This is a good show. It’s telling that Ripple Music can pick out a spot in a country like France, Germany or Sweden — not to mention any number of US locales — and say, yeah, let’s do a festival there, and have enough bands in the area to fill out a lineup. And I guess what it tells you is the label has a lot of bands associated with it, but also that Cali-based Ripple‘s international reach has continued to grow, and as much as it seems like they got a package deal at Costco on bands from Texas, they can still piece together a two-dayer like this and have it be a killer and diverse-sounding group of acts playing.

Incidentally, the Costco Texas-band unit pricing is sick. Just kidding, Texas. But they do breed ’em riffy down there.

Also in France, it seems. Also pretty much everywhere. Whatever else you might say about this time — plenty — never doubt you’re living in a golden age of heavy rock. Ripple Music has become a big part of why.

From the PR wire:

First edition of stoner and doom festival RIPPLEFEST FRANCE announced on March 18-19th in Nantes; tickets available now!

Ripple Music presents the first edition of RippleFest France, the stoner and doom festival to take place on March 18-19th at Le Michelet in Nantes, with Los Disidentes Del Sucio Motel, The Necromancers, Stonebirds, Kabbalah, Appalooza, Tremor Ama, Fire Down Below, Electric Jaguar Baby and Birds Of Nazca.

After California, England, Germany and Sweden, US stoner and doom powerhouse Ripple Music is treating French heavy rock aficionados with the first edition of RippleFest France. This celebration of the genre will feature bands from the Ripple roster, as well as a fine selection of French and European acts. On site, festival-goers will be able to enjoy local artists, homemade catering as well as merchandising throughout the weekend. The stunning artwork designed by Wild Horse Artwork will also be available for purchase!

RippleFest France
18-19th March 2022 at Le Michelet
1 boulevard Henry Orrion, Nantes (FR)
Day pass: 15€ // Weekend pass: 28€

Join the official event: https://www.facebook.com/events/5041887175830741
Tickets: https://yurplan.com/event/RIPPLE-FEST-FRANCE-2022-Le-Michelet-Nantes/79489#/

FRIDAY 18th MARCH
Los Disidentes Del Sucio Motel – (post-rock/prog rock – Strasbourg)
Appalooza (heavy rock – Brest)
Tremor Ama (stoner rock – Paris)
Electric Jaguar Baby (fuzz duo – Paris)

SATURDAY 19th MARCH
The Necromancers (heavy rock – Poitiers)
Fire Down Below (stoner rock – Ghent)
Kabbalah (doom rock – Pampelune)
Stonebirds (sludge/post-metal – Brest)
Birds Of Nazca (heavy psych rock – Nantes)

https://www.facebook.com/events/5041887175830741
https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://www.instagram.com/ripplemusic/
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel, Polaris (2021)

Just now, putting this post together, I read that Stonebirds are back in the studio working on their next album for a presumed 2022 release through Ripple Music. That they’ll be at the upcoming Ripplefest Cologne 2021 alongside Plainride — who as I recall have a hand in organizing the festival — Savanah, Fire Down Below, (that) Vug (under the rug), Aptera and Astral Kompakt is all the more appropriate, then, as they’ll have new material to showcase. Somehow I doubt they’ll be the only ones. As the pandemic-era dust begins to settle across the European touring circuit, governments ease lockdowns with a seemingly permanent “for now” attitude, it’s worth emphasizing how special something like this really is for the bands playing it and the people fortunate enough to be there.

That is, there’s a part of me for which an event like this — little more than a poster and a list of cool bands as far as I’m concerned; it’s not how I’m spending my Thanksgiving weekend — feels mundane. Then there’s the part of me that’s lived through the last 20 months or however long kicking myself in the brain with the reminder that, no, this is something to be treasured.

So take a breath, I guess is where I’m at. If it doesn’t hurt to do so, be glad.

From the PR wire:

German stoner and doom festival RIPPLEFEST COLOGNE reveals final names for 2021 edition, to take place on November 27th at Club Volta!

Ripple Music announce the final batch of names for the 2021 edition of RippleFest Cologne, taking place at Club Volta on November 27th. Tickets are on sale now!

RIPPLEFEST returns! After almost two years of pandemic break and three postponements, the Ripple Music-curated event finally returns to the city of Cologne. On November 27th, Club Volta will get suddenly filled with the finest retro rock, heavy rock, psych metal, and doom riffage, provided live by European up-and-coming acts Savanah, Aptera, Fire Down Below, Astral Kompakt, Stonebirds, and Vug.

During the day, festival-goers will be able to enjoy the fine delicacies of the Ripplefest food truck, some great art with local and international poster artists showcases, and the expertise of Diana Matthess and her Guitar Tech Truck — a special workshop offering guitar setups and repairs to musicians. Tickets are on sale now, so don’t wait any longer to treat yourselves to this one-off rock event in the beautiful city of Cologne!

RIPPLEFEST COLOGNE 2021
November 27th, 2021 at Club Volta (Cologne, Germany)
Info & Tickets (14,90€/19,90€) at ripplefest.de

❱ PLAINRIDE
Beer-fueled heavy rock (Germany – Ripple Music)
❱ ASTRAL KOMPAKT
Light-bending instrumental doom (Germany)
❱ FIRE DOWN BELOW
Interstellar psych metal (Belgium – Ripple Music)
❱ STONEBIRDS
Soul-crushing existential doom (France – Ripple Music)
❱ APTERA
Titan-slaying doom metal (Germany)
❱ VUG
Time-traveling 70’s hard rock (Germany)
❱ SAVANAH
Planet-devouring Psychedelic Stoner Doom (Austria)

Join the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/234338981846289/

https://www.facebook.com/events/234338981846289/
https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://www.instagram.com/ripplemusic/
https://twitter.com/RippleMusic
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/

Digging deep on some of this stuff, and I like that. I mean, yeah, you’ve probably heard Enslaved and Lowrider by now, and maybe Black Rainbows, but stuff like Burning Brain Band, Jointhugger and King Gorm could be new to you. I hope so anyhow, that’s why I picked the tracks. That and I thought they were cool. Pretty simple process when it comes down to it.

I did the voice tracks for this one while my son played (first) with kinetic sand and (then) on the piano, so that’s kind of a mess, but I’ve come to enjoy that and it’s a good show either way. If you manage to check it out, stick around for the end, because the last two songs, the long ones from Dire Wolves and Stonegrass, are absolutely killer. I was recently put onto both records and I have absolutely zero regrets. Cardinal Fuzz put out the Dire Wolves LP in April and Stonegrass is out through Cosmic Range Records in Toronto digitally now with LP to follow. Both albums are worth your time if you have the time.

And as always, thanks for listening if you do.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 05.29.20

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is June 12 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

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By the time they get around to releasing their new album, Collapse and Fail, as their debut release through Ripple Music, it will be closer than not to three years since France’s StoneBirds put out 2017’s Time (track premiere here). It seems like maybe the new record is a ways off yet — the press release says “summer,” if that helps — since the info on the thing is sparse apart from the title and the basic signing announcement to let you know that it’s arriving through Ripple, as well as the fact that it’s 40 minutes long, which actually I do appreciate knowing. Only so many hours in the day, and it says something about a band, particularly one playing a progressive style as StoneBirds do that they’re willing to keep things manageable.

Time is streaming at the bottom of the post if you’d care to revisit, and as you’ll hear, they bring an interesting edge to the label they’ve newly joined. Their style is a standout at least from some of the more straight-ahead rock stuff that Ripple is known for, and it’s awesome to see them branching out. That’s how longevity happens.

I’ll hope to have more to come on Collapse and Fail as “summer” approaches. Here’s the signing announcement, admittedly with some delay in getting it posted:

French post-doom royalty STONEBIRDS ink deal with Ripple Music for new album “Collapse and Fail”, to be released in the summer of 2020.

Ripple Music are happy to be welcoming France’s progressive doom trio STONEBIRDS to their roster. The Breton trio is set to blow minds once again, with their upcoming third album ‘Collapse and Fail’, due out in the summer.

With ‘Collapse and Fail’, STONEBIRDS will be releasing their darkest record to date. If previous albums resonated like distress calls for the planet, this third one is an excruciating work of hopelessness that embodies all the horror we’re collectively facing: this is too late. Throughout its gripping six songs, the band gives “doom metal” a more contemporary meaning, emotionally charged, linking a painful interiority with our collective gloomy destiny. This is too late, and all that is left is a burning violence .

The band enthuses: “We are very excited to be releasing our third album “Collapse and Fail” on Ripple Music. We were looking for a strong powerhouse owned by passionate people, and Todd and his team will be the best help we can get to promote that album. “Collapse and Fail” is the heavier and rawest piece of music we have ever written. As always, we intertwined solar soundscapes and darker moods to create this journey of forty minutes. Once again, we worked with the super dudes at Kerwax Studio for a great sound, and DZO for a mind-blowing visual. Hope you guys will lend an ear!”

https://www.facebook.com/Stonebirdsarestone/
https://www.instagram.com/stonebirdsofficial/
https://stonebirdsarestone.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.ripple-music.com/

StoneBirds, Time (2017)

French trio StoneBirds will release their second long-player, Time, on Oct. 20, and like the title of the record itself, the output therein is evocative and open to interpretation. What about “time” are we discussing? How it’s spent? How it’s already gone? How it’s not here yet? The subject is pretty vast, and as they engage it in the heavy post-rock textures of their centerpiece “Only Time” — among the final lyrics is the line, “There’s no hope in time” — the message could seem to be pretty bleak. Fair enough, but that doesn’t at all stop the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Fañch, bassist/backing vocalist Sylvain and drummer Antoine from exploring 55 minutes’ worth of progressive heavygaze fluidity across their mostly extended tracks. Bookended by intro “I” (3:12) and the crushing Jesu-style outro “II” (5:32), Time builds on the depth conjured for StoneBirds‘ 2015 Pink Tank Records debut, Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air (review here), brandishing Vangelis-via-Cult of Luna atmospherics on the 11-minute “Shutter Pt. I & II” and seeming to level an accusation with every tonally-dense churn and shout of the penultimate “Animals,” departing the earlier melodies of “Sacrifice” and the patient swelling and receding of “Blackened Sky” in order to take a more direct, nodding approach leading into the further crush and parting ambience of “II.”

Like many releases of its kind, Time takes a somewhat heady approach to its stated theme, and one finds a core of critique and cynicism (well enough earned) in the environmentalist-minded samples that pervade the early going of “Shutter Pt. I & II,” but whether one wants to engage StoneBirds on this level and discover what they actually have to say about these issues and about time itself or one simply wants to get lost in the tonal wash and alternating shoegaze-melodies and shouts, volume consumption and post-psychedelic meditations of “Sacrifice,” “Blackened Sky” or even “Only Time” itself will ultimately be up to the individual listener. For what it’s worth, repeat listens and taking StoneBirds‘ various turns and shifts on in a more active manner yields more satisfying results, as it almost invariably would. While more cerebral in the spirit of Rosetta, The Atlas Moth and any number of other post-metallic acolytes than the likes of Neurosis, there’s an underlying attention to detail that comes to fruition for example in the post-midpoint bassline of “Only Time” or in the guitar lead and additional vocal layering at the apex of “Animals” before the track stretches itself into a kind of subdued melancholy to end out, and the nuance goes a long way in distinguishing StoneBirds from those with similar stylistic purposes or intent. That doesn’t necessarily make Time revolutionary at its core, but as a record that by and large eschews traditionalist structures, it does give the audience something to grasp onto and justify that further digging that ultimately results in a more switched-on experience of the record as a whole.

And make no mistake, Time is meant to be taken as an entire work. While its 55-minute runtime borders on unmanageable, the immersive nature of StoneBirds‘ sound and the movement they enact between darker and lighter atmospheres, claustrophobic riffing and open-feeling ambience comes through as correspondingly broad to the offering’s stated theme. Bits, pieces and individual moments provide standout impressions, but there’s an arc to the proceedings that each song feeds into, beginning with the unfolding of “I” into “Sacrifice” and continuing until “Animals” gives way to “II” at the end. Between and within these songs, StoneBirds hone a spacious dynamic and embrace a creative breadth that all the more makes Time worth the investment.

On the player below, you’ll find the premiere of “Animals,” followed by some comment from Fañch on the ideas behind the song and how they play into the rest of the material. Time is out Oct. 20.

Please enjoy:

Fañch on “Animals”:

“Animals” is the rawest track on the album, and maybe the most primitive we’ve done with Stonebirds in a while. It’s also the only one with a traditional verse/chorus structure. “Animals” is the conclusion of stories about our relation to “subjective time,” life and death. It had to be tense and nervous to close the chapter. The lyrics deal with our hopelessness to create Time, and how mankind always wants to distort or break it. In a more general way, it’s a reflection on how we try to take the power on something that seems concrete to us, but is nothing more than a idea, a piece of our soul that we will carry until an hypothetical end. I hope you will enjoy this new song as much as we took pleasure to write and record it.

StoneBirds is:
Fañch : guitare/chant
Sylvain : basse/choeurs
Antoine : batterie
Alx : son

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Kerwax Recording Studio

Emanating sonic largesse from their home in the west of France, three-piece outfit Stonebirds will make their full-length debut on Pink Tank Records in July with Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air, a five-song/34-minute long-player whose bent almost immediately and throughout its entire course is toward carrying across material with as big a sound as possible. Riffs are huge, vocals shout up from way back in the mix, the bass pushes air underneath a dense wall of fuzz, and the drums crash with gotta-hear-it echo for a maximum sense of space, giving the entire work an added layer of atmospheric intensity to go along with its complex turns and ever-widening sonic breadth. If you had to put a genre to it (and you don’t), you might call it post-stoner for its pervasive ambience, adventurous flourish and open-feeling structures, but what Stonebirds do is still very much rooted in following the riff. It’s just where that riff takes them that makes all the difference.

The album opens with “After the Sin,” the longest song at 8:44 (immediate points) and a track that summarizes a lot of what the entirety of Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air will offer, its rhythmic thrust of considerable force from the moment Antoine‘s drums kick in with Fañch‘s guitar and Sylvain‘s bass, which will soon enough lead the swaying “Angst Lover.” Their builds seem to bleed into each other, but the atmosphere is hypnotic right away as “After the Sin” moves into its progressive-feeling midsection, a slide or ebow lead arriving after five minutes in and somehow presaging a return to the earlier chorus. When it hits, “Angst Lover” is moodier but winds up no less forward-thinking, an airy first half giving way to wah swing, chugging and crushing shouts later on while still holding onto an eerie melodic sensibility that “Into the Fog” develops further in a more laid back setting of squibbly guitars, fuzz bass and ride-cymbal wash. The tension comes to a head accompanied by what sounds an awful lot like a theremin and seems to expand outward until it starts to decay, leaving just the drums to hold the progression together until some surprise acapella at the end provides a transition into “Burned Flesh.”

If it’s not clear by now, momentum is a central factor working in Stonebirds‘ favor. Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air is a quick listen, but one of marked sonic depth. A headphone record not for its psychedelic aspects, though I guess it has those if you want to darken your colorful impression of the word, but for the way their audio seems so three-dimensional, it moves through with little time for reflection, and that seems to suit Stonebirds‘ purposes well as they push into “Burned Flesh” from “Into the Fog” and hit on a mid-paced roll with vocal interplay from Fañch and Sylvain that offers probably the nearest step toward post-metal that the band takes amid a deceptively catchy hook. “Burned Flesh” is the shortest song on the album at 5:36, but even with the relatively brief runtime, Stonebirds leave an atmospheric impression in a bridge topped by repetitive builds that pays off in a wash of guitar and a fading final rumble that sets up the quiet introductory stretch of “Perpetual Wasteland,” almost Deftones-esque for its brooding and malevolent melodicism, but holding firm to the underlying tension as it crashes toward Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air‘s last stomp, an epilogue of melodic wash and drum thud finishing cold to end the album.

It’s an impressive debut for what Stonebirds accomplish across its span and the lack of pretense with which they do it, and today I have the pleasure of hosting “Burned Flesh” for streaming ahead of the July 14 Pink Tank vinyl release of Into the Fog… and the Filthy Air. Please find it on the player below, followed by info on the LP release courtesy of the label, and enjoy:

STONEBIRDS trio emerged in 2008 from the desolated landscapes of central Brittany (France) from which they draw inspiration to write crushing and misty songs. After the self-release of a demo CD, a split album with Stangala and a digital Ep, STONEBIRDS is now fully matured and release the “Into the fog… and the filthy air” Lp through Pink Tank Records (Ger). A psychedelic and massive disc recorded in a full-analog studio which wraps the songs in a vintage and raw sound. On stage, STONEBIRDS crushes the audience like a dark fog hammer and riffs to break the spine!

Pink Tank Records 012 STONEBIRDS – INTO THE FOG AND THE FILTHY AIR

– 500 copies total
– 75 copies red/black marbled incl. poster & download code (exclusive Pink Tank edition)
– 25 copies red/black marbled standard edition (wholesale)
– 100 deep grey marbled incl. poster & download code (exclusive band edition)
– 300 copies standard black

RELEASE IS SCHEDULED FOR 14.07.2015

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Preorder at Pink Tank Records

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