i think i better follow you around

Burial Clouds have shared the first single, “Cloudsplitter”, off their upcoming album “Last Days Of A Dying World” out May 12th via Church Road Records.

TRACKLIST:
01. Cloudsplitter
02. Beirut Shores
03. Seawall
04. Ether Fields
05. Death, Emperor

Burial Clouds were originally an instrumental band, but have recently been joined on vocals by actor/musician Michael Malarkey (Vampire Diaries, Project Blue Book, Westworld).

With roots firmly planted in the heavy metal traditions of the Pacific Northwest, Burial Clouds’ music bears a dim light in a dark land; an emotional response to the human experience of life in a decaying empire.

Drawing influences from doom, psychedelia, post-metal, and grunge, Burial Clouds‘ well crafted songwriting is ambitious in sonic scope. Heavy without being cliche, complex without falling into self-indulgence and epic without pretension.

The band has a couple of shows lined up: 3/25 – Seattle, WA – Substation. 3/26 – Portland, OR – High Water Mark. 8/17 – Bristol, UK – Arctangent Festival.

Lanterns On The Lake have shared the first single, “The Likes Of Us”, off their upcoming album out June 2nd via Bella Union.

TRACKLIST:

1. The Likes of Us
2. Real Life
3. Vatican
4. String Theory
5. Thumb of War
6. The Saboteur
7. Locust
8. Rich Girls
9. Last Transmission

Hazel Wilde said this about the album: “Writing songs requires a certain level of self-indulgence, and songwriters can be prone to dwelling on themselves. Motherhood made me aware of having a different stake in the world. I’ve got to believe that there’s a better way and an alternative future to the one we’ve been hurtling towards. I’ve also got to believe that I could be better as a person, too.”

Wilde also shared this about having Phillip Selway joining in on drums: “Philip brought an energy to the songs that reignited our belief in them. Within a few weeks we had a whole other version of the album and things felt very different. We had changed the destiny of the record.”

The band will go on a UK tour starting in November. No news yet on a USofA (or Tijuana) tour yet.

Esben and the Witch have shared the second single, “True Mirror”, off their upcoming album “Hold Sacred” out May 12th.

A true mirror is a mirror that shows you as you really are.

This is a woman in black and white confronting her reflection, seeking the truth in the grey fog where self-loathing meets self-love.

Embrace the shadow self.

Via a previous press release the band had shared this about the album: “This record was born in a hot mosquito summer in a terracotta villa an hour outside of Rome. It bloomed in winter on an abandoned beach in a fishing village close to Porto, overlooking the Atlantic. It found form in a gîte in the middle of the French countryside and grew in a ramshackle old house, full of old cloaks and books in rural Germany.

Protect what is precious. Hold Sacred.”

Massimo Pupilo, Malcolm McDowell & Gabriele Tinti have shared they will release “Songs Of Stone” on March 10th via Subsound Records.

TRACKLIST:
1. No Respite
2. A Shadow Sparkles On The Ancient
3. At The Bottom Of The Stone
4. Between The Eyes
5. Heavy In The Bowels

Below you will find a small snippet of what to look forward to in the album.

“Songs Of Stone” is a musical project based on several epigrams, elegies and laments that Gabriele Tinti composed inspired by epigraphs from the ancient world. It arises from the wish to sustain the necessary link that joins us to the rituals of the past. The inscription on durable material was one of the languages the ancients used to oppose the transience of oral expression, wishing to conserve their words in time. The readings are made by Malcolm McDowell.

Tinti’s words and the actor’s vocal performance are put together by Massimo Pupillo in a work intended to transgress the confines between reality and ancient mythology. Massimo has created an imaginary landscape, creating a visionary theatre for Gabriele Tinti ‘s words, a sound world born and based on the precise and eloquent vocal timbre of Malcolm McDowell Using a plethora of different sources, various synthesis, samples of eastern European choirs, processing McDowells’ voice, ‘Songs of Stone’ will bring the listener in a twilight zone between dreams and mythology, where remote past and future horizons meet.

Dave Lombardo has shared the news of the release of his first solo album, “Rites Of Percussion”, which will come out May 5th via Ipecac.

TRACKLIST:

1. Initiatory Madness
2. Separation from the Sacred
3. Inner Sanctum
4. Journey of the Host
5. Maunder in Liminality
6. Despojo
7. Interfearium
8. Blood Let
9. Warpath
10. Guerrero
11. Vicissitude
12. Omiero
13. Animismo

The first single off the album is “Journey Of The Host” with a video done by Oleg Rooz.

Lombardo shared this about the album and the process of creating it: “Mike Patton originally gave me the idea as far back as 1998. He introduced me to Tito Puente’s Top Percussion album. I was already familiar with Tito and was a bit shocked that Patton was so musically diverse, and that he surrounded himself with musicians of the same mindset. That inspired me. I have had ideas that I’ve recorded on cassette over the years, but Patton kept insisting that I had to do a ‘drum album.’ So, the idea behind the album is years in the making. I just had to find the right time—for me—to do it. When the pandemic hit, I thought, ‘Well, I can’t tour now. I immediately started working on the record. It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. I had my studio, all my drums. Nothing was in storage for once! My home became a place where I could be free and creative. On the one hand, the touring part of my livelihood had been taken away, but on the other, I finally had the time to educate myself on different software and recording techniques. It was a very educational and gratifying experience.”

SQÜRL have announced the release of their debut album, “Silver Haze”, out May 5th via Sacred Bones.

TRACKLIST:

1. Berlin ‘87
2. The End of The World
3. Garden Of Glass Flowers [feat. Marc Ribot]
4. She Don’t Wanna Talk About It [feat. Anika]
5. Il Deserto Rosso [feat. Marc Ribot]
6. John Ashbery Takes A Walk [feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg]
7. Queen Elizabeth
8. Silver Haze

The first single off the album is for the track opener, “Berlin ’87”, with a video directed by Jem Cohen. Cohen shares this about the video: “Roaming Central and Eastern Europe soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, backpack crammed with Super 8 cameras, I was deeply moved by the landscape. I couldn’t have guessed some of the footage would surface over a quarter-century later in a film for Jim and Carter’s band. They work hard to forge their expansive sound, with its indomitable beat and secret harmonics. Glad I had that backpack, and to be of service.”

SQÜRL said this about working with Cohen: “SQÜRL is so happy to have a film by Jem Cohen to accompany the first single, ‘Berlin ’87,’ from our new album Silver Haze. He’s one of our favorite filmmakers, and with his magical hands and eyes, he somehow captures the most evocative details that most people don’t even notice. The images he has chosen and shaped so perfectly evoke the feeling of our music, and then elevate it to another level. Our big thanks to you, Jem!”

SQÜRL is Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan and they’ve been scoring Jarmusch movies since “The Limits Of Control” and they’ve released a few EP’s, yet this is their first proper album.

The album was produced by Randall Dunn, who’s worked with Boris, Sunno))), Cloud Nothings, Marisa Nadler and many others. The album features collaborations with Marc Ribot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika.

SQÜRL has not announced any tour dates yet. They did just finish a UK/EU tour so hopefully one will be announced soon.

James Ellis Ford (Simian Mobile Disco, The Last Shadow Puppets) has shared the first single, “I Never Wanted Anything”, off his upcoming solo album “The Hum” out May 12th via Warp Records.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Tape Loop #7”
02 “Pillow Village”
03 “I Never Wanted Anything”
04 “Squeaky Wheel”
05 “The Yips”
06 “Golden Hour”
07 “The Hum”
08 “Caterpillar”
09 “Emptiness”
10 “Closing Time”

The video for the track was created / directed by Trevor Jackson. James Ellis Ford shared this about the song: “I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve managed to keep doing what I do. When I play music and I get the feeling that it’s going to be amazing? That’s literally the buzz that I chase every day.”

Regarding the the album he shared this: “I was making tracks and thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll send this to Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys).’” Ford says. “It genuinely did cross my mind that I could make an album with a lot of guest features, but it just felt braver for me to do it on my own. With technology it’s easy to fix ‘mistakes’ after the event, and I really hate this point we’ve arrived at in recording history,” he says. “So I didn’t put things in time and didn’t even edit on the computer. Because of the approaching AI nightmare, humanness is the main positive quality you can add to a record”.

No tour dates have been announced yet for the USofA (nor Tijuana).

Crocodiles have share the second single, “Love Beyond The Grave”, off their upcoming album “Upside Down In Heaven” out April 7th via Lolipop Records.

The video for the song was directed by Kate Clover.

Charles Rowell shares this about the video / song: “Kate is astounding. She’s a constant inspiration, and I feel like we’ve been chasing her since we first met. For both videos she was there and her eye for aesthetics is impeccable. Amidst all the chaos of life there is one certain truth – that we will all die. Being a fan of heavy metal and books by such writers as Anne Sexton and Allen Ginsberg, I find it quite comforting to write about death. I probably have more t-shirts with skulls on them then I do any other article of clothing. I’ve lost many friends and most of my immediate family and the train never stops moving from station to station. The lyrics follow a person who’s scared by the living and revisits past haunts in an attempt to distort normality and find true love with the spirits that inhabit this world; from hometowns to historic street corners.”

Rowell shares this about the album: “Our idea was to make an energetic punk record touching upon a lot of our favorite sounds, from ’70s NYC, to ’80s/’90s UK. Our approach was more like a garage band for this album: Plug in and bash it out. Shout it loud and let the energy come across.”

The band will go on tour starting in April with the first show taking place in Tijuana on April 19th at Moustache.

Hayden has shared a single, “On A Beach”, off his new album “Are We Good” out April 5th via Arts & Crafts.

TRACKLIST:

1. “East Coast”
2. “We Danced”
3. “On A Beach” Feat. Feist
4. “Terry Cloth Blue (Every Single Thing)”
5. “Nothing Wrong”
6. “Are We Good”
7. “Window Washer Blues”
8. “Miss Fort Erie”
9. “It’s Just Me”
10. “Lay This In My Mind”
11. “Can’t Happen Now”

The video for the song was directed by Yael Staav, and it stars Steve Buscemi and Matt Berninger.

Hayden shared this about the song: “One afternoon February 2021 I was asleep at my piano when I received a text from my friend Leslie (Feist), inviting me to be a part of a songwriting workshop with several other musicians of note. I was terrified, but joined in as an attempt to jolt myself out of submission. The idea was to write a song a day for seven consecutive days, sharing them later each evening with the other writers. A great combination of pure feet to the fire expression and accountability. “On A Beach” was my “day four” submission. I continued tinkering with the song and recording in the following weeks, adding a bridge, tracking several synth lines to try to create what I thought hypnosis may sound like. A few weeks later, Leslie was in town and I invited her to sing on a newer verse I’d written to make the song more of a conversation. Who better than the best, and the one who basically made the song happen in the first place”.