is now available in North America on Sub Pop and in Europe via Weird World.
 
The “All I Know” video was co-produced by Urban Outfitters as the sixteenth installment of their UO Music Video Series. Check out blog.urbanoutfitters.com/washedout for an interview with director Daniel Kragh-Jacobsen, as well as behind the scenes photos from the shoot.
 
The UO Music Video Series has also featured the likes of Classixx, Charlie XCX, Autre Ne Veut, Tame Impala, How To Dress Well, Peaking Lights, Frankie Rose, The Walkmen, Nick Waterhouse, Cloud Nothings, Black Lips, Spank Rock, The War on Drugs, Beach Fossils, and Toro Y Moi.
 
In related news, Washed Out has extended his late fall & winter tour (and incredible light show) through December 31st. Highlights include: October 26th in Paris, FR at Nouveau Casino; November 10th in Austin, TX’s at Fun Fun Fun Fest; December 12th in Columbus, OH for commercial radio station CD 102.5’s Holiday Show; and a New Year’s Eve show in Atlanta, GA at Terminal West. Please find a full list of tour dates below.
 
What People Are Saying About Washed Out:
“It’s a realm of leisurely melodies and keyboard chords that wash in and drift away, of calm vocal harmonies and burbling electronics, of lavishly blended acoustic and electronic instruments and echoes of reassuring pop from past eras...Paracosm sounds warmer, more enveloping; precisely because it’s so much more spacious, it’s cozier.” [Playlist] - New York Times
 
“A sun-dappled, intricately layered, indie pop beauty.” [#2 / “Must List”] - Entertainment Weekly
 
"Greene's meticulous creations are still slow-rolling and thickly layered, but this time he and returning Animal Collective producer Ben Allen slather on less futuristic sounds: Mellotron, bongos, children laughing. Harplike arpeggios herald the beginning of the title track like the launch of a Technicolor reverie, but the nine-song LP’s dreamiest tune is ”All I Know,” a nostalgic stunner that glows like a jar of fireflies." [Review, 3.5/5 Stars] - Rolling Stone
 
“...Eerily beautiful” [Review, 3/4 stars] -  USA Today
 
“There’s something so distinctly summery about the Washed Out sound...the much-anticipated follow-up Paracosm seems as essential to the season as flip-flops and sunscreen...But unlike Washed Out’s previous efforts, in which frosty digital-age samples and drum machines served as the sonic backbone, Paracosm has a lush, natural feel, beginning with a bird-chirping, harp-scaling overture inspired by the rural Georgia retreat.” [Feature]  - Vogue
 
Paracosm is a beautiful, beautiful album.” [Review, 88%] - FILTER
 
“It All Feels Right” bumps with light reggae upticks before momentarily collapsing into a sunstroke, while “Great Escape” leans off the beat just enough to generate a little bit of Southern soul…However, Greene is growing in terms of melodic construct, as the chorus of “Don’t Give Up” is the strongest and trickiest he’s ever written." [Review] - Pitchfork
 
Tour Dates
Oct. 26 - Paris, France - Nouveau Casino
Oct. 27 - Dublin, Ireland - The Button Factory
Nov. 04 - Asheville, NC - Orange Peel
Nov. 05 - Charleston, SC - Music Farm
Nov. 06 - Birmingham, AL - Iron City
Nov. 08 - New Orleans, LA - Republic New Orleans
Nov. 09 - Houston, TX - Fitzgeralds
Nov. 10 - Austin, TX - Fun Fun Fun Fest
Nov. 11 - Dallas, TX - Granada Theater
Nov. 13 - Saint Louis, MO - Firebird
Nov. 14 - Louisville, KY - Headliner's Music Hall
Dec. 07-  Acapulco , Mexico - Tropico Festival
Dec. 12 - Columbus, OH - LC Pavillion [CD 102.5 Holiday Show]
Dec. 14 - New York, NY - Gramercy Theatre (ERNEST GREENE DJ SET)
Dec. 31 - Atlanta, GA - Terminal West
 

KING KRULE ANNOUNCES APPEARANCES ON LATE SHOW

KING KRULE ANNOUNCES APPEARANCES ON LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN AND CONAN

SHARES VIDEO AS PART OF CHURCH OF NOBODY WEB SERIES (WATCH HERE)

TOURING THE US IN DECEMBER

photo by: Mikeael Gregorsky

Following the release of his debut full length 6 Feet Beneath The Moon and a subsequent run of select US shows, King Krule is back today to announce that he'll be returning Stateside in advance of his December tour for his late night television debut on Late Show With David Letterman next week (Monday, October 28th) and a performance on Conan the following week (Monday, November 4th). 

King Krule is also featured today as part of Church of Nobody, a new video series presented by Willis Earl Beal. Church of Nobody is an 8-part series featuring filmed musical performances showing online as well as a full length Thanksgiving special to be broadcast on Brooklyn Public Television. King Krule's episode was filmed during his brief run of US tour dates around the release of 6 Feet Beneath The Moon and is can be viewed now at http://churchofnobody.com/ (or direct link HERE)

See below for all of King Krule's upcoming US tour dates.

Tour Dates

12/03 @ The Space - Hamden, CT
12/04 @ Webster Hall - New York, NY
12/05 @ Brighton Music Hall - Boston, MA
12/06 @ Rock & Roll Hotel - Washington, D.C.
12/07 @ Johhny Brendas - Philadelphia, PA
12/09 @ Lee's Palace - Toronto, ON
12/11 @ Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL
12/13 @ Fortune Sound Club - Vanouver, BC
12/14 @ Barboza - Seattle, WA
12/15 @ Doug Fir- Portland, OR
12/17 @ Independent - San Francisco, CA 
12/18 @ Fonda - Los Angeles, CA 

10/23/2013

The Flaming Lips Premiere Each Song from "Peace Sword" EP

EACH SONG FROM UPCOMING FLAMING LIPS EP PEACE SWORD TO PREMIERE ONLINE TODAY AT 10 A.M. ET
October 23rd, 2013 - (Burbank, CA.) - THE FLAMING LIPS will release a brand new six-song EP featuring new music inspired by Summit Entertainment's upcoming feature film Ender's Game onOctober 29th, to coincide with the film's November 1st release. Today, all six songs will premiere online at various music-related outlets at 10 a.m. ET.

Here are the links to stream each track:

"Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)" at TheDailyBeast.com

"If They Move, Shoot 'Em" at NPR.org

"Is The Black At The End Good" at Spin.com

"Think Like A Machine, Not A Boy" at Stereogum.com

"Wolf Children" at RollingStone.com  

"Assassin Beetle - The Dream Is Ending" at Pitchfork.com

The CD and limited-edition 12" vinyl release will follow on Black Friday/Record Store Day, which falls on November 29th. This beautiful vinyl package features the same audio content as the CD, but features different artwork. It will be pressed on black, standard-weight vinyl with a dazzling "LIPSian" gatefold sleeve. The title track "Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)" was written exclusively for the filmEnder's Game, while the remaining five tracks were all inspired by the book upon which the film is based as well as the motion picture itself. 

10/22/2013

Juana Molina announces new album "Wed 21"

The bewitching Juana Molina is back with "Wed 21", a terrific album, in which all the various threads she's previously explored are masterfully woven together with new elements to create a mischievous, playful, joyous series of songs, brimming with surprises. 

International release date (CD, Digital, 2LP limited edition) : October 28
Check out the first two singles "Eras" and "Sin Guia No" !
 
 
Juana Molina will be performing a string of shows around Europe, Hong Kong and Japan in November, and will be back for extensive touring from early 2014 on.

26/10/2013 FR PARIS TRABENDO / SPIRIT OF PIERRE-LOUIS
01/11/2013 DE BERLIN HEBBEL AM UFER THEATRE
06/11/2013 GB LONDON ST. GILES IN THE FIELD
07/11/2013 GB MANCHESTER SACRED TRINITY CHURCH
09/11/2013 CZ PRAGUE JAZZ DOCK
12/11/2013 CH ZURICH ROTE FABRIK
15/11/2013 CH YVERDON-LES-BAINS AMALGAME CLUB
16/11/2013 FR PARIS HOW TO LOVE FESTIVAL / PETIT BAIN
21/11/2013 ES ZARAGOZA OASIS
22/11/2013 ES GRANADA TBA
23/11/2013 ES BILBAO BIME
24/11/2013 PT LISBON CASA INDEPENDENTE
01/12/2013 JP TOKYO YEBISU GARDEN HALL
03/12/2013 JP TOKYO BLUE NOTE TOKYO

Stream entire COUM Transmissions (pre-Throbbing Gristle)

STREAM COUM TRANSMISSIONS
HOME AGED & THE 18 MONTH HOPE

VIA DAZED & CONFUSED
OUT 10/29 ON DAIS RECORDS
                                                                                                                                                                                Genesis P-Orridge
 
Today Dais Records is proud to share a stream of  COUM Transmissions' entire archival Home Aged & The 18 Month Hope LP. This release collects various selections spanning the years 1971 through 1975, including a rare live performance opening for Hawkwind, lost radio interview, obtuse poetry readings by early member Fizzey Peat, piano & violin compositions by Genesis P-Orridge and insightful field recordings.

The LP is limited to only 1,000 vinyl copies, pre-orders have been up for a bit now so don't miss out on the chance to own this special piece of history. 

Genesis P-Orridge also penned a fantastic track by track description of the album to run alongside the stream and you can read it/listen at Dazed & Confused right now. Find the streaming link and pre order link below! 

 
 
 
About COUM Transmissions:
COUM Transmissions were a performance art collective who operated in the United Kingdom from 1969 through to 1976. Influenced by the Dada and Fluxus art movements, COUM were openly confrontational and subversive, challenging aspects of conventional British society through mail art and public performances. Founded in Hull, Yorkshire in 1969 by Genesis P-Orridge, and later John Shapiro, after a brief stint with the Exploding Galaxy commune.  P-Orridge and Shapiro started the Ho-Ho Funhouse which rallied other members into the COUM Transmissions collective fold.  COUM Transmissions would later include signature members who would together found the pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle in 1976.

 
 


COUM Transmissions
Home Aged & The 18 Month Hope
Dais Records

10/29/13

10/21/2013

Wire Announce DRILL: SEATTLE Festival

Wire Announce DRILL: SEATTLE Festival 
November West Coast Tour Dates Announced
Change Becomes Us Out Now

"History and transformation are, understandably, recurring themes in the new lyrics on Change Becomes Us, and it's a treat to have this missing link in the Wire story repaired" - Pitchfork
"This is the best Wire album of this century." - Classic Rock Magazine
"They continue to exercise more craft in their work than newbies a
third of their age." - Alternative Press

Wire has announced a fall West Coast tour and plans to bring their DRILL festival to Seattle. The three-day fest will take place November 21-23 at venues throughout Seattle including Barboza, the Crocodile, and Neumo's. DRILL: SEATTLE will performances by Helmet, Chastity BeltVestals,Earth and more. The festival will also include a performance from the PinkFlag Guitar Orchestra in which other artists, including Helmet's Page Hamilton, will join Wire on stage for a rendition of "Pink Flag." All show information is listed below.

Wire's Colin Newman says, "In their nearly 40 years of existence Wire have never been a band to keep still or rest on their laurels. Although sometimes, wrongly, defined within certain narrow musical genres Wire's oeuvre has always ranged across a wide range of styles and influences whilst the membership, individually and collectively have always had good relationships, both working & personal with artists across a number of fields. So it is perhaps not surprising that in 2013 Wire launched the first of a series of Festivals entitled DRILL in London in March 2013. The concept is simple, it's an unpretentious city festival featuring artists from across all genres actively curated by Wire with a lot of input from local, informed media partners (in the case of London, The Quietus; in the case of Seattle, KEXP)  The concerts take place in small venues with great sound systems. There are no big ticket acts playing for over inflated fees. Wire go for the best in upcoming local talent combined with friends who just want to be part of it."

Wire is touring in support of Change Becomes Us which is out now on pinkflag. In spring 2012, Wire's plan had been to convene at Rockfield Studios in Wales to review the rudimentary blueprints of songs that had never made it beyond a few live performances in 1979 and 1980 - a time when the band-members were in creative overdrive yet the band itself was disintegrating. The aim wasn't simply to resuscitate and record old songs; in fact, many of them hadn't become proper songs in the first place, existing only as basic ideas or undeveloped parts. Rather, the objective was to approach that unrealized work as an oblique strategy, a potential springboard for Wire's contemporary, forward-looking processes - a possible point of departure for new compositions.

This took place with Wire firing on all cylinders, as a four-piece studio entity again, the core line-up of Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey now enhanced by guitarist Matthew Simms. Simms had played a key role in helping the band to cultivate and shape its new sonic landscape throughout the preceding year's live work. Out of the exploratory Rockfield session and subsequent, extensive development and production at Newman's Swim Studio, the ostensible source material became, in the classic Wire tradition, something quite other than what it may have once been - or what it might have become if it had been pursued in 1980.

Newman's songwriting and production on Change Becomes Us reimagines the past in ways that ultimately break any substantive connection with it, making entirely new pieces - and these songs themselves enact Wire's restless drive to become other, often thriving on a fundamental tension between opposing sonic characteristics. With its stop-start, soft-hard, quiet-loud structure, "Adore Your Island" veers between what Newman describes as "prog and unhinged punk rock," never quite resolving itself; the drama of "Attractive Space" hinges on a progressive splitting of the song's personality, between its calm, expansive, anthemic orientation and an increasing sense of intensity and claustrophobia.

Change Becomes Us encapsulates the paradoxical essence of Wire's creativity. The tendency of these new songs to refuse a single, settled identity is emblematic of the band's ever-evolving aesthetic - one that's always hinged on sustained tensions and oppositions: between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the comfortable and the unsettling, the melodic and the brutal, the cerebral and the visceral, the smart and the moronic, the obvious and the inscrutable, the rational and the absurd. This intrinsic, core ambivalence generates the essential otherness that has characterized Wire's most memorable, distinctive work - from the epochal innovations of Chairs Missing and 154 to the electronic-pop deconstructions of A Bell Is A Cup to Send's postmodern-punk expressionism and the widescreen lyricism of Red Barked TreeChange Becomes Us is an undeniable part of that illustrious lineage. Definitely more than just a good idea at the time. - Wilson Neate (Author of Read & Burn: A Book About Wire)

Wire Tour Dates
11.17 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echoplex * 
11.18 - San Francisco, CA @ Slim's *
11.20 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom # 

DRILL: Seattle
 
11.21 @ Barboza - EarthPillar Point, Drill 
11.22 @ The Crocodile - Helmet, TBA, FF
11.23 @ Neumos - Wire, Chastity BeltVestals 
* with Chastity Belt
# with Helmet and Chastity Belt
  
For more info, please visit:

http://www.pinkflag.com

Newport Folk Festival Announces Stewardship Program, Names Nathaniel Rateliff As First Appointee

 NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM, NAMES  NATHANIEL RATELIFF AS FIRST APPOINTEE FIRST ARTIST APPOINTED TO SUCH A ROLE SI...