Italy’s Clap! Clap!, the project of producer, songwriter and live performer Cristiano Crisci, is set to release a new album following his 2014 debut Tayi Bebba. The new record, A Thousand Skies, slated for a February 17th release via Black Acre, depicts the journey of a young girl through the stars. The record combines samples and live instrumentation, and draws from many genres, from Hip Hop and Footwork to UK Bass and House.
A Thousand Skies features collaborations with guests like South African folk singer Bongeziwe Mabandla, John Wizards and HDADD. One of Clap! Clap!’s favourite bands, and ours too, OY, also joined forces with with him on one of the songs, ‘Hope’, on vocals and co-production. The track has been paired with an animated video directed by Simone Brillarelli and Jonathan Calugi. Watch it now.
In support of his upcoming album, Clap! Clap! has announced several live dates in Europe and the US, starting today in Italy and including a show at London’s Moth Club on April 21st.
Category Archives: Blog
The Octopus Project announce sixth studio album Memory Mirror
It’s been a while since The Octopus Project released a full-length album and the good news is that is about to change. Comes April 7th, the Austin based experimental pop quartet will release their sixth studio album, Memory Mirror, via their own Robot High School label. The band enlisted Danny Reisch (Shearwater, White Denim) & Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, Flaming Lips) for production duties and Greg Calbi (David Bowie, Talking Heads) for mastering duties on the new album.
April seems far away but we can already hear their first single ‘Wrong Gong’, exuding their usual fun and colour. Listen to it now.
Saltland returns with second album A Common Truth
There’s a new album on the way from Saltland, following her 2013 magical and outstanding debut I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us. The enchanting Montreal based cellist Rebecca Foon, known as a founding member of Esmerine and a former member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire To Flames, amongst many other projects and collaborations, is also a climate consultant, involved and dedicated to the fight for climate justice. Her upcoming album, A Common Truth, explores themes of climate change and sustainability. The album “is a sonic meditation on climate change: the hope, diligence, anxiety, sadness and desperation of the climate movement and of our collective consciousness as social fabrics become increasingly frayed and scorched by fossil fuel dependency and environmental degradation”, describes the press release. A Common Truth, it adds, sees “Foon unfold[ing] an atmosphere and pace on the album that allows for the coexistence of optimism and despair, resolve and resignation, the intimacy of the local/personal and the hope of the global/collective.”
Unlike Saltland’s previous album which featured several collaborators, A Common Truth is mainly a solo effort, with cello being “the predominant source for all the music and sounds”, except for Warren Ellis’ contribution on violin and pump organ on four instrumentals.
Recorded by The Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lasek, the record arrives on March 31st via Constellation. Luckily, we can already wrap our wars around the moving and magnificent first single ‘I Only Wish This For You’. Here it is.
Watch PVT’s new video for ‘Another Life’
Photo: Mclean Stephenson
Last week PVT shared ‘Another Life’, the second single off their eagerly awaited fifth album, New Spirit, set for release on February 17th via Felte. Now the track has been paired with a stunning video, directed by Jim Pallon, who had this to say about it:
“‘Another Life’ hit me square in the chest. This song communicated truths to me in a most visceral way. Visions of a remote community came to mind, a place where true grit and character are defined.
I recalled a location scout in the mountains of central Romania. I had come upon a farming community located at the highest peak. I knew that this was the place.
The shoot was unlike anything else. The community radiated a cinematic glow. Capturing the final moments of the video were particularly memorable. There was an unfamiliar energy in the air, something altogether unreal. It humbled us to appreciate the moment for what it was.”
Watch the video below.
PVT have also announced a European tour in support of New Spirit, including a London show on April 14th at Kamio. Check all their live dates below.
April 19th – Kamio, London UK
April 21st – Charlatan, Gent BE
April 22nd – Kulturfabrik (Out of The Crowd Festival), Esch-sur-Alzette LU
April 25th – Metronum, Toulouse FR
April 26th – Iboat, Bordeaux FR
April 27th – La Fourmi, Limoges FR
April 28th – Le Point Ephemere (PZZLE Festival), Paris FR
Tonstartssbandht share title track from upcoming album Sorcerer
Florida / New York brothers Andy and Edwin White are the pair behind Tonstartssbanht, which is pronounced tahn-starts-bandit. Their 2011’s Now I Am Become is finally being followed up with a new full-length album entitled Sorcerer. Set for release on March 24th via Mexican Summer, the album sees them “chart a heavenly course above the storm and stress, one explored over years of touring and a poetic language forged between performers and siblings”, as the press release describes. Sorcerer comprises three expansive tracks, each one “form[ing] depictions of Tonstartssbandht’s boundless spirit; ambitious noise rock narratives buoyed in a swampy sonic scene of delay, distortion, and virtuosic interplay”.
Clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and navigating the realms of many genres, from psychedelia, low-fi pop to rock and blues, the album’s epic title track, which is also the shortest of the three, is being offered as the first single. Take a listen below.
In other related good news, Tonstartssbandht have announced a string of UK live dates ahead of the album’s release. Check their full run of dates below.
February 20th – Moth Club, London
February 23rd – Worksman Club, Dublin
February 24th – Shipping Forecast, Liverpool
February 25th – Soup Kitchen, Manchester
February 26th – The Joker, Brighton
Constellation announces new album from Matthew Patton’s project Those Who Walk Away
When there’s new releases on Constellation, we know better to take note. So meet Winnipeg based composer Matthew Patton, who is the latest artist to join the label. Under the moniker Those Who Walk Away, Patton is set to release several works, the first of which is entitled The Infected Mass and will see the light of day on March 17th.
Recorded in Winnipeg and Reykjavik, the album is described as “a haunted and profoundly emotive requiem of minimalist composition that combines ghostly strings and choral voices with musique concrète”. Patton elaborates on the album:
“There is something very genuine and at the same time very wrong in what I am doing. The recordings are very disturbing; as we listen to these cockpit voice recordings, real people are about to die. I don’t know why I am doing something that feels so wrong. But I am. This work is disturbingly personal for me. The music is filled with ghosts and artifacts I couldn’t erase. It is filled to the saturation point with a pathology which infects everything, of decayed memories haunted by the ghost of my brother, who was killed in a plane crash.”
We can already get a taster of The Infected Mass with two delicate and affecting movements, ‘First Degraded Hymn’ and ‘First Partially Recollected Conversation’. Take a listen now.
