Up ahead and high above

They’ll call

For a sliver of you

Los Angeles post-punk outfit Cold Showers are back with a mesmerizing new track and video for “Sliver”—a moody exploration of the self, grief, loss, and pain, with a dark synth essence. The song is a modern take on the late 80s world of electronic-driven guitar offerings, blending the expansive hook-driven pop of more mainstream bands like Simple Minds with the romantic introspection of Manchester mainstays such as The Happy Mondays and New Order, as well as The Chameleons, and Echo & The Bunnymen.

The song is illustrated beautifully with a cinematic video, directed by Jamie Parkhurst and Dominic Haydn of Rawle Process Visual Studio. A woman is seen in various forms of solitude – reverie in a car, out in nature, in the mind – and it appears that she is being pursued by an ominous force unseen. A melange of possible metaphors can be gleaned from this captivating dream, such as allusions to addiction, trauma, heartache, societal pressures, or even existing while female; no matter the interpretation, the mysterious sequence is sure to haunt you.

Watch the video for “Sliver” below:

The song is featured on the five-track EP Strength In Numbers, which was recorded during October of 2020 in the wilderness of Joshua Tree: Cold Showers singer Jonathan Weil sought solace from the pandemic chaos of city life. Assembling a makeshift studio, the band collaborated in an ego-free zone with the mantra, “Best idea wins.” Guitarist Chris King credits the experience in giving the album’s songs a new kind of independence. “The world seemed so bleak that making something lighter felt right.” Strength in Numbers refers to this creative process, with each song crafted to be more than the sum of its parts.

Tickets are on sale for the September 20th release show at Zebulon with Fearing, Cold Gawd, Blacklight, and DJs Kerosene and Ayejames. 

OrderStrength In Numbers here. The album is out now via Dais Records.

Follow Cold Showers:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
•  Twitter

The post Los Angeles Post-Punk Outfit Cold Showers Drift through a Haunting Daydream in their Video for “Sliver” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

The song is a brooding whirl of bass-driven dream pop with touches of Madchester groove that captures a late 80s vibe that would feel at home on a playlist with The Happy Mondays, AR Kane, Curve, and Technique-era New Order.

Heralding a new record due out this June via Dais Records, “How Do You Know This Love?” showcases a band that hasn’t peaked yet. The song is featured on the five-track EP, aptly titled Strength In Numbers, which was recorded during October of 2020 in a house located in the wilderness of Joshua Tree.

Cold Showers singer Jonathan Weil’s idea to escape the distractions of the city was ultimately a good idea notes Guitarist Chris King, who credits the experience in giving the new songs a more liberated atmosphere: “The world seemed so bleak that making something lighter felt right.”

With a makeshift studio assembled, the band shed their egos, and workshopped their contributions together towards the best possible result; their mantra being “Best idea wins.”

From this collaborative process, Strength in Numbers indeed earns its title, with each song crafted to be more than the sum of its parts.

Listen to EP’s first single, “How Do You Know This Love?” (ft Lil B) below:

Strength In Numbers sees its release via DAIS Records across all digital platforms on June 11.

Pre-Order and Pre-Save Here

Follow Cold Showers:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
•  Twitter

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Produced by Chris King of Cold Showers with drum programming by Brandon Pierce (Glaare), The Sea At Midnight’s eponymous, self-released debut album unleashes a captivating new single and accompanying video: Anything About You.

The video, the first animated video directed by Canadian artist Zach Fish, is a work of art in and of itself, but paired with Grant’s songwriting, it packs a wallop emotionally.

“I knew Anything About You was important the very first time I heard it,” says Fish. “For me, it conjured the terror of a newly discovered absence. It reminded me of approximately the second week of a new relationship, when one is struck by the sudden understanding that they were alone and now are not.

Fish and Grant discovered a mutual affinity for cyberpunk science fiction: in particular, the works of William Gibson.

“The singular element therein, in my experience, is the overlap between the visio-spatial, hallucinatory vector-fields of cyberspace and the gritty, hyperbolically human texture of the waking world,” Fish continues. “Much like the twin phosphate backbones of DNA, each serves as a counterpoint to the other, structuring the spiral code of the human condition. This was my conceptual guiding principle. There is a whiteboard next to my desk, and after deciding to take Vince up on his offer to do a music video, I quickly scrawled the words “Chamber With Vertical Cylinder Lights.” This simple concept seeded the narrative, inasmuch as one exists, for the video. The story grew of its own accord from that initial, spatial idea. I sincerely hope the character’s journey towards the mathematical dual of his soul’s graph strikes viewers as simultaneously mystifying and familiar.”

Delve into the gorgeous world of the video for Anything About You:

Purchase/stream the track here:

Follow The Sea At Midnight:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Spotify

The post Melodic Coldwave Outfit The Sea At Midnight Debuts “Anything About You” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Cold Shower’s Chris King is ringing in the new year right with the atmospheric Jalen Rose, a new track from his project Kai Tak, out today.

Kai Tak is currently working on a debut LP that will feature collaborations with different artists on every song, written as a sonic love letter to 1980s/1990s British era Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, pick up “Jalen Rose” digitally via Bandcamp, and follow Kai Tak on Instagram for updates on the project.

The post A Shoegaze Loveletter to 1980s Hong Kong with Kai Tak’s “Jalen Rose” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Our Editors Alex Baker (myself), Frank Deserto, and Andi Harriman have done our best to curate what we thought we some of the best releases of 2019, but I must make a mea culpa in advance because—despite the overlap in some of our choices—there are invariably some names left out that may have warranted inclusion if we were to expand both the number of entries and the scope of genres.

For example, one of the best political anthems of the year is perhaps Berlin post-punk act Diat’s “W.I.G.T.D.W.M?” (What’s It Got To Do With Me) from the album Positive Disintegration.

Two others, while not included in the list below, I mention here because of their artistic integrity, and activism in battling the Patriarchy and abusers.

The first being HIDE, whose frontperson Heather Gabrel smashes gender-roles, and truly does take a chainsaw to the bro-culture in music with their industrial noise opus Hell is Here (Dais).

The second ranks high on quite a few year-end lists, and rightly so. This is Lingua Ignota’s third studio album Caligula, which while defying genres, saunters in softly—in a matter of moments easing in from a caress to a slap in the face with a hand coated in shards of broken glass.

Another newer artist, that I could not quite fit on the list is Skemer, whose track “Sunseeker” from their album Benevolence, has been on heavy rotation in my own personal playlists.

There was also Tempers, whose fantastic single “Capital Pains”, the opening track featured on their third studio album Private Life is the NYC duo’s best song yet.

And finally, Wingtips, whose album Exposure Therapy released in August via Artoffact Records is a personal favorite of mine.

As for legacy acts, the only album I had initially planned to include in my list was Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Ghosteen, which was to my mind the spiritual successor to Cave’s closing contribution to Current 93’s All The Pretty Little Horses album, “Patripassian”.

This is record is one of the most beautiful expressions of what happens when one emerges from the perdition of grief with a renewed love and compassion for those lost.

Also worth praising both The Membranes What Nature Gives… Nature Takes Away, and New Model Army’s From Here, two records that are a must-listen for any fans of classic post-punk.

Now, that we have got the intro out of the way, here is the list below, and we hope that some of you will fall in love with some of these entries as we have if you had not heard them the first time.

Alex Baker

Albums

1. Secret Shame Dark Synthetics 

2. Twin Tribes Ceremony (Negative Gain, Manic Depression Records, Young & Cold Records)

3. Boy Harsher Careful (Nude Club)

4. Tamaryn Dreaming the Dark (Dero Arcade)

5. Body of Light Time to Kill (Dais)

6. Chasms The Mirage (felte)

7. Drab Majesty Modern Mirror (Dais)

8. Second Still Violet Phase (Fabrika Records)

9. Ritual Howls Rendered Armor (Felte)

10. Cold Showers Motionless (Dais)

11. She Past Away Disko Anksiyete (Fabrika/Metropolis)

12. Ploho Пыль (Sierpien Records, Other Voices Records, Bluedog Music, Vinyl Codes)

13. Sólveig Matthildur ‎Constantly In Love (Artoffact Records)

14. Xeno & Oaklander- Hypnos (Dais)

15. Automelodi- Mirages Au Futur Verre​-​brisé (Holodeck)

16. Mueran Humanos- Hospital Lullabies (Cinema Paradiso)

17. Kontravoid Too Deep (Fleisch)

18. Wires & Lights A Chasm Here And Now (Oblivion)

19. All Your Sisters Trust Ruins (The Flenser)

20. Hante Fierce Synth Religion

Bonus:

• Black Marble Bigger Than Life (Sacred Bones)
• Blind Seagull Nails (Detriti Records)
• Bedless Bones Sublime Malaise (Cold Transmission Music)
• Night Sins Portrait in Silver (Funeral Party Records)
• VR Sex Human Traffic Jam (Dais)
• Desperate Journalist In Search of the Miraculous Fierce Panda Records

Non-Album Singles (Including EPs)

1. Korine “Uncrossed”

2. SRSQ “Temporal Love” (Dais)

3. Ill Humans “Whatever” (From Disruption of The Binaries EP)

4. Pawns Monuments of Faith (Near Dark/Last Hour Records/Inflammable Material)

5. Thymian Thymian

6. Some Ember Submerged (Third Coming Records)

7. Panther Modern Los Angeles 2020 EP

8. Just Mustard- Seven (Pizza Pizza Records)

9. The KVB Submersion

10. Isolated Youth Warfare EP Fabrika Records

Bonus:

• Temple of Angels “Cerise Dream” Funeral Party Records

Frank Deserto

Albums

1. HTRK- Venus in Leo (Ghostly International)

2. Tamaryn- Dreaming the Dark (Dero Arcade)

3. Mueran Humanos- Hospital Lullabies (Cinema Paradiso)

4. Silent EM- The Absence (Disko Obscura)

5. Secret Shame ‎– Dark Synthetics (Self-released)

6. Xarah Dion– Plein Nord (Zodiaque/Visage Musique)

7. Chasms- The Mirage (Felte)

8. Body of Light– Time to Kill (Dais)

9. Automelodi- Mirages Au Futur Verre​-​brisé (Holodeck)

10. Nick Cave & the Badseeds- Ghosteen (Ghosteen Ltd.)

11. Xeno & Oaklander- Hypnos (Dais)

12. Be Forest- Knocturne (We Were Never Being Boring)

13. Kontravoid- Too Deep (Fleisch)

14. Carla dal Forno- Look Up Sharp (Kallista Records)

15. Second Still- Violet Phase (Fabrika Records)

16. Boy Harsher- Careful (Nude Club Records)

17. Cold Showers- Motionless (Dais)

18. Ritual Howls- Rendered Armor (Felte)

19. UV-TV- Happy (Deranged Records)

20. Vaura- Sables (Profound Lore Records)

Singles/EPs

1. SRSQ- Temporal Love (Dais)

2. Odonis Odonis- Reaction (Felte)

3. Just Mustard- Seven (Pizza Pizza Records)

4. Multiple Man- High on the Hog (Fleisch)

5. The Holy Circle- Sick with Love (Deathbomb Arc)

6. Whiner- You Never Have to Feel This Way Ever Again

Andi Harriman

1. Boy Harsher Careful

2. Kontravoid Too Deep

3. Body Of Light Time To Kill

4. Multiple Man High On The Hog

5. S Y Z Y G Y X Fading Bodies

6. She Past Away Disko Anksiyete

7. Rhys Fulber Ostalgia

8. Pawns Monuments of Faith

9. Randolph And Mortimer Manifesto For A Modern World

10. Blu Anxxiety God’s Exposure

11. TWINS New Cold Dream

12. Years Of Denial Suicide Disco

13. Pelada Movimiento Para Cambio

The post Post-Punk.com Best of 2019 appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

“In 1999 Adrian Borland, frontman for The Sound, tragically ended his life impacting many in the alternative music scene. Sadly, suicide is not uncommon and something most of us have experienced directly. Having been influenced by the work of Adrian and The Sound, we joined together to reimagine and re-record The Sound’s “Winning” and “Kinetic” to help raise awareness for suicide prevention.

All profits will be donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to help provide light for those that need it in dark times.”

Listen to the covers, and see all 6 dates below:

TOUR DATES:

• Jan 10 Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom
• Jan 11 Las Vegas, NV = Bunkhouse
• Jan 12 San Francisco, CA – Knockout
• Jan 13 Portland, OR – High Water
• Jan 14 Seattle, WA – Chop Suey
• Jan 16 Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon

The post Cold Showers & Fearing Cover The Sound Plus Announce West Coast Shows appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Evoking a hybrid of Kate Bush’s creative sensibilities steeped in dreamy vintage 4AD Goth, the song is fraught with palpable emotion, as Jane explains:

Love is inspired by personal experiences with emotional vulnerability and fragility. The song lyrics are a reflection on the complications of betrayal. Musically I’ve always been really inspired by avant-garde and 1980s darkwave, combining both of these styles with the combination of tragic lyrics and multiple synth layers I felt expressed the complications of betrayal elegantly but with lingering pain.

“Love” was produced by Chris King of Cold Showers and is out now on Manimal Records. Listen below:

The post Darkwave Siren Caress Unveils Her Ethereal and 80s Synth-laden New Song “Love” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

About the song, the band says:

“The song was recorded at Station House studios in Echo Park with Chris King of Cold Showers. We tracked everything in a day and mixed the songs between Sydney & Los Angeles. The song is about escaping feelings of stagnation, which is funny considering Remy & I faced the exact same feelings back home in Sydney, which brought us out here to LA.”

Watch the video below:

After spending the majority of 2018 touring North America, Death Bells have re-emerged in their new home of Los Angeles, transforming their sound with new singles through band’s new label Metropolitan Indian.

The lineup, now consisting of long-time members William Canning and Remy Veselis wrote both songs in Los Angeles and they detail change and reflection that both members have experienced with their move 7,000 miles away from home.

Both core members of the band, including a revolving live lineup, will be performing on the west coast this June with Collapsing Scenery. Additionally, the band was handpicked by Julien Baker to perform at the Sled Island festival in Calgary. Upcoming shows are listed below.

Tourdates:

• June 15th – Cellar Door, Visalia CA
• June 16th – Bunkhouse, Las Vegas NV
• June 17th – Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City UT
• June 19th – Ole Beck VFW, Missoula MT
• June 21st – Sled Island, Calgary AB
• June 23rd – High Dive, Seattle WA*
• June 24th – Black Water, Portland OR*
• June 25th – The Astoria, Vancouver BC*
• June 28th – Thee Parkside, San Francisco CA*
• June 29th – Chewing Foil, Los Angeles CA*
  * with Collapsing Scenery

The post Australian Post-Punk Act Death Bells Relocate to Los Angeles and Unveil New Video “Around The Bend.”  appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Dismiss, directed by Ruinas Romanas is:

“…a reverie about a relationship that ends at the darkest point. An inevitable farewell.”

Watch the video below:

The début of “Dismiss” follows both “Shine” and “Faith”, all of which are part of the cohesive palette of shimmering post-punk daydreams that comprise Motionless, with is being released through Dais Records on May 24th.

Motionless will be available on both compact disc and vinyl LP (with limited edition colored vinyl variants), as well as all digital formats. The LP comes in an embossed jacket with cover artwork by noted Los Angeles based artist, Robbie Simon.

Pre-Order Here

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The aptly named “Shine” is a warm sunkissed daydream of shimmering keys, guitars saxophone, with the main vocals channeling The Psychedelic Fur’s Richard Butler if he were signed to late 80s Creation Records or 4AD, and candy-coated backing vocals that are reminiscent of Kate Pearson of The B-52’s.

The video was shot and directed by Travis Waddell, featuring dancer Nicola Collie movements cut with scenes of the Santa Cruz coast.

“‘Shine’s textures are a reverent nod to MTV-era music video etherea,” Waddell explains. “The 16mm footage shot between Bolinas and Point Reyes backdrops Nicola Collie’s movements, a performance so immersive she nearly threw out her neck. From concept to completion it spans over half a year’s work, which allowed it to reform and define itself.”

Watch the video below:

The debut of “Shine” follows the Cold Shower’s recent premiere of the video for “Faith”, which is the lead single off Motionless, which sees its release on Dais Records, May 24th.

Motionless will be available on both compact disc and vinyl LP (with limited edition colored vinyl variants), as well as all digital formats. The LP comes in an embossed jacket with cover artwork by noted Los Angeles based artist, Robbie Simon.

Pre-Order Here

Cold Showers will be embarking on their 21 date European tour with Tamaryn this May. Among the dates listed is a festival appearance at Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig.

Cold Showers Live Dates:

• 05/23: Antwerp, BE – Kavka
• 05/25: London, UK – The Shacklewell Arms
• 05/27: Glasgow, UK -Broadcast
• 05/28: Manchester, UK – Night People
• 05/29: Bristol, UK – The Lanes
• 05/30: Paris, FR -Supersonic
• 05/31: Trier, DE – villaWuller
• 06/01: Berlin, DE – Urban Spree
• 06/03: Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang
• 06/05: Gothenborg, SWE – Musikhuset
• 06/06: Stockholm, SWE – Slaktkyrkan
• 06/07: Malmo, SWE -Plan B
• 06/09: Leipzig, DE – WGT
• 06/10: Brno, CZ – Kabinet Muz
• 06/11: Krakow, PL – Klub RE
• 06/12: Warsaw, PL – Poglos
• 06/13: Prague, CZ – Underdogs
• 06/14: Jena, DE – Café Wagner
• 06/15: Cottbus, DE – zum faulen august
• 07/11: Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex (Record Release Show)
• 7/12: San Diego, CA – Whistle Stop

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