Brant Bjork to Release New Album This Fall
Today brings word that desert rock progenitor Brant Bjork will release a new album this Fall in continued collaboration with Heavy Psych Sounds, as well as two more reissues in the label’s ongoing series thereof. Particulars are light, as happens, but Bjork has been touring with his band Stöner since basically the minute touring started up again and so the switch to solo work is a noteworthy shift. As says the man himself, so much change in life.
The last Brant Bjork solo record was 2020’s Brant Bjork (review here), for which the bio I wrote appears below. Nice that it’s getting used. Since that time, Bjork, as noted, has been keeping busy with the trio Stöner alongside fellow-former Kyuss bandmate Nick Oliveri (also Mondo Generator, Dwarves, etc.) and drummer Ryan Güt, who also plays in Bjork‘s touring solo band. Stöner‘s second LP, Totally… (review here), came out this Spring, following behind last year’s Stoners Rule (review here) and their first release, the nearly concurrent live album Live in the Mojave Desert Vol. 4 (review here).
I have no idea what Bjork doing Brant Bjork material again means for Stöner, but it seems unlikely he would put out an album at this point and not tour, and as he leaves behind his studio setup in Joshua Tree, one wonders at what might be next for one of the architects of fuzz as we know it.
New song and more details next week. For now, this from the PR wire:
Heavy Psych Sounds to announce the coming back of desert legend BRANT BJORK – new album presale + first track premiere July 19th
Heavy Psych Sounds Records&Booking is really proud to announce the signing of the desert rock legend BRANT BJORK !!!
Mr. Bjork is coming back with a brand new album + 2 REISSUES
released this autumn via Heavy Psych Sounds.
NEW ALBUM PRESALE + FIRST TRACK PREMIERE:
JULY 19th
SAYS THE ARTIST:
“This is a bitter sweet record for me. So much change in my life. Some stuff more positive than others. But it’s always a blessing to be able to make a record and get the music out and to the fans. This is the last record to be recorded in my Joshua Tree studio. I’m saying good bye to an era and looking down the road toward new beginnings.” BB
BIOGRAPHY
Brant Bjork has spent over a quarter-century at the epicenter of Californian desert rock. From cutting his teeth alongside Fatso Jetson’s Mario Lalli in hardcore punkers De-Con to drumming and composing on Kyuss’ landmark early albums, to propelling the seminal fuzz of Fu Manchu from 1994-2001 while producing other bands, putting together offshoot projects like Ché, embarking on his solo career as a singer, guitarist and bandleader, founding his own record label and more, his history is a winding narrative of relentless, unflinching creativity.
For someone so outwardly laid back, he’s never really taken a break. And while Bjork has shown different sides of himself on albums like his funk-laden 1999 solo debut, Jalamanta, the mellow Local Angel (2004), 2007’s mostly-acoustic Tres Dias, and heavier rockers Somera Sól (2007), Gods & Goddesses (2010) and the two most recent outings with The Low Desert Punk Band, he’s maintained a natural representation of himself in his material, whether that’s coming across in the Thin Lizzy-isms of the faux-full-band 2002 release Brant Bjork and the Operators (actually just Bjork playing mostly by himself) or the weedy, in-the-jam-room spirit of “Dave’s War” from Tao of the Devil. When you’re listening to Brant Bjork, you know it, because there’s no one else who sounds quite like him.
That fact and years of hard touring have positioned Brant Bjork as an ambassador for the Southern California desert and the musical movement birthed there in the late ’80s and early ’90s. As underground interest has surged in recent years, Bjork has been a pivotal figurehead, realigning with his former Kyuss bandmate John Garcia to drum and write in Kyuss Lives!/Vista Chino, celebrating and building on that legacy while giving a new generation of fans the chance to see it happen in real-time.
Having told his story in films like Kate McCabe’s Sabbia (2006) and the documentaries Such Hawks Such Hounds (2008) and Lo Sound Desert (2015), he’s represented desert rock at home and abroad with no less honesty than that which he poured into the music helping to create it. The same impulse led to the founding of his Desert Generator in 2016, an annual festival held in Pioneertown, CA, with an international reach capturing the intimacy and timeless aura of the desert culture, including music, a van show, the Stoned & Dusted pre-show in a secret desert location, and an evolution that looks to continue into the foreseeable future.
Bjork’s work, with any project, has always had a rebellious sensibility. He’s always walked his own path. But more, his career through Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Ché, Vista Chino, and his crucial solo work has been about freedom through rock and roll, attained by the truest representation of the person and the place as art. This, along with a whole lot of groove, is what has helped Brant Bjork define desert rock as a worldwide phenomenon, and whatever comes next, it is what will continue to make him its most indispensable practitioner.
(JJ Koczan)
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