Posted in Whathaveyou on June 29th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Rochester heavy psych rockers King Buffalo will return to Europe for the second time in 2023 this Fall. They were last there, oh, earlier this month for a stint that wrapped on June 17 at Hellfest in France, but they state in the quick announcement below that their October tour will be their last time in Europe until 2025. That’s kind of surprising considering we’re only halfway through 2023 and King Buffalo has been going hard before and after the pandemic, but no doubt they’ve got plans, whether that’s touring in other places — Australia/New Zealand comes to mind — or recording, or both, or neither. We’ll see.
The band recently put their 2013 Demo (review here) up for a 10th anniversary edition vinyl preorder (info here), and they’ll be supported for most of this tour by Bergen, Norway-based labelmate upstarts Slomosa. Their announcement of the tour draws together prior confirmations for Keep it Low, Desertfest Belgium and Lazy Bones Festival, each weekend but one of the tour anchored by a fest date, which is not a thing to be taken for granted. We live in a golden age. King Buffalo are a part of what makes it so very shiny.
Also, anyone notice how King Buffalo, Slomosa, Elder and Iron Jinn have all had announcements this week? It’s like the entire Stickman Records roster all decided it was time to get out. Good fun.
Thee dates:
KING BUFFALO – OCTOBER EUROPEAN TOUR ANNOUNCE!
These will be our last European Tour Dates until 2025. If you want to see us, this is your last chance!
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 29th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Spinda Records has announced picking up two bands in the last 40-or-so hours, sending word down the PR wire that Argentina’s Fin del Mundo and Portugal’s Travo have signed to the label — the latter also a collaboration with Portuguese imprint Gig.Rocks — with new releases coming soon. I’ve heard the new Travo and it’s right on modern heavy psych, sounding like it’s from another galaxy. I don’t know the status of Fin del Mundo‘s next offering, but if Spinda wanted to do a pressing for their pastoral 2022 second EP, La Ciudad Que Dejamos, hearing it for the first time following word of their signing, I’d hardly argue.
The record is righteously heavy in the bass and has a bit of post-rock float in the vocals and guitar, a kind of heavy-indie psych-gaze, melodically focused and flowing. It’s only four songs, so perhaps it might be paired with their similarly-constructed 2020 self-titled across a compiled 12″? Just tossing out ideas, here. Either way, “El Incendio” sounds like The Cure in a way that sits well alongside Travo‘s more blasted cosmic rock.
Details are sparse but follow here in not-really-organized-looking-but-organized-in-my-head-and-it’s-my-site-so-bite-me fashion, along with audio and video from both acts:
FIN DEL MUNDO – NEW BAND!!!
Post-rock & shoegaze band FIN DEL MUNDO from Argentina joins Spinda Records. Some exciting news are coming… but in the meantime please enjoy their live session for the KEXP, with nearly 900.000 views in 8 months!
FIN DEL MUNDO: Julieta Heredia – guitarra Julieta Limia – batería Lucía Masnatta – guitarra y voz Yanina Silva – bajo y coros
TRAVO – NEW BAND!!!
We’ve some awesome news to share with y’all. TRAVO’s upcoming second studio album ‘Astromoporh God’ is fully ready, sounds amazing and is coming out in Autumn through an Iberian collaboration between Gig.Rocks and Spinda Records. Keep an eye as both album pre-order and live dates are just behind the corner. (#128247#) Francisco Gaspar
Enjoy this live video from their gig at Sonic Blast 2022!
TRAVO: David Ferreira – Bass Gonçalo Carneiro – Electric Guitar, Synthesizer Gonçalo Ferreira – Vocals, Electric Guitar, Synthesizer, Percussion, Organ, Piano Nuno Gonçalves – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Progressive heavy rock forerunners Elder have announced the second leg of US touring to take place this September, following on from the stint with Ruby the Hatchet and Howling Giant that wrapped up on June 3 in Connecticut. The new round of tour dates covers the East Coast and some of the Midwest, hitting basically where the last tour didn’t go — there are some states they’re not hitting this time either; these things happen; I hear social media is a really good and super-helpful place to complain about that? — while putting the mostly-Berlin-based four-piece in the company of Chicagoans REZN and Austin, Texas, heavy moodmakers Lord Buffalo. Elder’s latest full-length, Innate Passage (review here), came out last year through Stickman Records and Armageddon Shop. It was my pick for the best album of 2022; a selection I happily stand by.
It should be noted that this tour is snuck in ahead of a previously announced UK and European tour set for October and November. The band will get home from this run, have a couple weeks off and then head back out for the Euro Fall fest season, wrapping in Berlin on Nov. 18. They’re also booked for at least Krach am Bach in Germany and SonicBlast Fest in Portugal this August, so fair to say it’s a busy year. That also doesn’t count Nick DiSalvo and Mike Risberg‘s participation in the side-project Weite, whose debut LP, Assemblage, is out July 14, also on Stickman.
Booked by Heavy Talent, the dates were posted by the band as seen below:
ELDER – US TOUR with REZN and Lord Buffalo
We’re headed back out on tour in the States this September and extremely happy to be joined by the excellent REZN and Lord Buffalo!
Our last tour Stateside was excellent and we’re so excited to come back to all these cities we didn’t manage to hit last time. See you in a few months!
— 9/05 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts 9/06 – Brooklyn, NY @ Monarch 9/07 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Music Hall 9/08 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups 9/09 – Chicago, IL @ Avondale Music Hall 9/10 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East 9/12 – Fort Worth, TX @ Tulips 9/13 – Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room 9/14 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse 9/15 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa 9/16 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl 9/17 – Orlando, FL @ The Conduit 9/19 – Raleigh, NC @ The Pour House 9/20 – Baltimore, MD @ The Ottobar 9/21 – Syracuse, NY @ The Song & Dance 9/22 – Portland, ME @ Portland House Of Music 9/23 – Cambridge, MA @ Middle East / Downstairs
Elder is: Nick DiSalvo – Guitars, Vocals Mike Risberg – Guitars, Keys Jack Donovan – Bass Georg Edert – Drums
Posted in Questionnaire on June 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Angelo Mirolli of Le Scimmie
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I live music in a very visceral way, the guitar is a branch of my brain. All my works are born during long jam sessions.
My mom gave me a guitar when I was fourteen but she didn’t force me to play it.
For a year it gathered dust. Then one day while I was stretched out in bed I stared at it and a spark broke out in me. From then on everything came very spontaneously and music became my life: I chose a free and uncompromising life, so my music will always be.
Describe your first musical memory.
Music came into my life about two years before I started playing guitar.
I spent entire afternoons closed in my room listening to the radio and recording my favorite songs on audiotape, I remember it as one of the best times of my life.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Definitely the first European tour of Le Scimmie in 2012.
I was 22 and it was a fantastic experience as well an unique training experience.
Playing your music away from home for so many nights in a row is the best thing for a musician, I think.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Losing my mom when I was 18 shattered all my beliefs.
She was whole my family. Today I only believe in myself and in the good things and the bad things that people can do.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Leads to knowing yourself better and better and to understand what you are and what the places where you live are capable of giving you.
How do you define success?
I think that true success is never compromising. Always being yourself is the real victory. Not chasing success at any cost is the key.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I didn’t want to see the violence that some people do to other people.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Definitely the next album!
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
I think that art is the artist’s outlet and the sign of his passage on Earth.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Based in Strasbourg, France — which is a hometown they share with Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel — the rolling four-piece Yojimbo made their debut last year with their self-titled five-song EP. Fuzz and echoing vocal command, light progressive metal flourish, and atmosphere were the order of the day, with each song offering something different, be it “Kingdom” moving from its sample and acoustic to a brooding build and sprawling solo payoff, “Battlefield” layering its verse melody amid fervent, boogie-tinged push, longer centerpiece “The Far Still Grows” with its atmospheric focus and later-Truckfighters breadth, “Devil’s Dance” resolving the question of whether to slow down or push itself over by doing both in succession, or closer “Last Mile” with vital tension released in a particularly massive stomp. Being their initial public offering, all it did was bode well.
The track “Doomsday Clock” takes some of the tonal scope hinted at in the short release and expands on it with two guitars intertwining. The band has undergone some lineup change since that came out, though I’ll confess I’m short on details there. But as it stands, Yojimbo bring palpable growth to bear in the standalone single, the video clip for which was filmed as an ‘M33 Session’ — named for the triangulum galaxy; it’s in the local group — as part of a residency at Strasbourg’s M33 artist workshop. No word on a follow-up to the EP just yet, but you can stream the clip at the bottom of this post, and if you’re looking for big crash, big melody and vast vibes, they’ve got that ready to roll. All you gotta do is click play. When/if I hear more, I’ll post accordingly.
Info from the PR wire and YouTube page:
Self-proclaimed Intergalactic Stoner Rock, the French quartet YOJIMBO has given its first cries in the spring of 2019. Carried by vocal flights nourished by fuzz tones with progressive floydian accents, the ship Yojimbo sails through massive, catchy stoner grooves, to abyssal invocations of doom and the spatiality of post-rock.
A first self-produced eponymous EP is released in 2022, hailed enthusiastically by the specialized press. YOJIMBO pursues his journey with a promotional tour where it shares the stage with bands such as IAH, Geezer or Baron Crâne.
2023 marks a new milestone: new line-up, new identity; YOJIMBO continues his interstellar journey, ready to conquer new worlds.
Video recorded @ Atelier M33, Strasbourg April 2023 – as part of our creative residency
Mixed by Florent Herrbach
Direction: Marc Linnhoff
Following on from last week’s reissue of their first two albums and the first installment of this retrospective, 1000mods this Friday will re-present 2016’s Repeated Exposure To… and 2020’s Youth of Dissent, specifically for US distribution through Heavy Psych Sounds. In between the one batch of reissues and another, the Chiliomodi-based generational forerunners of Greek heavy rock also announced a full round of American tour dates with their prior-confirmed appearance at Desertfest NYC as its centerpiece. It’s been, as the saying goes, quite a week.
The September trip will not be the first time 1000mods have come to the US. They visited in Feb. 2018, playing shows coast-to-coast and making stops in Mexico and Canada. The following Spring, they’d make their first voyage to Australia, and if the story of this era of the band is one of their reach expanding beyond Europe — which they covered first in this cycle as one would expect; Fall 2016 and again in early 2017 — that came very much with a mirroring expansion in scope with Repeated Exposure To…, which was released Sept. 26, 2016.
1000mods were beginning to show the band they would become, in sound and presence. Their first record, 2011’s Super Van Vacation (discussed here; review here), had portrayed them as a bunch of upstart groovers with an affection for Kyuss, perfect (yes, perfect) pacing and an ability to convey largesse in their songs through more than just tone. Vultures (review here) had followed in 2014 and charted the course for this growth. Already by then, 1000mods were a working band, touring vigorously, making videos, engaging in the kind of social networking that, at the time, was much newer and not always done. They’d even gone so far as to wrap the Vultures touring cycle with a video for “Claws” filmed at various shows. Everything they had went into pushing themselves forward.
These records are the manifestations of that. Let’s go:
Maybe a case of a band having their collective cake while also eating it? The full title as it appears on the cover: Repeated Exposure to High Sound Levels (More Than 80 Decibels) May Cause Permanent Impairing of Hearing. This warning was well issued as 1000mods returned to engineer George Leodis to co-produce their third album, drawing together aspects of the first two into a cohesive and obviously maturing 51-minute outing. Seven songs, massive hooks. The sound of 1000mods growing could be heard in the finer details — the right-channel guitar mutes after and before the Monster Magnet garage jangle of “A.W.,” or even the way the siren call of feedback at the start of opener “Above179” howls into a fade as the first rolling nod kicks in loud — as well as in the overarching atmosphere of the recording. As much as Vultures had attempted to capture their live sound, Repeated Exposure To… answered back by doing the same, but in a bigger venue.
If Vultures was the club show, the tracks on Repeated Exposure To… like the energetic shover “Loose,” the short and explosive “Electric Carve,” which follows, and the later build into the sing-along-with-us chorus of “On a Stone” seemed to emanate from a festival stage. From the gang-shout hook of “Above179” and the sweep and chug and precision of its finish onward, 1000mods made it clear they were reaching out to a broader audience. It wasn’t about changing their core style — they were still very much a heavy rock and roll band, and the fuzz of “Loose” reinforced the notion well — but as their take came into its own after two previous LPs and more shows than some do in a band’s lifetime, the sense of professionalization was audible in it. Repeated Exposure To… was higher stakes.
The band played back and forth between shorter and longer cuts on side A and dug in shortest-to-longest in side B, with the closing pair of “Groundhog Day” (7:18) and “Into the Spell” (7:50) contrasting the earlier trades between the eight-plus-minute “Loose” and “Above179” before it or the three-minute “Electric Carve” ahead of rhythmic first-half capper “The Son,” which its layered highlight soloing, uptempo-but-not-too-uptempo swing and, absolutely, another ultra-engaging chorus. That’s the heart of the whole record. It feels written with the live audience in mind, all the way through to the build happening in “Into the Spell,” with its early meandering and guitar creep under the watery verse, turning to massive stoner nod and more urgent thrust as it moves to the big finish of its final third, wrapping the album as much as itself with a long fade.
This was the sound of 1000mods going all-in. They stepped up to the challenge of being a pro-shop act and wrote an accordingly pro-shop bunch of songs to mark the occasion. Still touring constantly — and in new territories, as noted above — 1000mods began to reap the fruits of their significant labors and became one of Europe’s most crucial heavy rock bands. It wouldn’t have worked if these songs weren’t there to carry them.
The story of Youth of Dissent — album number four and the latest 1000mods full-length — should have been that the band traveled to Seattle, Washington, to record and mix with producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Sandrider, Isis, etc.), outdoing their own professionalism, directly waving at the American market, and offering an even tighter collection comprised of 11 songs that, in cuts like “Warped” and “Blister” leaned into a grunge influence, while in “Dear Herculine,” “Less is More” (some grunge in there too, for sure) and the interlude “21st Space Century,” the band were also atmospheric in a way they’d never yet been and their doing most melodically complex work on record. If you missed the word ‘should’ in that far-too-long sentence, it’s there because Youth of Dissent came out on April 24, 2020.
Greece’s first case of covid-19 was discovered that fateful February, and by the time Youth of Dissent was released, the entire country had been locked down for a month, and after another few weeks of in-place sheltering would gradually begin to reopen later in a terrifying, traumatic Spring when live music and so much else evaporated. Youth of Dissent was defined in part by the resistance mindset inherent in its title and album cover, and while tracks like “So Many Days,” “Blister,” “Less is More” and the concluding “Mirrors” were resonant in speaking to the experience of depression and “Young” and “Dissent” — split between sides C and D of the 55-minute 2LP — seemed to use the platform of 1000mods‘ audience-building to speak directly to that audience and encourage them to stand up, be involved in making their world, to dissent from the various systems holding them back, the moment in which the album arrived completely undercut that statement.
Certainly the covid pandemic did not just happen to 1000mods. It happened to everybody’s everything and the heavy underground is only a teeny-tiny sliver of a microculture. Acknowledged. But to see an act who’d put in by-then eight years of road work while also building a catalog of landmarks, earning Greece a respect it maybe didn’t have before them as a hotbed of heavy in Europe, changing the geopolitics of the underground, and begun to expand their reach even beyond that have that momentum obliterated by circumstances genuinely out of their control was painful. Covid happened to every band, but not every band was 1000mods in late 2019/early 2020 making and releasing their fourth record. Of course the European tour that was to start in May 2020 didn’t happen, and it wouldn’t be until Spring 2022 that they could hit the road in earnest to support it.
Which they did and are continuing to do. Removed from the moment of its release, at three years’ distance, Youth of Dissent answers the greater reach of the record before it with even more refined and cognizant approach, and a bevvy of new ideas and directions taken. Mature as songwriters, 1000mods proved able to conjure epics regardless of a track’s runtime, communicating ideas in new ways that signaled ongoing development and a refusal to stagnate, greeting an unknowable future with hope and progressivism even as it offered some of the band’s darkest lyrical themes.
—
As they’ve gotten back to live performance, that the material on Youth of Dissent has held up to the years-long split between its arrival should convey its urgency. This Fall, 1000mods return to the States all the more as a veteran act. That they’ll have these reissues along with them lends this tour — especially as a Winter 2023 Australia/New Zealand tour was canceled — an edge of celebrating the entire catalog as well as giving Youth of Dissent its overdue due, but 1000mods have only looked in one direction over the 15-plus years of their tenure, and whatever else one might expect from them, expect them to keep their eye on the future.
Thanks for reading. Again, if you missed the first part of this retrospective, it’s right here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Bergen, Norway’s Slomosa started a round of summer shows last week that are likely as much a herald for their second album as continued support for their 2020 self-titled debut (review here). They’ve been touring steadily since such a thing became possible, signed to Stickman Records earlier this year, and have already been confirmed for Lazy Bones Festival and Keep it Low this Fall.
As both of those festivals take place in Germany — Hamburg and Munich, respectively — on different ends of the month of October, one might infer that more tour dates are likely to be announced, and further, that a Fall release for the album is also a distinct possibility. Upstarts as they are, and as successful as the first record was, there’s a lot riding on Slomosa‘s sophomore full-length, and whether it ends up coming out in the second half of 2023, during or after the Winter touring lull, it is highly anticipated. Much of the live activity listed below is festivals, and Slomosa have quickly become regulars on that circuit. One hopes that the momentum they’ve built from the work they’ve don’t to this point remains on their side.
Sound of Liberation posted the following:
SLOMOSA – SUMMER 2023
Hey friends,
we’re super stoked to present the @slomosa summer dates 2023!(#128165#)
It was basically impossible to miss this fresh “Tundra Rock” sensation from Norway last year, when they blew us away with their catchy tunes and immersive live shows. We’re so happy to have them back on the road!(#128293#) & shhhh: there is more to come! (#129323#)
Check out the tour dates below, grab your tickets and join the party!(#128640#)
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 27th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
So much the better if it gives the album another look. Melbourne’s Treebeard issued their debut full-length, Nostalgia (review here), during the covid-lockdown days of 2021, and having now signed to Bird’s Robe Records, will offer it again with the label’s backing. The record was comprised of tracks re-recorded and in part rearranged from their first two EPs, so as that makes some of its material upwards of half a decade old, it’s not a surprise to hear them discussing moving forward with new material as well. They call it “very much on the way,” but leave further specifics to guesses at this point.
Fair enough. They list some of the artists who release/have released through Bird’s Robe — We Lost the Sea, Sleepmakeswaves, etc. — and being in a heavy post-rock vein, they’re a solid fit among on a roster that’s obviously curated with care and a precise idea of what it’s looking for. If you didn’t catch Nostalgia, it’s of course streaming below. If you did catch it, well, maybe catch it again, I don’t know. Or maybe just drop the band a comment and say congrats. They seem pretty stoked on it, and reasonably so.
Their announcement follows:
Treebeard joins Bird’s Robe
We are thrilled to announce that Treebeard is now joining Sydney-based record label and promoter Bird’s Robe!
We are so excited and humbled to be on a roster featuring many of Australia’s finest post / prog artists, including many of our peers as well as some of our biggest influences such as We Lost The Sea, Sleepmakeswaves, Solkyri, Mushroom Giant and many more!
We have always considered Bird’s Robe and Mike Solo to be at the forefront of our scene and are so thankful for his endorsement of our band. We appreciate his support of our music both old and new which, yes, is very much on the way.
With our debut album ‘Nostalgia’ having come out during lockdown, it was always felt that its potential was never fully realised post release. Mike after hearing the album agreed, and therefore we are also happy to announce we are rereleasing ‘Nostalgia’, with more details to come soon.
Many thanks to Bird’s Robe for welcoming us, and to all our supporters for getting us to this point!
We’re only just getting started…
Treebeard is: Guitar & Vocals – Patrick Cooke Bass – Rhys Brennan Drums – Beau Heffernan Guitar & Vocals – Josh Bills
