Black Royal are late for Halloween, Taraban are plagued by twerkers, Matt Steele and Corvette Sunset assure you this is a one-time thing, Close Talker double down on an immersive experience and more in today’s Roundup. I just got my ISP to quintuple my Internet speed and upgrade all my gear and connections. Now I have no one but myself to blame when this stuff takes me forever.
1 | Black Royal | Pagan Saviour
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Following on from the success of their 2018 debut album Lightbringer, Scandinavian sludge savants Black Royal return early next year with their creed crushing new album, Firebride. Formed in 2013 in Tampere, Finland, the quartet revisits their highly infectious brew of metal as they usher in their latest foray into the fields of Wicca with first single, Pagan Saviour. “The song was inspired by the witch hunts, paganism and war between early Christianity and ancient mythology,” explains Black Royal’s vocalist, Riku. “It’s about how the church forced common people to follow their laws and rules and criminalized all other ways of life in order to control citizens and the state.”
2 | Taraban | The Plague
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Krakow’s up-and-coming power psych trio Taraban debut their stunning video for The Plague, taken from their upcoming debut LP How The East Was Lost, out Nov. 22. As a blazing hot introduction to Taraban, your first stop will be the eerie Club Dragon in the belly of a closed hotel and the yellow sands of the Błędów Desert military area, where The Plague was shot. Directed by Mirek Stanek, the video features Krakow Twerk Queens and the band in an epic ride through the East.”
3 | Matt Steele & The Corvette Sunset | It Won’t Happen Again
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Matt Steele & The Corvette Sunset release their latest music video for the song It Won’t Happen Again. The video is an all-out water gun fight against a rival team of musicians at Point Pleasant Park, Halifax – a perfect summer memory as we head into the colder months. Jeff Miller, who has worked with other Nova Scotia artists such as Dave Sampson and T. Thomason, directed and edited the video. To celebrate the video release, we are playing a residency in Halifax all November long at the Local and visiting Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton.”
4+5 | Close Talker | The Making of Immersion + The Change it Brings
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Close Talker are thrilled to announce their new live album of How Do We Stay Here? to be released Nov. 8, recorded during their recent Immersion 3D Binaural Silent Headphone Concert Tour. First, they share the song The Change It Brings and the documentary The Making Of Immersion, a behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge performances. The band says, “It would have been easier to have just left it an idea that we had dreamt up in the van, or the thought, that some band should do this someday it is pretty cool to reflect and look back and be like, ‘Whoa’ we’re that band. Special thank you to Versa Films for their vivid storytelling and helping share Immersion with a wider audience.” Regarding the live album, “It was always our intention that our special 3D headphone concert series: Immersion would outlive the cross Canada tour itself. With that, we’ve selected recordings from the tour and compiled a full representation of our new album How Do We Stay Here? live from select cities across Canada. In addition, we’ve mixed the album with immersive binaural audio, best experienced in its entirety wearing headphones, by yourself, and with a glass of red wine. If you can manage to achieve at least two out of the three listed above, you’ll be in good shape.”
https://youtu.be/53dWiDUbVCE
6 | The Pool | Krystalite
THE PRESS RELEASE: “The new album Smokescreen by The Pool was released on 11.10. Now the three around the Danish Martin Behrndt are releasing a new video for the song Krystalite. Just like the song, the video takes you on a journey. And when we write this, we mean it. The nature shots are really breathtaking and fit perfectly to the mood of the song. While the video is always peppered with the trance-like live recordings of the band. So and now you can’t imagine what it’s all about? That’s why it’s best to watch the video.”
7 | For I Am | Die Hard
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Belgian punk outfit For I Am’s 2nd full album Late Bloomers consists of a mixture of the band’s signature happy, fast pop-punk songs and a number of tracks that try to deviate from the standard, all laced together by lead singer Hanne’s edgy vocals. After having released a first EP called 15 Minutes Late in 2015 and a first full album called All About Perspectives in 2017, For I Am decided it was time to shake things up and take their music to a higher level with the release of Late Bloomers in 2019. Says Hanne: “Die Hard tackles the current-day issue of people being stressed out on a daily basis, not wanting to admit they cannot take any more to the outside world. We very quickly tend to say “I’m okay” when asked how we are. But often that’s a lie. If you’re not okay, try to be honest and tell people about it. That’s the only way you’ll ever, in fact, be okay again. But we realise it’s not that simple, ‘cause old habits die hard…”
8 | Rosie Valland | Blue
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Two years after the release of the EP Synchro, which earned her the GAMIQ award in the Pop EP of the Year category, and four years already since her debut album Partir Avant, Rosie Valland is back with a second LP: Blue. This confident new record, which is packed with melodies inspired by 90s pop, will be available everywhere in Feb. The first single Blue and its video premiered this morning. Rosie shared the inspiration behind the song: “I’m talking directly to a friend, I express my worries, my sincere wish to see him happy, and I naively try to make him understand that no pain is permanent.”
9 | Porridge Radio | Eugh
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Beginning as Dana Margolin’s sadcore bedroom project, Porridge Radio developed into an idiosyncratic post-punk 4-piece after she moved to Brighton and met her future bandmates. They inelegantly knot together Margolin’s vicious, furious emotional outpourings with beautiful pop melodies, and have shared stages with the likes of Soccer Mommy, Alex G, Cherry Glazerr, Goat Girl, Dream Wife and Lydia Lunch. After a series of demos, and the growing legend of their intense live shows, full-band LP Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers came out in 2016. Recorded in a garden shed, their lofi debut documents struggles with life, love and boredom, and showcases the scrapbook absurdism at Porridge Radio’s core. Here they’re playing Eugh, the emotionally raw stand-out track from the album.”
10 | Pyramids on Mars | F-22 Raptor
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Guitarist Kevin Estrella’s project Pyramids On Mars has a new album being released on Dec. 21, entitled Edge of the Black. Offering an aural palette of intense instrumental rock, it’s emotional, provocative and 4-dimensional. The first single from this album is F-22 Raptor, the song soars like the jet itself, with intricate riffs set alongside aggressive chugging and the visuals are of the USAF stealth tactical fighter the song is named after. “On Edge of The Black, I wanted to put emphasis on songwriting and telling a story. The emphasis is not just on the lead guitar melody, but on the band as a whole. Harmonic variations on repeating themes are strongly utilized; like rhyming phrases in spoken language that allows easier accurate retelling of the original story. This idea of repeating music phrases/themes so the audience can easily recall it and hum it all the way home.”
11 | Heartstreets | I Wanna Dance/Lost Revisited
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Montreal duo Heartstreets (Gab Godon and Emma Beko) spent years perfecting their craft by releasing a string of critically acclaimed tracks. Heartstreets’ debut full length album – Why Make Sense – was released this past February. Now, just a few months later, the duo have revamped some of the record’s key tracks on Why Make Sense Revisited 2. New single/mashup – I Wanna Dance/Lost Revisited – blends the duo’s silky, smooth R&B sounds over hard-hitting beats and a unique song structure.”
12 | Yorkston/Thorne/Khan | Westlin’ Winds
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Yorkston/Thorne/Khan – a trio of James Yorkston (guitar/nyckelharpa/vocals), Jon Thorne (double-bass/vocals) and Suhail Yusuf Khan (sarangi/vocals) – are pleased to announce their new album Navarasa : Nine Emotions will be released on Jan. 24. At the heart of YTK’s transporting new album is the subcontinent’s navarasa; the nine (nava) emotions or sentiments (rasa) of the arts. This central unifying underpinning is a centuries-old organizing principle and directly connects an emotion to each song on the album. The first track to be shared from Navarasa : Nine Emotions is Westlin’ Winds, which is paired with Adbutha (surprise/wonder). Westlin’ Winds starts with the life-destroying Act I of Robert Burns’ poem Now Westlin Winds, (And Slaught’ring Guns) and transplants its disjoined, nature-extolling and life-affirming Act II onto Indian soil with a composition “in Purbi, a specific dialect of old Hindi.”
13 | Dune Rats | Crazy
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Brisbane trio Dune Rats announce the release of their new album Hurry Up And Wait, out Jan. 31, and share new single Crazy. Of the new single, the band says, “Crazy is one of our heavier songs that we wrote over in LA when we were surrounded by a lot of excess. Everyone is doing anything and everything because it’s available, whether it’s taking drugs, eating shitty food or being surrounded by technology. All this stuff at the end of the day, whilst awesome at the time, doesn’t leave you any better off even if it feels that way in the moment”.
14 | Clipping | Aquacode Databreaks (feat. Shabazz Palaces)
THE PRESS RELEASE: “You can now hear Clipping’s Aquacode Databreaks (feat. Shabazz Palaces), a new track from the group’s forthcoming single The Deep, available on Nov. 29. Clipping’s The Deep is a dark sci-fi tale about the underwater-dwelling descendants of African women thrown off slave ships and based on the mythology of Detroit electronic group Drexciya. The song was originally commissioned for a This American Life episode about Afrofuturism in 2017. The Deep also earned Clipping a nomination for a 2018 Hugo Award, and the band constructed a sound installation based on The Deep at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.”
15 | Horses on the Beach | Minds
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Horses On The Beach are an up and coming band from Falmouth that draws influence from a wide range of genres including Jazz, Funk, Latin, and Dub. After a summer of festivals including Boomtown, Port Elliot and Wonderfields, they have released this track to accompany their first UK tour. They have tried to recreate the energy of their live shows within the studio, taking inspiration from bands like The Cat Empire, Gentleman’s Dub Club and Backbeat Sound-system.“
16 | Neverlanded | Refuge
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Neverlanded, an alt-rock trio from London, have released their new single Refuge. The band, consisting of Pete Bloom (Guitars/Vocals), Niki Jester (Bass/Vocals) and Jaca Freer (Drums/vocals), recorded the song at Hermitage Studios with Margo Broom (Arrows of Love, Yassassin & Calva Louise) and had it mastered by Pete Maher (Pixies, Jack White & Linkin Park).”
