Ryan Patterson's Fotocrime returns with a different approach, but the same punch and artistic vision for what he refers to as “electric Southern romanticism.” The project's third full length, Heart of Crime, will be coming out on August 27th, 2021 through Profound Lore.
Opposed to last year's great South Of Heaven which had detailed production by J. Robbins and included sessions recorded by Steve Albini in Chicago and Simon Small in London, the new album is a product of quarantine, with Patterson doing almost the entirety of the mixing and recording.
“This is by far the most direct and personal thing I’ve ever done in that 99% of everything on the recording is me,” the artist says. “It’s the first album I’ve ever recorded and mixed myself.”
First single and video, Delicate Prey, is a minimalistic, pulsating darkwave hit, with Patterson's croon and an unadorned style of production coming together to perfection.
“In my mind, Fotocrime is a meeting point between cold-war Europe and mid-century Americana,” Patterson comments. “DAF meets Roy Orbison, Portishead meets Ricky Nelson. Raymond Chandler and Paul Bowles go to see a Douglas Sirk and Carol Reed double feature.”
An aesthetically strong video comes with the song, directed, filmed and edited by Katie Lovecraft.
Leaning on the atmospheric side of shoegaze, German band, Swirlpool, deliver a balmy, dreamlike indie rocker, their new single, Cinnamon Sun. Following on from their EP, Camomile from 2018, and last year's standalone single, Spinning In Reverse, Swirlpool give rise to a warm and mature style of shoegaze, hinting at bands like Slowdive and Catherine Wheel.
Cinnamon Sun comes with an accordingly artful accompanying music video which features well constructed collage art animations, directed by Julius Bigott.
With their dreamy and airy qualities in display, Swirlpool easily achieve a level of surreal without diverging much from the genre's tested essentials, and sound placed in a kind of high flown ethereality while at the same time they appear completely lucid.
Having previously been part of the goth-bent shoegaze band, C’est la Mort, married couple Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar) are joined by former Death Cab for Cutie / Long Winters drummer Michael Schorr, and form Fotoform, a trio with a bold sound which lifts heavily from both the post punk vanguard and the more atmospheric side of shoegaze.
The band released their self-titled debut in 2017, followed a Part-Time Punks Sessions EP the next year, and began recording their impending album, Horizons, before the 2020 lockdown, including Evan Foster (Boss Martians, The Sonics, Dirty Sidewalks) and later drummer Matt Bayles (Minus the Bear, Mastodon, Pearl Jam).
Kim House has a long statement about Running, the album's first single and its accompanying video: "Running was the first song we wrote with the new lineup (myself, Geoff, Michael), almost a statement of purpose as we rethought how we approached our sound and writing. With one less guitar we had more space to play with and fill- or intentionally not fill. It was inspiring, and in some ways freeing, to reconstruct and re-envision everything. I’d just started playing around with a drum machine and 16-track at home, and this one was a result of really stripping back everything to the bass and vocals and then building it up from there.
"At its core Running is about peeling back the layers to connect with your innermost self. Summoning the courage, patience and stillness to distill it down and uncover what truly matters, to listen to our hearts and tap into the subconscious. It’s about facing fears and insecurities and having the courage to go after what will truly make you happy (or “make your heart happy” as my dad would say), which oftentimes might be in the opposite direction of what we’re running toward, whether in relationships, life paths and choices, etc.
"The hardest thing sometimes is to look deep within and listen to ourselves, to follow our instincts and face what we may know is true but are too afraid to admit for fear of change, risk, loss, disappointment, or failure.
"On a personal level, Running was written in the midst of a period of significant change and reflection. I had just left my role as Footwear Design Director at Nordstrom. It was a whirlwind of a job I held for many years – one which required lots of travel in the US and Europe, intense long hours, and barely enough room for other passions or pursuits. It was rewarding, but almost all encompassing."
More of Fotoform's many-sided post punk is expected in the near future, as the band prepared to return to touring, and are already writing for their next releases, including a split with legends, Savage Republic.
Midwestern post black metal genre-bending act, Chrome Waves, dig deeper into the heavy shoegaze aspect of their sound with new single, Sometimes. The band have announced their third full length, following from the very good, Where We Live, from last year. The Rain Will Cleanse will be available on September 10th, 2021 via Transcending Records (LP/CD) and through Chrome Waves/Disorder Recordings (cassette/digital).
On their previous album the band showed their intentions to hold back some of the extreme heaviness, something which seems to also be the new direction of the impending album. Sometimes leaps out for its sentimentality, as well as for its bold, brilliant sound scheme and the great production, all of which result in the song to be striking as an absolutely massive and electric hit.
Carrying a lot of sentimentality and sorrowfulness, post punk greats, Pink Turns Blue, release new single, You Still Mean Too Much To Me, a track about grief and overcoming the death of a loved one.
The band describe: "Torn between hate, very bad feelings and at the same not being able to let go at all. As there is no understanding why you fall in love with someone in the first place, there is also no reasoning or understanding for love to end."
The track will be part of the influential band's upcoming full length, Tainted, expected out in September 2021 through Berlin's Orden Records.
The continually dark proclivity in all of the work of Pink Turns Blue is now presented as a more heartfelt and earthier venture into post punk's underground, yet, approachable courses.
It's a frequent occurrence among the heavy rock realm for artists known for their heavier creative endeavors to try out more stripped down sounds, and enter the singer/songwriter field. It turns out that Brian Cook of Russian Circles, SUMAC, Botch, These Arms Are Snakes and more, is quite good doing that, as the first single of his solo project Torment & Glory is a delicate and poetic charmer.
Torment & Glory’s debut, We Left a Note with an Apology, will be out on August 27th, 2021 through Sargent House, a work which spans more than a decade of writing and conception, and has gone through a few obstacles until its final realization. With the project's inception sparked after a sincere listening session of Bruce Springsteen masterpiece, Nebraska, Cook seems to have created something very different, yet, correlated with his established musical sophistication.
Clearly, Brian is also a very expressive singer, although singing hasn't been exactly effortless since 2019 when he suddenly lost his voice. “It’s just one of those things,” the doctors said. “Maybe your voice will come back tomorrow. Maybe it’ll come back in a few months. But be prepared; it may not come back at all.” Eventually it returned after six months, not at its full extent. “My voice still cracks and warbles in certain note ranges,” Cook says. “It seemed like a good idea to try to rehabilitate my voice by singing, so I started adding vocals to the little fingerpicking melodies I’d developed over the years.”
First example off Torment & Glory’s debut is No Big Crime, coming alongside a music video directed by Bobby Markos / DocumaVision. We Left a Note with an Apology was fully performed by Cook, and mixed by his friend, Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe).
“All the songs are a reflection on youth and the reckless behavior that serves as a rite of passage,” Cooke comments. “It’s a way of atoning for some of the more aimless acts of rebellion I dabbled in during my young adult years.”
Cornwall three-piece, Mildred Maude, deliver an improvisational take on gazey, atmospheric noise rock, and they have already made a strong impression for their live presence. The band have played shows alongside Gwenno, Bonnacons of Doom, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, and opened for The Fall at one of Mark E. Smith’s last gigs. They recently signed with Sonic Cathedral, and their new track, the ten-minute standout, Trevena, is their first release for the label.
"Trevena was the first thing we recorded in this session," says drummer Louie Newlands. "It was just supposed to be a warm-up, really, so Lee played the bassline from a gig we’d done in Tywardreath the night before and Matt had just come up with a new guitar tuning and was getting a feel for it, but it turned out good, so we kept it. We named it after our lovely friend Chris Trevena who comes to most of our gigs and recording sessions to document our activities with photos. He also ended up making the video for this song."
Trevena is a terrific noisy shoegazer which undeniably verges on post rock by way of its tone, lengthiness and structure. It's ten enjoyable minutes which fly by like a breeze, while they make clear Mildred Maude's evident, multilayered elaboration.
It's very early to be considering the first interesting albums of 2022, but it already seems that UK's Cassels will be making the list with their upcoming fourth full length, A Gut Feeling, expected out February 2022 via God Unknown Records. First single, Mr Henderson Coughs, is an acidic and bitter narration of a person's declining psyche, delivered through the duo's fierce noise rock/post punk flair.
Brothers Jim and Loz describe the song as "a story of grey areas, extenuating circumstances, and misguided attempts at redemption. It could be seen as darkly comic, but that depends on how dark your sense of humour is."
It's one of the most playful, yet, consistently dark takes on contemporary post punk, and it details a rather vivid picture from start to finish.
Yorkshire, South London-based post punk band, DEADLETTER return with their new single, Monday Night Terrors, flaunting neat production courtesy of Theo Verney (TRAAMS, Lazarus Kane, FEET), as well as their own ability to combine a storytelling style of prose with bursting brashness, hinting at great post punk acts such as The Fall and Gang of Four.
Monday Night Terrors is themed on nightmares, and it finds the band delivering a very expressing performance.
Singer and frontman Zac Lawrence comments on the new single: "Monday Night Terrors is a response to a severely terrifying series of early-hours nightmares I experienced. I had three dreams within one another, like three Russian-doll polythene bags wrapped around my head. Upon my perceived awakening from each dream, further horrors occurred, to the point that when I finally awoke, I was unable to tell whether or not I truly was sentient, as the horror continued."
DEADLETTER are Zac Lawrence (vocals), George Ullyott (bass) Will King (guitar), Alfie Husband (drums).
Liz Harris' Grouper is reaching the impressive amount of twelve albums, with the upcoming Shade expected to be released on October 22nd, 2021 through Kranky.
Parts of the new full length were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency a while ago; other pieces are even older and were created in Portland, and the rest of the album was laid down during recent sessions in Astoria.
First example off the coming album is Unclean Mind, a piece of raw acoustic fragility and beauty, and it finds the artist channeling partly obscure folk from the sixties and seventies, as well as more contemporary indie sounds, always through a distinctive experimental and experiential filter.
Grouper outlines Shade as "an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How we frame ourselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames ourselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping our connection to place."
