Kayo Dot Streams "Blue Lambency Downward!"

Stream Blue Lambency Downward HERE!

Dusted Praises Torche's "Meanderthal!"

huge thanks to Dustedmagazine.com for their amazing support! Click for full review!

NoneLouder Reviews Steve Von Till's "A Grave Is A Grim Horse!"

huge thanks to Iann Robinson and the entire NoneLouder staff!



STEVE VON TILL
A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE
NEUROT RECORDINGS



When you involve yourself in the world of metal you don’t often find reasons to discuss beauty. Anger, violence, rage, hatred, those emotions and ideas you can count in but rarely beauty. I’m not sure why, perhaps beauty is a term that means something flowery and bright, an idea that metalheads tend to shy away from. When I think of beauty I think of it as an artistic concept, devoid of attachment to mass ideology. I can see something that’s so ugly it become beautiful or something so dark, so tragic that it illuminates the tragedy in all of our souls and thus becomes a thing of beauty. Such is the effect with Steve Von Till’s new solo album “A Grave Is A Grim Horse.” This is the third offering from Von Till and by far his most mature and---dare I say it---beautiful work to date.

(((click to read full review!)))

Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till Announce New Solo Albums on Neurot!

Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till
Announce Upcoming Solo Releases on Neurot!




Scott Kelly is one of three founding members of Oakland, California experimental hardcore band Neurosis. He has been writing and recording music since 1985 with Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot, Blood and Time and his solo acoustic project. He has also appeared in other recordings, most notably Mastodon's Leviathan (2004) (on the song Hearts Alive) and Blood Mountain (2006) (on the song Crystal Skull). Currently he is still writing, recording and performing with Neurosis and all of the related projects as well as being part owner of Neurosis' record label Neurot Recordings. He has recently started an Internet radio station/website called Combat Music Radio. - Wikipedia.com

* Kelly is also currently working on the new Blood & Time recording as well as writing new music with Neurosis and Shrinebuilder which is a collaboration with Wino (St Vitus/Hidden Hand), Dale Crover (Melvins), and Al Cisneros (Om). Look for the debut release from Shrinebuilder on NR in 2009.

Steve Von Till is a singer and guitarist for the progressive experimental metal band, Neurosis. He is also in Tribes of Neurot and Culper Ring, and records solo work under both his given name and the moniker Harvestman. - Wikipeda.com

* Like Kelly, Von Till is still writing, recording and performing with Neurosis and all of the related projects as well as being part owner of Neurosis' record label Neurot Recordings. He is writing new music with Neurosis, planning further Harvestman titles, including the limited edition release of the soundtrack to the 2006 film 'Hate2O' (Alex Infascelli, dir.), which was scored entirely by Von Till performing as Harvestman.

The leaders of one of the most groundbreaking bands in the history of heavy music have just announced they will be releasing new solo albums on their own Neurot Recordings, later this Spring. Read below to learn more about each amazing album.



SCOTT KELLY: THE WAKE
(May 6th, 2008)

In James Joyce's Dublin the streets inhale and exhale an Irishness that is so fundamentally elemental that it's more a part of the landscape than the actual landscape which is to say: his books are more real than the real space they describe. And so it is with SCOTT KELLY, great guitar griot and founder of Neurosis, and his Wake. Or THE WAKE, to be precise. Its reality supersedes the place, the space and the particulars that gave birth to it. Mixing imagery that borders on a bold and stark contemplation of the limits of our earthly existence via our failed loves, efforts, conceits and even our less than noble other failures [blissfully unspecified and probably unnecessary to HAVE them specified: if you're ALIVE the blanks are easy enough to fill in], THE WAKE with its lion-in-the-winter woe wrenches the almost inexpressibly sad into seven songs that sound like what you hear when you're just about to not hear anything anymore.

"The weather never changes in my world." – Kelly

Goddamned right.

With an acoustic guitar and a croon that crams the lilt, lift and longing of several lives well lived into 5-some-odd minutes of every song this record would not only not have been possible at any other point in either his life, or ours for that matter, than now, it also seems to suggest the shape of beyond-now: thin and on fire.

Enjoy it. Time is short.
--Eugene S. Robinson/www.eugenesrobinson.com




STEVE VON TILL: A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE
(May 20th, 2008)

A Grave Is A Grim Horse marks yet another musical accomplishment from a man who has long given us music to save ours lives with. - Iann Robinson / NoneLouder.com

Perhaps the history of the song is innate within us. At least that's what we might glean from STEVE VON TILL's third Neurot Recordings solo outing A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE. Intertwined with interpretations of songs by Nick Drake, Townes van Zandt, Mickey Newberry and Lyle Lovitt, Von Till's powerful yet subtly graceful originals merge with a lexicon that manifests as something beyond the concept of persona that popular culture has repeatedly old us over the past 50 years. Where his previous releases showed reverence for folks music forms of the past, A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE peers directly inward, drawing from this history of song and earnestly embracing the need we all share to etch our mark upon the artifacts that will ultimately survive us.

Listening to the album, there's a troubling theme that reveals itself only when we're not seeking it. It tells us that we are nothing more than the part of the sum of an elusive whole, but sometimes the patterns that define us can be harnessed, as they are here. And what's most striking about the album is that Von Till's originals are so immediately captivating and threadbare that they seem more familiar on first listen than the works of the time-honored songwriters to whom he pays tribute.



For more information, visit:
www.neurotrecordings.com

Pyramids Stream Self-Titled Debut out Aprill 22nd on Hydra Head!

Pyramids
Announce and Stream Self-Titled Debut Album, Out April 22nd on Hydra Head!



Pyramids are a Denton, Texas-based band alternating between guitar-driven ambient pieces and a hazier approximation of Hydra Head labelmates Jesu's slow-diving metallurgy. I put on "Sleds", the opening track from Pyramids' self-titled full-length, thinking I was supposed to be hearing a metal record, but this one's squarely on the ethereal side of the dichotomy. As multi-layered guitars crumble and burn out, a high, incomprehensible male voice reverberates and decays, bringing to mind Deerhunter's more ambient moments, such as "White Ink". - Pitchforkmedia.com

It starts in the upper atmosphere, in that rarefied air where silence sings and time is little more than an abstraction. As it makes its way down through the tree line, to sea level, to the ear canals, elliptical windows and auditory nerves of the great unwashed, the shapes begin to shift. The sine waves become more distinct: swarming, swirling guitars, drums like a churning steam press, a chorus of celestial voices.

Instruments collude and collide in a roiling shoal and then dissipate, leaving a cavernous hole, a ghost town, the vestiges and echoes of a brief terrestrial existence. Out in Dallas and “other parts of the country,” where seemingly mild psychotropic disturbances can have vast and sinister implications for certain elements within the local populaces, Pyramids conjure the cacophonies of the great unknown, one song at a time.



Stream all of Pyramids self-titled debut HERE!

Pyramids Tracklist:

CD 1:
1. Sleds (3:12)
2. Igloo (3:19)
3. The Echo of Something Lovely (3:23)
4. End Resolve (3:44)
5. Hellmonk (3:16)
6. This House is Like Any Other World (3:03)
7. Hillary (3:18)
8. Ghost (3:30)
9. Monks (2:31)
10. 1, 2, 3 (2:35)

CD 2: Remixes
1. The Echo of Something Lovely [Toby Driver/Ted Parsons/Colin Marston] (5:34)
2. 1, 2, 3 [James Plotkin] (4:30)
3. The Echo of Something Lovely [Jesu] (6:18)
4. Sleds [loveliescrushing] (3:49)
5. Ghost [Birchville Cat Motel] (9:54)
6. Sleds [Blut Aus Nord] (3:35)
7. The Echo of Something Lovely [James Plotkin] (3:15)
8. The Echo of Something Lovely [loveliescrushing] (3:27)




For more information, visit:
www.myspace.com/pyramidsmusic
www.hydrahead.com

Pitchfork News: Ecstatic Sunshine Hit The Road w/ Cex!

huge thanks to Amy Phillips, Dave Maher, and the entire Pitchfork staff:



Ecstatic Sunshine Hit the Road With Cex



Energized by the recent Cardboard Records release of their sophomore album Way, drone-y three-piece Ecstatic Sunshine have plans to hit the road with fellow Baltimore resident and glitch-hop weirdo Cex.

Before the two meet up, Ecstatic Sunshine kick off their tour tonight (April 17) in Princeton-- right after bandmember Matthew Papich gets weird in NYC. In addition to plenty of Cex, Ecstatic Sunshine will also share stages with Atlas Sound, High Places, Zs, and BARR.

Ecstatic Sunshine:

04-17 Princeton, NJ - Princeton University *#
04-18 Brooklyn, NY - Market Hotel #$^
04-19 Purchase, NY - SUNY Purchase (Culture Shock) #$
04-20 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY - SMOG Club (Bard College) $
04-22 Buffalo, NY - Soundlab $
04-23 Detroit, MI - Scrummage University $
04-26 Chicago, IL - South Union Arts $
04-27 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club $
04-30 Denver, CO - Rhinoceropolis $
05-02 Boise, ID - 406 O'Farrel St. $
05-03 Portland, OR - Backspace $
05-05 San Francisco, CA - ATA $
05-06 Oakland, CA - TBA $
05-07 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo $%
05-08 Phoenix, AZ - Modified Arts $
05-09 Albuquerque, NM - High Mayhem $
05-11 Austin, TX - The Mohawk $
05-12 Dallas, TX - Kettle Art $
05-14 Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light $
05-15 Athens, GA - Caledonia Lounge $
05-17 Washington, DC - Comet Ping Pong $

* with Atlas Sound
# with High Places
$ with Cex
^ with Zs
% with BARR

Stream: Ecstatic Sunshine: Herrons [from the Way LP]

Around the Web Today: Wednesday April 16th

As we find ourselves w/ the not-so-horrible dilemma of having more press come in then we can profile individually on our site, we're trying out this new entry to give props to those who support. Enjoy and click away!

Since this is a new entry, we might sneak in some love from earlier in the week ;)

Solid PR Artist of The Day:


CHRIS MILLS (New album "Living in the Aftermath" April 22nd on Ernest Jenning)

* Absolutepunk review (posted today by Blake Solomon)
* Decoymusic review

Also around the web today:
CMJ.com interviews An Albatross
Plug In Music reviews Scott Kelly's "The Wake" (Neurot)
Treble reviews Cavity's "Laid Insignificant" (Hydra Head)
Impose Magazine Interviews Jettie (Eyeball Records)
MYSPACE BAND OF THE WEEK: E For Explosion (Eyeball Records)