Following last years sold out EP 'Sista Valsen' and debut UK shows including sets at Supernormal and Liverpool Psych Fest – Flowers Must Die have a new album called 'Kompost' to be released on 28 April. You can watch the band-made video to the track 'Hit' exclusively via Loud and Quiet: Loud and Quiet The album is available for presale on ltd yellow vinyl from here: Rocket Shop The band are playing some shows to celebrate the launch of the album: 13 April / Kraken / Stockholm / Sweden 14 April / Crypt / Linkoping / Sweden 25 April / The Prince Albert / Brighton / UK 26 April / The Shacklewell Arms / London / UK 28 April / The Cube / Bristol / UK The press release reads: Flowers Must Die – Kompost Ask many self-styled music aficionados, and they’ll tell you that rock in the early to mid ‘70s descended into a mire of boundless self-indulgence and instrumental virtuosity. Not so in Sweden. For there, the egalitarian spirit that many thought revolutionary to punks in the UK was nothing new for the heads to be found enjoying the cult Swedish psychedelia of bands like Träd, Gräs och Stenar or Älgarnas Trädgård. It’s exactly this lineage forty plus years later where one can find Flowers Must Die, the six-piece Swedish outfit whose 'Kompost’ - their full-length debut on Rocket Recordings, home of Goat and Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - is a landmark moment for an outfit pursuing an improvisation-based approach removed from the codified realm of contemporary psych, and exploring uncanny and unhinged territory fuelled by diverse record collections yet unique to their own collective headspace. The band may have taken their name originally from an Ash Ra Tempel song, whilst both the strains of Amon Düül II and the repetition of Can lurk within these overgrown sonic pathways. Yet 'Kompost' shows them honing their improvisatory excursions into coherent songcraft amidst spectral techno and cosmic disco shapes, as the angular post-punk pop of The Sugarcubes sits alongside the narcotic clanguour of prime Royal Trux, and one-take spontaneity locks horns with nocturnal revelation. Here the outward-looking spirit of 1971 and the anything-goes mentality of the Scandinavian freaks of yore is transposed elegantly to a modern era in need of new horizons, and in a manner refreshingly bereft of retro chic. What's more, who's to say what dimensions this alchemical force have yet to explore. ---
It reads: It's a joke that's gone a bit too far!" laughs Matt Baty, frontman of Newcastle's quite phenomenally named Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. "We just want to play fun riffs," adds guitarist Sam Grant. Along with his fellow guitarist Adam Ian Sykes, we're speaking backstage in the affably dingy basement of Manchester's Soup Kitchen, the final leg of a three date tour that proves the fivesome to be something truly unusual.
There is, of course, that name, inspired by cabin fever after a 'particularly shit day' spent doing very little at Newcastle's Blank Studios. "We were like, 'let's start a band called fuckin' Pigs. Actually, let's call it Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and it'll be really obnoxious on posters,'" recalls Baty, yet it's what lies beyond the moniker that really sets the group apart. Debut album Feed The Rats, released on Rocket earlier this year... Read the rest of the interview here: The Quietus ---
GNOD have announced the following European tour dates in celebration of their forthcoming album 'Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine' April 13 / The Golden Lion / Todmorden / UK 14 / Elektrowerkz / London / UK 15 / Instant Chavires / Paris / France 16 / Mag 4 / Bruselles / Belgium 20-23 / Roadburn / Tilburg / Netherlands 25 / Cave 12 / Geneve / Switzerland 26 / Sonic / Lyon / France 27 / Blah Blah / Torino / Italy 28 / Bronson / Ravenna / Italy 29 / Gromka / Lubiana / Slovenia 30 / Donau Festival / Krems / Austria May 02 / Klub Famu / Prague / Czech Republic 03 / Urban Spreee / Berlin / Germany 04 / Gouvernment / Gent / Belgium 06 / Green Door Store / Brighton / UK 18 / Portland Arms / Cambridge / UK 19 / The Island / Bristol / UK 20 / The Crypt / Bristol / UK 21 / Church Of St. John / Bristol / UK 24 / The Cluny / Newcastle / UK 30 / Tape Denmark / Aarhus / Denmark 31 / 1000Fryd / Aalborg / Denmark June 01 / Loppen / Copehagen / Denmark 02 / Truckstop Alaska / Gothenborg / Sweden 03 / Plan B / Malmo / Sweden 04 / Tubnitz / Stubnitz / Germany 08 / Cardiff / Moon Cub / UK
It reads: Its shaping up to be a heavy, sludge encrusted week around here, so naturally I’ve set sights on the debut from UK space juggarnaut Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs or Pigs x7 as they are, mercifully, better known. The album is only three tracks long, but much like that heavy slab by Dhidalah yesterday, they’ve got no affinity for brevity and little remorse for unleashing a half ton torrent of noise upon the listener. The album opens with “Psychopomp,” clocking in just a tad over fifteen minutes of sludge, a suite of grit, blood and bile that feels like there may be no hope of ever seeing light again. Usually on a track pushing the stopwatch toward the quarter hour there’s an eye of the storm, or some sign of relent, but Pigs x7 open hot and pretty much clear cut any ounce of hope you had living in your system before the needle pop out of the groove. Read the full review here: Raven sings the blues ---
Teeth of the Sea join Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and many other great bands at this years Fat Out Festival in Salford on 14-16 April. Info and tickets here: Fat Out Fest Teeth of the Sea are also supporting Chrome at the Dome in London on Wednesday. Tickets here: Baba Yaga's Hut ---
As reported in a previous post Hills have revealed a track from their forthcoming album 'Alive at Roadburn' and you can check out the edit of 'Master Sleep' above. We have a limited amount of coloured vinyl available at the Rocket Store, the rest along with copies on Black will be available on release from all good record shops: Rocket Store ---
From GNOD's website: GNOD - Just say No …. T- shirts available NOW - £15.00 £5 from every online sale will go to a Manchester based homeless charity. 100% cotton ring spun Gildan shirts. SIZES - XL, L, M, S, LADIES L Email ingnodwetrust@hotmail.co.uk for orders and info ---
Bandcamp are donating 100% of their share made on all sales this Friday (tomorrow). It will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union. - The Quietus reported this: Following a ban placed on travel by citizens of seven majority Muslim countries to the US, the ACLU is working to make legal challenges against Donald Trump's actions with relation to this action as well as anticipated further plans by the Trump administration. "Like 98% of U.S. citizens (including the President), I am the descendant of immigrants—my great-grandparents came to America from Russia and Lithuania as teenagers and worked in sweatshops until they were able to afford to bring the rest of their families over," says a statement by Bandcamp founder and CEO Ethan Diamond. "It is an unequivocal moral wrong, a cynical attempt to sow division among the American people, and is in direct opposition to the principles of a country where the tenet of religious freedom is written directly into the Constitution," Diamond says of the Executive Order signed by Trump. The donations will apply to all sales made starting on Friday (February 1), at 12.01am Pacific Time, and in the 24-hour period following that. Read Diamond's full statement here. - You can buy Rocket vinyl, cds and downloads from our Bandcamp shop here: Rocket Bandcamp ---
We are excited to announce that Hills have the new album 'Alive at Roadburn' released on 17 March.
You can listen to an edit of 'Master Sleeps' exclusively via The Quietus here: the Quietus
The album will be available on LP/CD/DL & vinyl versions will be gatefold with artwork courtesy of Nik Payne of the Myrrors.
You can preorder the album on 'Double Ltd Beer & Cream Vinyl' Rocket Store
We have a limited amount on pre-order, the rest will be in shops both as the limited coloured at selected indie stores vinyl & standard black version elsewhere.
Alive at Roadburn is Gothenburg based Hills 3rd album with Rocket Recordings.
Hot off the Swedish Psychedelia revival of the past few years and after their hailed 2015 album ‘Frid’, Hills connect the dots to their countries rich and intoxicating past with a handful of new sepia-toned tunes.
Like their predecessors unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar, Hills penchant to stretch out beyond, performing what feels like openly casual exhortations into intricate eastern tones and primal hypnotic rhythms, the band illustrates that their sermons offer rational derangements of all the senses.
These four tracks sit deeply buried in oblivion, bones, skin, sweat, grooved with fearless intensity with no diminution of the interplay, spontaneity and feeling onstage, the band are entombed in mantric repetition while the vapour trail of The Byrds ‘Untitled’ epic; ‘Eight Miles High’ descend into an Elysian Field, where the dead enjoy happy tranquility, until they come to life and rise up again.
Alive in Roadburn summons the spirits of Swedish Midsummer celebration, the welcoming of the light of the longest day, as a people who have endured the long dark winter, their celebration of light, steeped in pagan roots are absorbed into the bands psyche and these tracks sit like Cairns on the Swedish landscape, built as monuments to Hills.
