Bloom "The Light We Chase"
Melodic hardcore group Bloom is excited to announce their sophomore album, The Light We Chase. Set to be released on October 31st via Pure Noise Records, The Light We Chase reflects a period of emotional turmoil – relationship breakdowns, struggles with trust, and wrestling with hopelessness – offering the band’s most visceral collection to date.
Ace Enders "Posture Syndrome"
Forever Home "Forever Home: Live in Japan with Orchestra PITREZA"
Forever Home: Live in Japan with Orchestra PITREZA celebrates MONO’s 25th Anniversary ‘OATH’ Orchestral World Tour, which stretched to 20 concerts in Europe, Asia, and the United States of America in the final months of 2024. Recorded in front of a sold-out crowd at Spotify O-EAST in Tokyo, Forever Home features a 12-piece orchestra – led by orchestra director and frequent collaborator, Chad McCullough – supporting MONO as they perform their latest album, OATH, in its entirety. The 100-minute concert concludes with a pair of the band’s most iconic songs – “Ashes in the Snow” and “Everlasting Light” – that pay homage to that first-ever orchestral live performance in NYC 15 years ago. Recorded and mixed by MONO’s longtime touring sound engineer, Matt Cook, Forever Home captures the venerable group in their natural environment, and at their most transcendent. With the symphonic accompaniment of Japan’s Orchestra PITREZA, MONO makes a room in Tokyo feel like a limitless sea – mercurial, contemplative, and overwhelming. This is MONO. This is Forever Home.
Major Stars "More Colors of Sound"
Out of the roiling miasma of timeless time comes a long-promised delivery from one of the constants of our era: Major Stars, and their new LP, More Colors of Sound. Fueled by overdriven guitars and gut-punching rhythm, these veteran rockers are stalwart in their delivery of trippy, psyched-out extremes. Over 27 years since The Rock Revival (their Twisted Village debut), they can be counted on to come back around every three or four years or so, with something heavy picked up on their journey. This time, it’s been since 2019’s Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy – but what’s a few years in the larger scheme of things? Because ‘larger’ IS the Major Stars scheme of things, one that’s always cut deeply into the grooves.
YES. It’s been since the late 90s that Major Stars have been transmitting their signal. But even eternity wasn’t built in such an arc of time: Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar have been crossing necks dating back to the 80s, with Crystallized Movements’ screaming psych-punk hybrids. Tom Leonard, Major Stars’ current third axeman, has been in the mix almost as long: Luxurious Bags’ amorphous low-fi (that’s him!) was released on Twisted Village too, and Kate and Wayne and him all played together in Vermonster. After the demise of Magic Hour -Wayne and Kate’s proto-freak-folk outfit with Damon & Naomi – the three of them formed Major Stars, with Wayne singing and Dave Lynch on drums. Which brings us… not quite to today, but, the More Colors of Sound lineup is as-was for Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy: Kate, Tom, Wayne, Dave Dougan on bass, Casey Keenan on drums and Noell Dorsey singing lead.
More Colors of Sound had been earmarked as a title for nearly twenty years when they started work on the album that would finally bear its name. For the first ten Major Stars releases, Wayne wrote everything, but due to the way things were in 2020 and 2021, Tom and Noell wrote a bunch of things together, along with Wayne’s stuff. By the time they got around to recording, at Gloucester’s Bang-A Song Studios, there was enough stuff to make a double LP! A double’s a once-in-a-lifetime dream scenario, but once they’d done the overdubs, they skinnied it down to the 44 minutes here – 22 minutes of each songwriting team. Ultimately democratic, not too long… you don’t see that much nowadays!
As ever (and ever), the crush of the three guitars as they riff with the rhythm defines Major Stars’ sound. The work of two writing camps has produced a song-centric focus on More Colors of Sound – one, of course, shot through with distorted tones, fevered neck-wringing solos and several extended jammers – but the production overall has a cleaner sound than its predecessor. That, plus the increased number of writers on deck gives the title a kind of kismet to go along with its historical weight, and that’s alright!
On More Colors of Sound, Major Stars find new hues inside the incendiary approach that’s launched them so ecstatically since early times; another jar of infinity captured with a quality all its own – and it’s all in the grooves!