Bit of a media blitz on this one, so bear with me. The Grand Astoria released the track “To Whom it May Concern” on a split with U.S. Christmas at the beginning of last month. The St. Petersburg, Russia, outfit went all out on it. The song is a 19-minute sprawl of psychedelic experimentation, rife with samples, winding riffs and ethereal flourishes and swirls. Don’t just take my word for it, though. They’ve put it up on their Bandcamp, so you can check it out here:

Pretty wild stuff. Over the course of their three albums — last year’s Omnipresence (review here), 2010’s II (review here) and 2009’s self-titled (On the Radar’ed here) — the band have quickly grown to cast a wide stylistic berth, but I think “To Whom it May Concern” is the farthest out The Grand Astoria have gone yet. Should be interesting to see what they do with it on tour, whether they strip it down or jam out on its space rocking elements. They hit the road on Friday, dates below (click to enlarge):

Ever ones for multi-media, they’ve also put together a video flyer for the run of shows, which they posted on the ol’ TubesofYou:

Now, they don’t really highlight it in there — presumably out of humility — but on this tour, The Grand Astoria will be taking part in Mudfest, which is happening Nov. 9-10 in Venlo, in the Netherlands, at Peron55. They’ll be playing with the likes of Sungrazer, Wheelfall, Kadavar, Black Bombaim, Glowsun and Belzebong on a stacked two-day bill. Here’s the poster for that one:

They’ve also announced they’ll play Roskilde Festival next year in Denmark. One would think this flurry of activity and the recently-issued split would be enough to keep The Grand Astoria busy, but according to a pic they recently posted on their Thee Facebooks, they’re also looking to have a new album out next spring. It may or may not be titled Punkadelica Supreme (though I certainly hope it is), and if you squint, you can check out the maybe-tracklisting below:

The really crazy part is, there’s probably more. I’m sure as we get closer to 2013 and the new album release, there’ll be further updates on The Grand Astoria and their manifold adventures, but that’s all my limited research skills could muster for the moment. In any case, plenty to look forward to, and if you want to check out more of their records, they’re all up on Bandcamp. Right on.

Tags: Russia, Setalight Records, St. Petersburg, The Grand Astoria

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012 at 10:12 am and is filed under Whathaveyou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.