Tag: The Third Sound

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Golden Hours Returns with Krautrock-like “The Same Thing”

Currently split between Berlin and Brussels, post punk outfit Golden Hours — Hákon Aõalsteinsson, Wim Janssens, Tobias Humble and Rodrigo Funtealba Palavacino — features a collection of seasoned players, who have performed as part of Gang of Four, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Fuzztones, Tricky‘s backing band and a lengthy list of others. 

The post-punk outfit rumbled into the scene with the release of 2023’s self-titled debut. Their sophomore album  Beyond Wires was recently released through The Third Sound/Fuzz Club Records.  The album was knit together in between the tours and other obligations of its four members, written and recorded in rehearsal rooms in Berlin and an old mansion in Brussels. “The latter definitely put its stamp on the record with its noisy electric static bleeding into every song”, Golden Hours’ Wim Janssens says. However, Golden Hours never shies away from these things: they boldly learn into it and welcome those ghostly appearances with open arms and then, just try to out-fuzz the buzz with layers of noise and strong melodic elements that can cut through it.

The sophomore album is essentially the sound of four musicians gathering in a Berlin rehearsal room, punching oles in a wall and picking up the fallen bits to create something new over the course of a few days. Employing a creative process centered around trial and error, the members of the band swears by a simple rule: “A light shakin’ of the head to the left and right will kill a weak idea in a heartbeat, when no-one says anything the idea is likely accepted. You’ve got to keep the roads clear, to let all the good stuff pass through. You can throw up road blocks in your own time.”

“With the new album, the band is stealthily moving closer to a sonic space that we can call our own,” Janssens adds.

Beyond Wires features the previously released singles “The Letter,” “Arctic Desert,” and the album’s latest single “The Same Thing.” Anchored around a relentless motorik groove and a shimmering guitar paired with a brooding baritone vocal, “The Same Thing” strikes me as being a bit of a hypnotic synthesis of krautrock and post punk that expresses an existential sense of dread and unease.

“’The Same Thing’ leans heavily on Tobias deadpan drum groove and shows the band in full repetitive kraut modus,” Janssen explains. “The song was the last one added to the long-list for the album. When all tracks were recorded, the question was asked: did anyone still have any gems hidden up their sleeves? Hakon started playing this guitar riff, and we all instantly locked in, and within 15 minutes, a song structure appeared. After 2 takes, the basic track was nailed. The song took a slight turn when vocals and extra layers were added in post-production, away from the obvious and into more atmospheric realms, in sync with the overall sound of the album.”

“The song is about the inevitable that comes for you, mostly in moments when you let your guard down. Good things, bad things…The ground beneath your feet can disappear in an instant,” Janssen adds. “It’s the stuff you can never prepare for unless you want to live your life in fear, hiding in a bunker somewhere in a desert where the floods can’t reach you. And it hardly ever happens to you alone, even when no one else gets hit, there’s always collateral damage, stuff that pops up and rears its ugly head years after the avalanche turned your world upside down. It’s a cleansing ritual at best if you’re able to get from under the snow. You can’t keep an eye on everything all the time, and you probably won’t see or hear it coming anyway, but as Tom Waits so beautifully put it: ‘We’re all gonna be just dirt in the ground,’ so no need to go check on your car that fell into that sinking hole before your time is up.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Golden Hours Shares Broodingly Cinematic “Arctic Desert”

Currently split between Berlin and Brussels, post punk outfit Golden Hours — Hákon Aõalsteinsson, Wim Janssens, Tobias Humble and Rodrigo Funtealba Palavacino — features a collection of seasoned players, who have performed as part of Gang of Four, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Fuzztones, Tricky‘s backing band and a lengthy list of others. 

The post-punk outfit rumbled into the scene with the release of 2023’s self-titled debut. Their sophomore album Beyond Wires was released last week through The Third Sound/Fuzz Club Records and features brooding album track “The Letter,” and the album’s latest single “Arctic Desert.”

“Arctic Desert,” is a slow-burning, cinematic tune that’s one part post-apocalyptic post punk, one-part Morricone-era Spaghetti Western film score anchored by Hákon Aõalsteinsson’s world weary delivery.

“‘Arctic Desert’ leans into our love for French and Italian cinema from the age of lead,” Golden Hours’ Wim Janssens explains. “The beat and opening guitar pull you in before waves of noise flare up, sounding like the house band on Anton LaVey’s ritual ceremonies at his Black House in San Francisco. Hakon’s weary croon invites you for a walk to fully disappear into the ice cold desert night.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe Leads Pure Ensemble 6 at Space Fest 2016

Created by Nasiono Association, Space Fest is annual Gdansk, Poland-based festival of shoegaze, space-rock and alternative rock that features the prerequisite live music, but much like CMJ, Mondo.NYC, Northside Festival and others also features meet-and-greets with legendary and renowned artists, workshops for Polish and other internationally-based musicians, a battle of the bands-like competition for young, up-and-coming bands and more. As an annual celebration of all things psych rock and space rock-inspired, Space Fest in his almost seven year history has gradually become a scrappy yet internationally recognized festival with an increasingly diverse lineup of bands from across the European Union, Poland, the US, Canada and elsewhere. 

One of the festival’s standout highlights over the course of its history is the Pure Phase Ensemble, a collaborative collective that features one permanent member, Karol Schwarz (KSAS), who also manages Nasiono Records, and every year Schwartz is joined by a rotating cast of local musicians and at least one internationally recognized musician, who acts as a guest musical director, mentor and collaborator through a series of workshops and joint songwriting that culminates with the group performing their new material during the final night of the festival. 

Now, if you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of years, you may recall that during the course of the Festival’s history, they’ve invited the likes of  Spiritualized’s Ray Dickaty, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, Placebo’s Steve Hewitt, Marion’s Jamie Harding, Six by Seven’s Chris Olley, The Bad Seeds and The True Spirit’s Hugo Race and RIDE’s Mark Gardener. Last year, The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s legendary frontman and founding member Anton Newcombe led Pure Phase Ensemble 6 with Serena Maneesh’s Emil Nikolaisen, and the collective managed to impress festivalgoers with a live set that included “God Drugs” a menacing, droning, and murky dirge, consisting of layers fuzzy and distorted power chords, thundering drumming and an almost mosh pit-friendly hook over which Newcombe laconically delivers his lyrics. While forceful, the song manages a lysergic haze. 

Also, every year the organizers create a documentary of the festival and the documentary features brief interviews and live footage with festival organizers, Anton Newcombe, who says that his appearance at last year’s Space Fest was a way to convince and entice establish artists that it’s a serious and growing festival; the UK’s MDME SPKR, Italy’s Be Forest, Germany’s Camera, the Icelandic-German act The Third Sound, Poland’s Wild Books, Lonker See, The Fruitcakes, Rosa Vertov and The Czech Republic’s DIV I DED. Additionally, the video features impromptu interviews with thrilled festivalgoers and more. The documentary offers a glimpse of a rarely seen Gdansk, a city with a burgeoning music, arts and nightlife scene, full of hungry, young creatives  — a marked departure from the city’s long-held reputation as a grim Soviet satellite city. 

Interestingly, the videos serve as a teaser for this year’s Space Fest, which take place the weekend of December 1 – December 2 and will feature Maciej Cieslak of renowned Polish shoegazers Scianka, leading Pure Phase Ensemble 7, Italy’s New Candys, Portugal’s 10,000 Russos, Mugstar, Switzerland’s Blind Butcher, Germany’s Odd Couple, Mexico’s Tajak, the UK’s Dead Rabbits and up-and-coming local acts 30 kilo slonca, and Wilcze Jagondy.