Tag: Electrelane

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: MEMORIALS Share Mind-bending “Cut Glass Hammer”

Canterbury, UK-based MEMORIALS — Electrelane‘s Verity Susman (vocals) and Wire‘s Matthew Simms (guitar) — will be releasing their third album All Clouds Bring Not Rain on March 27, 2026 through Fire Recordings. The album will be released digitally, on CD and three limited citrus vinyl editions: Orange Vinyl, Lemon Vinyl (Indie Store Exclusive) and a Lime Vinyl Bundle, which will include four hand-stamped art prints in a signed wax-sealed envelope plus a sticker sheet (Fire Records and Bandcamp Exclusive).

Having spent the first half of last year composing the soundtrack to an acclaimed documentary about Kate Bush, which aired last fall, the duo spent the summer writing and recording All Clouds Bring Not Rain, before embarking on a Stateside tour with Stereolab.

The duo locked themselves away in a studio in a secluded barn deep in the southwestern French woods, where the immediate environment imbued the recording sessions with a sense of freedom and an album of beautiful, unusual material that’s both melodic, unconventional and remarkably ambitious.

Written, performed, recorded and mixed solely by the duo, the album reportedly sounds much like an unearthed classic that sees the pair twisting their influences into their own unmistakable sound that draws from a wide range of influences including folk, dub, post punk, experimental tape music, 60s soul, garage rock, 70s spiritual jazz and Canterbury prog among others.

“We are increasingly drawn to the way records used to be made, both the sound of the equipment used and the choices forced by that equipment; there wasn’t the option to tinker for ages, it was about capturing a moment in time and committing to that,” the duo say of the new album’s creative process. “It’s far more satisfying to record sounds that exist in a real space and so become unique to us: they aren’t the same as the samples readily available everywhere . . . we were actively turning away from the easy option at almost every opportunity!”

That attention to detail in their sound meant finding several other studios to get what they needed to create what they wanted the album’s material to sound like and to record with, including a harpsichord at 4AD‘s London-based studio and a vibraphone and vintage Leslie speaker at Stereolab’s Andy Ramsay’s Press Play Studio.

Susman’s distinctive, unadorned delivery, which sees her moving from tender to wild throughout is a focal point oft the album. Her vocal melodies provide the tunefulness and hooky earworms around which their songs’ more unorthodox elements are arranged, showcasing Matthews’ unique approach to recording and production.

All Clouds Bring Not Rain‘s first single “Cut Glass Hammer” is a woozy and hypnotic song built around two looping modular synth lines, a motorik groove paired with Susman’s dreamy delivery singing lyrics inspired by a trip the duo took to see the Yoko Ono retrospective Music of the Mind at London’s Tate Modern Gallery. The result is an anachronistic, mind-bending, psilocybin trip that sounds as though it could have been released in 1967 or a B-side on Pavo Pavo‘s 2016 effort, Young Narrator in the Breakers.

The fittingly trippy DIY accompanying video starts with patches being plugged into an analog, modular synth, the song’s titular hammer being used to keep musical time, old toys on spinning a record player and more.

Tour Dates
April 08 – Le Hasard Ludique, Paris, France 
April 09 – Le Tangram, Évreux, France 
April 10 – Variations Festival, Nantes, France, w/ Einstürzende Neubauten 
April 11 – Calm, Limoges, France 
April 12 – La Petite Populaire, La Réole, France 
April 14 – Le Consortium, Dijon, France 
April 15 – Le Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France, w/ Bibi Club 
April 22 – The Croft, Bristol, UK 
April 23 – Little Bully, Oxford, UK 
April 24 – Prince Albert, Brighton, UK 
April 26 – Heartbreakers, Southampton, UK 
April 29 – The Lexington, London, UK 
April 30 – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds, UK 
May 01 – The Castle Hotel, Manchester, UK 
May 31 – Nachtasyl, Hamburg, Germany
June 01 – Kantine am Berghain, Berlin, Germany
June 02 – Noch Besser Leben, Leipzig, Germany
June 03 – Kohi, Karlsruhe, Germany
June 04 – Club Manufaktur, Schorndorf, Germany
June 05 – Bellevue Di Monaco, München, Germany
June 06 – Rotown, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Ganser Release a Probing and Cake Smashing Visual for “Buio”

Formed back in 2014, the Chicago, IL-based post-punk act Ganser — comprised of founding members Alicia Gaines (bass, vocals) and Nadia Garofalo (keys, vocals) with Brian Cundiff (drums) and Charlie Landsman (guitar) — have received attention both locally and nationally for a sound that has been largely influenced by the likes of Sonic Youth and Magazine paired with lyrics, which served as incisive critiques on larger social issues. The Chicago-based quartet’s critically applauded full-length debut Odd Talk thematically focused on communication breakdowns with the material centered around narrators, who desperately attempting to seek meaning in hopeless confusion and messiness. 

The members of Ganser have spent the bulk of this year in the studio recording new material, some of which will appear on their forthcoming EP You Must Be New Here. Slated for a November 8, 2019 release, You Must Be New Here finds the band working with longtime collaborator Brian Fox and Electrelane’s Mia Clarke. The EP’s first official single “Buio” features the angular and driving post-punk sound that first caught my attention and the rest of the blogosphere — with a clean and precise studio sheen. But at its core, the song  possesses acutely self-aware observations centered around the relationship with author/creator and audience. 

Directed by the band, the recently released video is set at a highly uncomfortable dinner party, where we follow a self-conscious and awkward woman, who happily kills the mood of the party by going wild on a cake with her bare hands.  In some way, by the woman deciding to not give a fuck, she finds her own power and agency.