Art-punk legend Carla Bozulich announces a new album. Moreover, two doom bands with bong on their name are releasing two-song slow records.
Bong set for spring release
With some exceptions, bands that play extremely slow tend to pace their releases at similar, slow rates. With more than twenty releases in barely more than ten years (not counting live records and compilations, which are not exactly few), Newcastle’s Bong is one of those exceptions. Their next record is called «Thought and Existence» and, as guitarist Mike Vest put it whilst talking to Outlaws Of The Sun, consists of “two epic tracks of modded fuzz, layered vocals and expansive percussion” and thematically focuses on “the inward expansive nature of the mind and our senses,” further pointing out methodological solipsism as an overarching theme, one that is “a constant with all our albums, but is more prominent on this.” Below, find a trailer for «Thought and Existence», directed by Cristiane Richardson and edited by Sergio Angot.
«Thought and Existence» is set for release through Ritual Productions on May 4.
Bongripper heralds a slow death by way of «Terminal»
Instrumental doom quartet Bongripper have announced the release of their seventh full-length, «Terminal». Coming four years after «Miserable», the upcoming album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by the band’s guitarist Dennis Pleckham at his own Comatose Studio in Bradley, Illinois. As has been the case since their breakout release of «Satan Worshipping Doom», the record’s songtitles form a simple message, in this case «Slow Death». The record will be released on July 6 by the band’s own label, The Great Barrier, on vinyl, cd, and digital formats. No pre-orders are available as of yet.
Around this date, the band will embark on its first US East Coast tour in quite a while, which will culminate with a performance of the aforementioned «Satan Worshipping Doom» in its entirety at Saint Vitus on the 25th of July. More information regarding the tour can be found here.
Carla Bozulich announces «Quieter»
The storied career of Carla Bozulich is about to see yet another album released. The upcoming «Quieter», as the press release explains, started from previously unreleased material which the singer was going through whilst recovering from tour-related injuries a few years ago. One of its tracks, «Glass House», can be heard below and was written by Freddy Ruppert. «Quieter» is set for release on May 11 by Constellation Records on vinyl, which can be pre-ordered here. After the stream, we are reproducing the Bozulich’s fascinating account on the origin of the record title and its cover picture (seen above), as it appears in the liner notes of the record. Normally, we’d intertwine her citation on our piece, but this story deserves to be read in its entirety.
“The cover of the album is a cool pic, sure as hell. But to me, it just looks like tour. Tour is just another job where if you do it long enough you get hurt here and there. In 2014 I lost my hearing completely (temporarily) in 1 ear. I kept playing, as always with injury on tour. After all, it is the law of averages. We all know it. Play more than 100 concerts a year doing 90% of the work alone, injuries are occasional. Well, it was a loud tour-a loud set every nite. It was strange for the volume to be cut in half. I cannot play with ear plugs, I was swirling sound every nite like falling but still refusing to behave-sit still-or even cancel. And boy, it was freaky QUIETER. This photo is from one Otolaryngologist I saw in Austria right before the concert in Graz. His treatment was to put me in a 50s Soviet style scalding hot head-heat-box for 20 minutes. After a while I got bored and took some selfies. They came out exactly like this. Thus the cover. It was a Quieter time for me, like-in the van Mats Gustafsson sounded like cherry ice cream. Finally quiet in the fucking van. I couldn’t understand what was happening unless I turned my head. I completely stopped listening to people talk. Strange concerts. Le Guess Who was a highlite-very like thrashing through the air, as the numerous monitors seemed to be alive and spinning. Eventually I cleared it but not after several promoters kindly took me to crackpot doctors who did silly things. This is a nice deaf pic for the Quieter album. To me it just looks pretty like tour: still a fantastic job to have.”
Carla Bozulich
Nether 