After the gothic electronica bent Happier Happyless which introduced their coming debut album, Swedish trio, Spunsugar, re-enter the shoegaze territories and the sharp guitar-laden sound of their previous work with their dynamic new single, Run.

"We call ourselves an alternative rock band with shoegaze influences," the band describe their own act. "Sound wise, imagine if Alternative Nation on MTV 1997 and a drum machine fall into a cotton candy machine. The cotton candy wheel breaks and derails. We grew up farmer offsprings, bible belt kids of fundamentalists and trailer trash in small towns of Sweden. These are our references and this shapes our sound."

Run maintains the dark angle of Spunsugar's recent single, but through it the band sounds tenser than before. Straight away the song becomes part of a subtly differing pair of tracks, both of which put on show the prospects of the group's upcoming full length.

Drive-Through Chapel was produced by Joakim Lindberg at Studio Sickan, Malmö, and it comes out on October 2nd, 2020 via Adrian Recordings.




Pre-orders


Spunsugar Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram





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A consistently emerging act from Copenhagen's underground alternative rock scene, Leizure's post punk drive bears resemblance and induces comparison to Iceage whom they have also supported live in the past. The band have been on the rise since their initiation in 2016, and they conveys a kind of impassioned darkness founded on a very strong style of instrumentation, including sharp guitars, an anchored rhythm section and a hard edged saxophone, next to the fervid vocals by frontman Zakarias Sanderson.

Leizure's session is the latest one unveiled off the highly regarded series of live performances at Aarhus' Tapetown Studio. The band have recently released, Caveman, a single from their coming album, Primal Hymns, and they're expected to appear at this year's Uhørt festival which showcases the emerging talents of Denmark.




tapetownstudio.com/




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By way of their first recordings and their intense live act, New York's Pure Adult have made fans out of IDLES' Joe Talbot and Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers, unsurprisingly so, given the band's proneness toward an avant garde and forward looking post punk sound which mingles elements from noise rock, krautrock, hardcore punk and experimental passages which even flirt with jazz, all amalgamated into an ultra bizarre assortment.

Mise en Scène, their newest single, borrows its ideological terminology from theorist Jean Baudrillard, panopticism and simulacra, and it is a cry of existential distress, a work of dystopian hyper-reality, arriving alongside an equally perturbing, surrealistic video.

Pure Adult are composed of Jeremy Snyder and Bianca Abarca. Mise en Scène follows the duo's self-titled EP from 2019, and it was put together at Brooklyn’s Studio G and the rising act's home studio. “A lot of the sections of this song were recorded completely separately, on different days with different recording setups and pieced together later,” Snyder explains. “I’m very inspired by bands like This Heat who were known for this kind of experimentation.”

Joe Talbot describes his fondness of Pure Adult: “They marry all that I love in music and violence. And like all good pugilists, they win.” Acordingly, Oliver Ackermann says: “The pure raw energy of the band captivates and doesn’t let up.”






Spotify



Pure Adult Facebook | Instagram




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Leeds-based psychedelic garage rockers, Magick Mountain, have just unveiled Infinity X2, their second single ahead of their coming debut album, Weird Feelings, expected out in its entirety on October 23rd, 2020.

Arriving with a completely traditional approach, and also with a dynamic sound which borders on proto-punk, yet, feels extremely fresh and invigorating, the new single is an exceedingly fuzzy punk rocker. The song balances its noisy grit with colorful psychedelia and underlying melodiousness, leading to something that could have belonged in one of the obscure garage rock anthologies from the sixties which were notably loaded with analogous sounds.

"It's a psychedelic, punk love song," the band describe, "a direct nod to the idea of being so close to someone that worlds, thoughts and imagined futures merge together. A combination of Magick Mountain's love of breakneck speed and fuzzed out sound, verses filled with driving mantras melt into a gnarly, psyched up breakdown."

Magick Mountain are Lins Wilson (Grammatics, Mother Vulpine) on guitar and vocals, Tom Hudson (Pulled Apart By Horses) on bass and vocals, and Nestor Matthews (Sky Larkin, Menace Beach) on drums.



Spotify



Magick Mountain Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram




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Last month Danish synthwave creator, Code Elektro, revealed a first demonstration from his live act with a full group, the impressive Wolf Live 2020 which he now follows with another piece of analogous retrowave intensity, maximized by the band's strong live delivery.

Once again gravitating toward an industrial rock sound, N30n Live 2020 is an exciting instrumental piece which smartly exploits its repetitiveness and flaunts its evident cinematic properties, as it becomes another fine example of Code Elektro's convincing and hard-hitting live act.

N30n Live 2020 was captured at a full venue in February 2020.



Spotify



Code Elektro Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram




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Following their recent run of excellent new singles, Hamburg's Kraków Loves Adana announced the upcoming release of their next album, and have just unveiled another superb track and visual ahead of it. Don't Ask Why sets the tone for the rest of Darkest Dreams, the band's fifth album which is expected out September 25th, 2020 through the eclectic Italians Do It Better.

A dark and easy on the ears synthpop cut, Don't Ask Why, is a wonderful piece of well expressed esotericism, and one of the most tuneful and memorable tracks of the band's recent few.

Singer Deniz Çiçek says of the new song: "Don’t Ask Why describes the moment when you step outside this comfort zone, see things from a different perspective and therefore come to terms with your own apathy and sadness."

Darkest Dreams was put together in the course of two years in the group's home studio in Germany, and like its title implies, it deals with the idealistic concept of desires, dreams and fantasies.






Artist photo courtesy of the band



Kraków Loves Adana Facebook | Twitter | Instagram




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For something immensely heavy and fully unconventional, Ontario's Acid Womb come up with a powerful, weighty sound which draws from old school death metal and modern hardcore, and culminates in a compound that's totally fresh, alive with energy and completely the band's own.

Acid Womb have released a couple of singles thus far, the latest of which is the feverish savagery of The Upheaval, a boisterous piece with enormous instrumental power, expressive, deeply growling vocals and a fascinating compositional structure which sets the bar pretty high, as the band prepare for the release of their upcoming debut EP, Grief, expected soon.

Although it doesn't design around the standards and the main virtues of death metal in general, Acid Womb's early work takes extreme metal heaviness to a new level in an odd and very much propitious manner.



Spotify


Acid Womb Facebook | Instagram





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Two years after their debut EP, Round Dreams, Ontario based dreampop band, Talking Violet, return with a standalone single which continues in the same hazy and dreamlike ways of their previous offering.

Indigo is a harmonious piece of gazey dreampop mistiness which takes apparent cues from analogous sounds from the nineties, especially form the dreamier side of alternative rock, and bands like Slowdive and Mazzy Star, while it also presents a more underground-prone, subtler but still recognizable slowcore angle.

The band's instrumentals once again turn out very well and considerately constructed, while vocalist Jill Goyeau’s soft and fragile perfomance blooms quite finely.

Indigo comes with a good looking clip of fittingly hazy VHS-style visuals, directed by Lourdes Lasala.

Talking Violet consist of Jill Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jay Turnbull (vocals, guitar), Nate Blackton (vocals, bass) and Jeremie Brousseau (drums).






Video directed by Lourdes Lasala



Talking Violet Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram



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As was foreseeable, Bandcamp Fridays will be extended throughout the rest of 2020, held on the first Friday of every month, in order to support artists impacted by the pandemic. Today August 7th, 2020 is the first of the newly announced batch, and it will be followed by four more dates, on September 4th, October 2nd, November 6th and December 4th, 2020.

For our highlights of this particular dates we selected a few Bandcamp Friday regulars, like Marissa Nadler who put out another enjoyable set of lo-fi demos, and Crippled Black Phoenix whose live shows are usually unmissable and their newest offering comes from a 2015 recording in Slovakia.

Nadja released an album of great drone mixes from older material as well as from something yet to be announced, and purveyors of extreme noise, Full Of Hell, offered their fifth part of their ongoing series FOH NOISE.

The series of the Engine Kid re-releases continues with their EP, Astronaut, which was originally out in 1993 through C/Z Records.

As far as archival releases go, Boris outshined them all, with a massive six-CD worth of material, Archive Volume Zero to Five, featuring three live albums reissued as Archive I (Vol. 1, 2, & 3), and early demos together with a compilation of live recordings which comprise Archive II (Vol. 4, 5, & 0), and span the great albums Heavy Rocks, Akuma no Uta, dronevil -final-, mabuta no ura, and PINK.

Regarding new material, Lingua Ignota unveiled another odd cover, this time for Chris Isaak's Wicked Game.

Rarities 1 is one of the few Sonic Youth releases that came out today. Those include their sessions for their music for Ken Friedman’s Made In USA film, and a couple of live shows, all of which are more than worth to check out.

There's also an EP by DC post hardcore veterans, Edsel and a sole demo of a song from On Dark Horses by Emma Ruth Rundle, that round out our recommendations for the day, however, new music and releases keep popping up during the day, so mind the feed.
















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Nest is the third single from Flaw, the anticipated new LP by Southern Californian band, Iress, whose amalgamation of heavy, doomy rock, shoegaze and post punk has been quite imposing through the first couple of pieces that the album has originated.

Keeping up with the recurring ocean theme which runs throughout the whole record, Nest unsurprisingly comes quite tough to place, and it fuses a set of disparate types and genres in the most consummate of ways, while it juxtaposes its massive heaviness with a more approachable songwriting style, equivalent to that of the venerated alternative rock nineties, but always forward looking.

Flaw is expected to be a pragmatic album which deals which themes as real as addiction, despondency and despair. It was recorded and produced by Sarah Tudzin, mixed by Collin Pastore, and mastered by Jett Galindo, and it releases September 18th, 2020.





Iress Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram





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