December 15, 2016

MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE AND SANFORD PARKER ANNOUNCE EUROPEAN TOUR STARTING JANUARY



MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE have announced plans to return to Europe in January 2017, following a jaw-dropping performance at Roadburn Festival earlier in the year. Along with Sanford Parker, who will also be performing his solo experimental electronic set. There are 22 shows in all, including a visit to the UK, starting on January 12th in Hamburg - and you can watch a trailer for these dates below…


MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE is the collaboration between Neurosis’ Scott Kelly and Buried At Sea’s Sanford Parker. The band released their self-titled debut – a sonic manifestation of insomnia, complete with the tossing, turning, and perennial dread that comes with facing a new day – earlier this year via Neurot Recordings. The five songs that comprise Mirrors For Psychic Warfare lurch and pulsate across a sullen, desolate landscape with an almost curious obsessiveness. You can hear in full at their Bandcamp.

Purchase Mirrors For Psychic Warfare on vinyl, CD and digital download HERE




Anyone who has lowered their ear into the chasm of sound between metal and industrial in the last couple of decades will most likely have come into contact with Parker’s work. Perhaps through the bands and projects in which he is or has been involved as a musician: the doom-prophesying powerhouse Buried At Sea, the extreme-sound fraternisation, Corrections House, or perhaps the doom/post-metal shamans Minsk. Or maybe via the sheer volume of the releases to which he skilfully brought his very own toxic sound as a producer or sound technician. In this capacity, the name-dropping begins with Pelican, Eyehategod, Rwake, and Voivod and carries on far beyond YOB, Lair Of The Minotaur, and Wovenhand. In many cases (Minsk, Corrections House, Twilight, YOB, Blood Ceremony), he even combined the two areas of activity in an interdisciplinary radicalisation of sound both through the amps and behind the mixing desk.

In a way, this material is the translation of doom into the methods of electronic music. A concept work of cross-genre, dystopian music that builds on the loops and sequencer programs of industrial, but shuns purely linear song structures in favor of instrumental storytelling, the development of which expands a track into an entire world of sound. In the process, Parker knowingly invokes American and British industrial traditions, but equally, his microscopic detail work – primarily observable in the harmonics – could easily have come from German avant-garde electro institutions such as Raster-Noton or Mille Plateaux. These ideas manifested themselves in his solo album of this year, Lash Back, which imposes itself on the contemporary extreme music scene like the black monolith in Kubrick’s Space Odyssey – unassailable, incomparable, and perfect in form. Listen to the record in full at bandcamp.


MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE AND 
SANFORD PARKER TOUR DATES

12.01 - GER, Hamburg, MS Stubnitz [tickets]
13.01 - NL, Rotterdam, Worm [tickets]
14.01 - NL, Amsterdam, OCCII [tickets]
15.01 - BE, Antwerp, Het Bos [tickets
16.01 - FR, Paris, Espace B [tickets]
17.01 - UK, London, Underworld [tickets]
19.01 - GER, Oberhausen, Druckluft [tickets]
20.01 - GER, Berlin, Berghain Kantine [tickets]
21.01 - PL, Warsaw, Beerokracja [tickets]
22.01 - PL, Cracow, tba 
23.01 - CZ, Prague, Klub 007 Strahov 
24.01 - HU, Budapest, Dürer Kert 
26.01 - CH, Zurich, Ziegel Oh Lac [tickets]
27.01 - IT, Brescia, Circolo Colony [tickets]
28.01 - CH, Luzern, Industriestrasse
29.01 - CH, Bern, Dachstock [tickets]
30.01 - AT, Bregenz, Between
31.01 - AT, Vienna, Arena [tickets]
01.02 - AT, Linz, Kapu
02.02 - GER, Leipzig, UT Connewitz
03.02 - GER, Dresden, Scheune [tickets]
04.02 - PL, Poznan, LAS


ABOUT MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE:

"Parker's ability to invoke foreboding tones and textures enhances the ritualistic features, bringing MPFW closer in line with Jef Whitehead's defunct project Lurker Of Chalice than Corrections House...the psyche rattling tension they maintain is as unnerving as it gets." - METAL HAMMER

"Imagine a broken mirror on the floor, one shard catching your eye, reflecting a warped, spectral veil emanating from those motherships when at rest, like exhaust pipes slowly bellowing, and a mist created by gradually subsiding engine heat." - ZERO TOLERANCE

"Kelly and Parker deal in a form of debased, defeated industrial future-folk, a zoned-out space cluttered with crunching metallic debris. Some of the quieter moments skirt the dreaded dark ambient category – but that subgenre always seems to suggest hokey cyberdelic techno-sabbats or the Hellraiser sequel in which chief Cenobite Pinhead sashays around on a spaceship. By contrast Mirrors For Psychic Warfare seed concerns about depleted stocks of tinned food and the likelihood of typhoid.” - WIRE

ABOUT LASH BACK:

"Sanford Parker shedding layers until there's only his bare heart exposed - heart, as in a dark powerful engine, an inhuman mechanical contraption pumping oil to his moving limbs." - TERRORIZER

"As if to ask how much more sonic punishment you can take, Parker saves his most abstract piece for last. The charmingly-titled ‘Sheep Slaughter’ verges on the sadistically nightmarish sounds of noise artists such as Prurient, although it does include quieter, calmer gaps in between the barrages of nastier noises. Thanks to this metal interloper, electronica just got a whole lot heavier." - THE PLAYGROUND

"Sanford has found yet another genre that he is able to master and make his own." - AVE NOCTUM

"Lash Back is not a welcoming record. There aren’t many comparable acts who are so visceral and angular, but it’s a rewarding listen and another success for Parker, who has found another avenue in which to excel. For anyone following his work this is more than worth your time, and for metal fans who are intrigued by electronic music, this may scratch an itch you didn’t know you had." - THE MONOLITH


December 9, 2016

NEUROSIS To Perform In Four West Coast North American Cities Next Week Including Headlining The Power Of The Riff

[Photo Credit: Stefaan Temmerman]

NEUROSIS continues to bring the monolithic tones of their recently-released Fires Within Fires LP to audiences, with a run of four West Coast North American live performances rapidly approaching next week.

Following recent shows in London with Earth, Discharge, and Subhumans, and two shows in Portland with labelmates Yob and Kowloon Walled City, NEUROSIS next week plays to fans in their Bay Area origin, with a show in San Francisco on December 17th, again with support from Yob, Kowloon Walled City. The next day, NEUROSIS headlines the multi-day The Power Of The Riff in Los Angeles, the fest also including sets from Wolves In The Throne Room, Incantation, Nails, Pelican, Kowloon Walled City, and more. December 19th sees the band in Seattle, and December 20th in Vancouver, with support from Yob and Sumac on both shows.

Rolling Stone – who today issued their 20 Best Metal Albums of 2016 list, which features NEUROSISFires Within Fires in the #5 position -- recently highlighted the new West Coast shows in an in-depth feature on the thirtieth anniversary of NEUROSIS and the new Fires Within Fires LP. A segment of the interrogation offers, “Outside of booking tours and scheduling press, the group has existed as a DIY operation for the better part of the last two decades, sort of like metal's equivalent to Fugazi or Black Flag. Everything about NEUROSIS, from their extended drum etudes to the Pink Floyd–like visuals they hauled on the road with them for years, has been about bowing to their own artistic whims. Their 11th and latest release, this year's Fires Within Fires, showcases the best aspects of the Neurosis experience: downtuned Sabbath-influenced riffs, pounding tribal drumming, fleeting moments of elegance and caustic vocals recounting personal apocalypses.” Read the entire feature HERE

NEUROSIS’ first tour of 2017 sees them traversing the Pacific for a run through New Zealand and Australia. Running from February 14th through 18th, 2017 the band will play in Wellington, Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. Additional tour dates for the upcoming year will be announced in the weeks ahead.

Fires Within Fires is available now on CD, LP, cassette, and all digital platforms through the band’s own Neurot Recordings RIGHT HERE.



NEUROSIS Tour Dates:

12/17/2016 Regency Grand Ballroom – San Francisco, CA w/ Yob, Kowloon Walled City [tickets]

12/18/2016 Regent Theater – Los Angeles, CA @ The Power Of The Riff [tickets]

12/19/2016 Neumos – Seattle, WA w/ Yob, Sumac [21+] [tickets]

12/20/2016 Venue – Vancouver, BC w/ Yob, Sumac [19+] [tickets]

2/14/2017 San Fran – Wellington, NZ [tickets]

2/15/2017 Kings Arms – Auckland, NZ [tickets]

2/16/2017 The Triffid – Brisbane, AU w/ Dispossessed [tickets]

2/17/2017 Manning Bar – Sydney, AU w/ Dispossessed [tickets]

2/18/2017 The Croxton – Melbourne, AU w/ Dispossessed [tickets]


Decibel Magazine released an entire issue dedicated to NEUROSIS, including multiple rare Hall Of Fame features as well as a full feature on the new album, a very brief section of the coverage praising, “NEUROSIS have redefined what heavy meant and what heavy could be, all while refusing to define themselves as anything more than conduits for the music they conjure like diviners. Now releasing their eleventh LP, Fires Within Fires, they’ve ascended from the trappings of youth to alter the landscape of heavy music like the violent shift of tectonic plates.” Alternative Press published, “NEUROSIS have been endlessly creative and relevant for every stage of their now three-decade career…. Every part of their discography is essential, and this will be another welcome chapter in their story.” Noisey posted, “They're giants in a field obsessed with hugeness—hugeness of riff, of amplifier, of decibel, of ambition—and are a seemingly unbreakable sonic force… Whatever it is they continue to seek, this latest offering is a massive step forward towards it.” The Wire praised, “Fires Within Fires is the summation of thirty years of experimentation in tonality and texture. Yes, NEUROSIS are firmly positioned within the extreme metal underground yet their music, with its ability to generate images of beauty akin to those many of us have experienced in our own lives - not to mention the loss that accompanies them - challenges this categorization." Terrorizer’s album of the month review included, "Fires Within Fires sees NEUROSIS evoking both the primitive elements of their early years and the polished grace of their current form. A worthy addition to their legacy, their fire burns on."






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