quête:decline of the i

Philippe Hallais returns to Modern Love with a new album, the first under his own name following his label debut as Low Jack with Lighthouse Stories in early 2016.
It's by some distance his most important work to date, setting aside the squashed dancefloor productions of his Low Jack Alias for an album of emotive, indefinable ambient pieces.
After working through different subcultural musical languages as Low Jack, this time Philippe takes inspiration from the TV biopics of high-performance athletes for an album of exceptional
emotive impact; somewhere between pastiche, tragedy and electronic futurism.
Fascinated by the sports documentaries mass-produced by the US TV channel ESPN, Hallais transcribed and amplified its dramatic recipes. These form the material of tearful soap operas
which develop the same narrative ad nauseam; the rise to the top, the betrayal, decline, salvation, comeback and, ultimately, nostalgia and regret. The TV formatting reduces the life of these high level athletes to a generic tale, transforming them into impersonators of their own lives through extreme use of editing, slow motion and musical themes.
Divided into four sides (and eleven tracks) acting as parts in a greek tragedy, the album delves into the dislocations of the mythology of sports and its achievement in mass entertainment; whereby the hero becomes a dispensable and mimetic body. Hallais delves into this unusual portrayal of triviality and disaster, naivety and cynicism that make the real life and ordeals of the hero indistinguishable from their scripted form on TV.
This obsession with storytelling and the creation of bigger than life characters forms the narrative of 'An American Hero', a parable for our times.

Stockholm-based Wolfbrigade announce the news of their ninth full-length album, titled Run With The Hunted, set for release on April 28th through Southern Lord.

Formed in 1995, initially as Wolfpack, after five years they ventured into the new millennium as Wolfbrigade. The band have released an impressive volume of LPs and smaller releases, and have toured widely over the years, becoming one of the premier acts of their genre. Their damning music surges with outcries against human socio-political injustices, yearning for transformation and freedom.

Wolfbrigade's Run With The Hunted strikes with ten brutal new tracks of their trademark d-beat, hardcore-crust-punk fury, elevating both the harsh intensity and the melodic attributes of their music to new extremes of savageness. There's a concentrated sense of urgency across the record, and a sense of dystopia fuelling the scathing vocal wrath. Run With The Hunted was recorded in both Studio Fredman in Gothenburg (At the Gates, In Flames, Martyrdöd), by Fredrik Nordström and Henrik Udd, and in Sunlight Studio (Dismember, Entombed, Grave) in Stockholm, by Tomas Skogsberg.
 
  About the new album, Wolfbrigade declares, We looked to explore our rawness, writing straight-up, in-your-face, primitive songs. On this record, we decided to push the melodic strains even further, but without losing either intensity or brutality. Lyrically we have been inspired by both classic and obscure dystopian literature, finding suitably horrible metaphors for the decline of western society. The search for freedom continues, but this time the path is pointed inwards, into ourselves.'
Run With The Hunted











 

Stockholm-based Wolfbrigade announce the news of their ninth full-length album, titled Run With The Hunted, set for release on April 28th through Southern Lord.

Formed in 1995, initially as Wolfpack, after five years they ventured into the new millennium as Wolfbrigade. The band have released an impressive volume of LPs and smaller releases, and have toured widely over the years, becoming one of the premier acts of their genre. Their damning music surges with outcries against human socio-political injustices, yearning for transformation and freedom.

Wolfbrigade's Run With The Hunted strikes with ten brutal new tracks of their trademark d-beat, hardcore-crust-punk fury, elevating both the harsh intensity and the melodic attributes of their music to new extremes of savageness. There's a concentrated sense of urgency across the record, and a sense of dystopia fuelling the scathing vocal wrath. Run With The Hunted was recorded in both Studio Fredman in Gothenburg (At the Gates, In Flames, Martyrdöd), by Fredrik Nordström and Henrik Udd, and in Sunlight Studio (Dismember, Entombed, Grave) in Stockholm, by Tomas Skogsberg.
 
  About the new album, Wolfbrigade declares, We looked to explore our rawness, writing straight-up, in-your-face, primitive songs. On this record, we decided to push the melodic strains even further, but without losing either intensity or brutality. Lyrically we have been inspired by both classic and obscure dystopian literature, finding suitably horrible metaphors for the decline of western society. The search for freedom continues, but this time the path is pointed inwards, into ourselves.'
Run With The Hunted











 

In this space between chaos and conformity disorderly moments welcome new phases into existence, leading to the awakening of an elevated version of the self. Between highs and lows, Transitions of Life remain; the concept behind Synthek's first solo full length sound narrative on his Natch Records imprint. Unfolding across a vexing two-year transformation phase, Synthek's crossings along rough roads are the tribulations to reveal this intimate personal journey of reve- lation through emotional downshift, spiritual upheaval and cerebral quandary. In this dominion, Synthek shapes the eleven track escapade along a sophisticated array of synths and warm analog drums, while contrasting the build and decline of atmosphere through deep bass soundscapes.
Pivotal turning points execute the programming of the album's three part sound design; beginning from darkness and repression, evolving to a more colourful aerial majesty of lucid dream state, morphing into the developed nature of life lessons learned; Transitions of Life making its incarnation into the discovery of the self and re-entry into reality.

*Transitions of Life is a 2x12' release made available through Natch Elements, intro- spective extension to the Natch Records imprint. Visual embodiment of the project artfully presented with photographic time capsule by Salar Kheradpejouh of Berlin, Germany with graphic work curated by Jacopo Saveritano, co-founder of Natch Records.

The album was produced by John Congleton (Blondie, Sigur Ros), Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu's own Angela Seo.

It features guest appearances by fabled minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, L.A. Banjee Ball superstar commentator Enyce Smith, Swans guitar virtuoso Kristof Hahn and legendary drag artist and personal hero of Xiu Xiu, Vaginal Davis.

FORGET was recorded during a period of epic productivity for Xiu Xiu. While writing FORGET, they released the lauded Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, collaborated with Mitski on a song for an upcoming John Cameron Mitchell film, composed music for art installations by Danh Vo, recorded an album with Merzbow and scored an experimental reworking of the Mozart opera, The Magic Flute. All of this frantic, external activity lead to a softly damaged dreaminess and broadened intent that has not been heard before in other Xiu Xiu works.

Standout track, Wondering' is one of the catchiest boogie pop gems in the Xiu Xiu catalog, but like much of FORGET, it still bears an underlying tension that manifests differently in each piece. From the haunted guitar duet of "Petite", the hilariously fraught lyrics of "Get Up," the advanced industrial boxing match of "Jenny GoGo," or the experimental goth explosion of "Faith, Torn Apart", all the songs, in their own ways, build to a roiling boil of a fate in vanishing.

The calligraphy on the cover translates literally to "we forget." It bows to the universality of everything and everyone's inevitable decline and foggy disappearance. Regarding the album title, Xiu Xiu singer Jamie Stewart said, To forget uncontrollably embraces the duality of human frailty. It is a rebirth in blanked out renewal but it also drowns and mutilates our attempt to hold on to what is dear.' FORGET is both the palliative fade out of a traumatic's past but also the trampling pain of a beautiful one's decay.

Xiu Xiu is Shayna Dunkelman, Angela Seo and Jamie "Butch Jenny" Stewart.