trauma ray release new Carnival EP via Dais Records
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Touring North America in Spring w/ Glixen
Add Forth Worth Release Party, March 14 at Fire Station Skate Plaza
photo by Justin Pietropaoli
Cementing trauma ray as one of shoegaze's current essentials, Carnival captures the Fort Worth’s five strongest, most intense, and exploratory work within the boundaries of a whirlwind year. The EP delves into moodier, more cerebral material, like holding their past excursions against a funhouse mirror. There's a distinct sense of unease in these songs, built as a band in a fleeting window of time, proving they work best under pressure and when pulling from the darkest corners of their subconscious.
Available today via Dais Records, Carnival follows in the breakout success of their 2024 debut Chameleon which was released to high acclaim and earned them extensive touring slots with the likes of Deafheaven, Loathe, Touché Amoré and more. A confluence of blitzing riffs and stark beauty, trauma ray’s sound continues to evolve, nodding to loud-quiet-loud greats across metal, grunge, and shoegaze from Slowdive to Smashing Pumpkins.
trauma ray cross North America in the Spring on their co-headlining run with Glixen. Her New Knife, Knifeplay, Money, and Keep are confirmed to support on select dates. All tickets and more info are available HERE. See below for a full list of dates.
More About Carnival:
trauma ray used a break in their relentless touring schedule in Summer of last year to regroup in Texas for a few days to record a flurry of tracks; then sent off to Corey Coffman (They Are Gutting A Body of Water, Milly) for mixing and mastering. "It's the most collaborative we've been, where everyone was both hands-on and hands-off," says Avila. "You can really hear each person's influences in almost every song in a very unique, non-biting way." Avila and guitarist Jonathan Perez, the band's core songwriting duo to date, welcomed more contributions from others, notably an eerier strain of rhythmic and textural ideas from guitarist Coleman Pruitt and bassist Darren Baun. The direction coincided with a growing sense of collective dread and anxiety, and a striking photo set of a deserted amusement park near Brighton, England, taken on tour by drummer Nicholas Bobotas and now featured as the artwork. "It really looks like we specifically chose this theme and like had this whole preconceived idea, but it truly appeared out of thin air," says Perez.
The wordless "Carousel" ushers in the EP's unsettling atmosphere with blasts of static and downcast strums giving way to "Hannibal", the anthemic lead single packed with power riffs and raw emotion. "Méliès", named after the French illusionist and filmmaker Georges Méliès, cuts between heavy, sludgy chords and a skyward chorus, "from something scary to like a dream state," says Avila, who channels the namesake's surreal abstraction. His lines detail, "being stuck in your head and just making up realities that probably aren't the real thing going on, when you don't want to face the truth." "Funhouse" dips into doom metal, with sparse guitar work and possibly the band's slowest ever BPM, as self-proclaimed Sleep-heads. Lyrics play with shifting perspectives, culminating in the call-and-response outro ("take my hand / this is not your wonderland") that conjures two forces, or frames of mind, at odds with one another.
In contrast, the final track "Clown" jolts, flashes, and pummels, like the listener has come out the other end of a house of horrors, now fully immersed in the jarring, disorienting lights of the carnival. Personified by a knotty, synthy lead guitar squall — "the lead tone is something I'm super proud of, we've never had something like that in a trauma ray song," per Perez — "Clown" reminds them of Robin Williams, an archetype of tragic happiness, how the people trying the hardest to make others laugh may privately be the saddest. Sonically, the band is quick to credit the influence of “Undone” and “Stuck on You” by '90s cult favorite Failure, alongside the omnipresent Loveless, which gets to the greatness of trauma ray: five musicians absorbing, synthesizing, and expanding on what they love. Carnival offers a brief and highly loopable detour into darkness from a band growing more formidable by the mile.
trauma ray Live Dates:
Mar 14: Fort Worth, TX - Fire Station Skate Plaza ! (Free w/ RSVP Here)
Apr 10: San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger ~
Apr 11: Houston, TX - The Secret Group ~
Apr 13: New Orleans, LA - Gasa Gasa ~
Apr 14: Orlando, FL - The Social ~
Apr 15: Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade - Hell ~
Apr 16: Asheville, NC - Eulogy ~
Apr 17: Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506 ~
Apr 18: Washington, DC - Union Stage ~
Apr 19: Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church ~
Apr 21: Brooklyn, NY - Elsewhere Hall ~
Apr 22: Boston, MA - The Sinclair ~
Apr 23: Montréal, QC - Theatre Fairmount ~
Apr 24: Toronto, ON - Hard Luck ~
Apr 25: Ferndale, MI - The Loving Touch ~
Apr 26: Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop ~
Apr 28: Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge ^
Apr 29: Minneapolis, MN - Amsterdam Bar & Hall ^
May 01: Lawrence, KS - The Bottleneck #
May 02: Denver, CO - Marquis #
May 03: Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court #
May 04: Boise, ID - Shrine Basement #
May 05: Seattle, WA - Substation #
May 06: Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre #
May 08: San Francisco, CA - The Chapel #
May 09: Los Angeles, CA - Teragram Ballroom #
May 10: San Diego, CA - Soda Bar #
May 12: Phoenix, AZ - Walter Studios #
May 13: Albuquerque, NM - Launchpad #
May 15: Austin, TX - Brushy Street Commons #
May 16: Dallas, TX - Trees #
! Free release party w/ Empty Shell Casing, Ozone, Defcon 1, Spurred
~ w/ Glixen (co-headline), Her New Knife, Knifeplay
^ w/ Glixen (co-headline), Keep, Knifeplay
# w/ Glixen (co-headline), Keep, Money
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