Episode 65 of Melting Pot, first broadcast on Get Radio (www.getradio.co.uk) on September 21st 2023, features an interview with Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin.

They premiere 3 songs that will be released in January 2024.

• Bolts of Melody – “5 x 5” (17:37 mark)
• Shake Appeal – ‘Train Train’ (31:31 mark)
• Swervedriver – ‘Why Say Yeah’ (41:28 mark)

Adam talks about the soon to be released 99th Dream reissue and the upcoming new Bolts of Melody album. Planned release date for both is January 2024.

Adam also reveals that J. Mascis plays a guitar solo on a track on the Bolts of Melody album.

Listen to the whole interview here.

11:40 – Adam Franklin interview (part 1)

17:37 – Bolts of Melody – “5 x 5” (new song premiere)

21:04 – Adam Franklin interview (part 2)

31:31 – Shake Appeal – ‘Train Train’ (exclusive)

34:30 – Adam Franklin interview (part 3)

41:28 – Swervedriver – ‘Why Say Yeah’ (deluxe reissue of 99th dream, exclusive)

44:40 – Adam Franklin interview (part 4)

New track from the soon to be released EP An Object In Motion, called The Skin and the Glove.

Musically it’s reminiscent of Lush, perhaps with some M83 drums sprinkled in.

Tame Impala have announced a 10-year anniversary box set for their second album, Lonerism. (pre-order here)

The box set, due May 26th, will include 3 vinyl records and a 24-page booklet. Two bonus tracks, Retina Show and Sidetracked Soundtrack, which were left off of the album are available to stream now.

Also available are “assorted sketches” made up of material from 2010-2012, which is what we consider the bands best era.

British Alternative band Blur announced their ninth studio album, The Ballad Of Darren, and it’s scheduled for release on July 21, 2023. It was produced by James Ford (Foals, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode) and recorded at Studio 13 in London and Devon.

Damon Albarn wrote demos for the new album, mostly while touring with Gorillaz.

Albarn states, “I recorded in a lot of conference rooms but I did actually have a wonderful moment in Montreal. Opposite my room was this fantastic mural of Leonard Cohen. I just didn’t think about it, I wrote from the heart. When I got back we just started and we crashed into the studio in January.”

You can pre-order it from Amazon US here.

The debut single is called The Narcissist.

From the longing of synthetic fulfillment comes the self-titled debut album from American synth duo – out today, June 7th, 2019 on Idol Records. Find warmth in sweet bouncy melodies, as they frame a revolt from the digital dots that connect modern society. Stacked layers of brilliant vocals descend into a gritty bed of rock sentiment, leaving you wanting more. Their sound has drawn comparisons to St Etienne, Sylvan Esso, Purity Ring, STRFKR, Glass Candy, Ladytron, Beach House, XX and even Blondie’s more disco-leaning material.

Available today on digital or vinyl from Idol Records.

“Like many important bands, Seattle quartet Versing got their start in college radio—Tacoma’s KUPS. The group’s main songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Daniel Salas served as alternative music director there, where he met guitarist Graham Baker, drummer Max Keyes, and bassist Kirby Lochner. Now Versing are poised to spread their coolly combustible brand of rock on those said airwaves…and beyond if the world knows what’s good for it.

Baker, Keyes, Lochner, and Salas have risen through Seattle’s competitive rock ecosphere with nonchalant élan. They cheekily titled a previous album Nirvana, but never mind the bleach: Versing isn’t emulating Sub Pop’s most famous artist. Rather, these four twentysomething aesthetes are forging an exciting sound that finds a golden mean between lustrous noise and ebullient melody.

Emerging from a stint as a drummer in a stoner-metal band, Salas formed Versing as a vehicle to vent obliquely about his political and social views with irony and humor. Populated with strange characters, his songs often double as “critiques of centrism and conservatism, from a leftist perspective. That’s a theme: committing to something or doing something that may be hard but is the better option. However, when I write politically, it’s more allegorical and can be interpreted beyond the political realm. I find that more interesting to write about than my personal life.”

That being said, the pell-mell, ostinato-laced “Renew,” which Salas says is his most hopeful song, has a personal message. “It’s about taking time to care for yourself—even when things are all weird and fucked up.” Meanwhile, the immersive, pummeling “Offering” evokes those twin pillars of 1988 rock: My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anythingand Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. “I just really enjoy that droning line of guitar feedback,” Salas says. “We use a lot of feedback on our songs, but I think that’s one of the more deliberately musical uses we’ve found for it. It’s sort of a fantastical song about traveling through a mystical portal to stop an encroaching force of evil, and the feedback is like the whirring sound the portal makes.”

Another fantastical song, “Tethered,” is a low-key, Daydream Nation-esque anthem with plenty of dissonance and surging, distorted guitars, plus rhythms that drive piles. Salas explains that it’s “about how people are tied together,” figuratively. “It’s a reminder of the interconnectedness of humans, to people who make excuses for not doing the right thing” for the greater good of humanity.

With Versing, songwriting is obviously crucial, but much of the pleasure in 10000 comes from its guitar textures. They’re swarming, yet also spiky and agile. The funny thing is, Salas writes most of Versing’s songs on his unplugged Gibson guitar. “I like a more shambolic tone than something that sounds really clean and put together. I like there to be some screechiness to it—something that’s not right.”

Salas cites earlier purveyors of abstract rock music Cocteau Twins and Wire as major inspirations. Much of the rock that followed in the wake of 9/11, though, leaves him cold. “9/11 messed up a lot of things culturally, including music,” he says. “It engendered a deep social conservatism and nationalism that meant the chaotic and unpracticed sounds previously common in rock music had to go, in favor of tighter playing, more simplistic subject matter, and super clean production.”

Gently chiding the Seattle music scene’s self-seriousness while acknowledging Versing’s playfulness and irony, Salas says, “There’s a ‘let’s just fuck around and see what comes out,’ aspect of what we do, which I think is uncommon for Seattle bands.”

Versing’s freewheeling attitude has paradoxically resulted in 10000, an engrossing album that’s impossible to feel ambivalent about. “

https://www.hardlyart.com/releases/versing/10000

• First LP pressing on limited colored vinyl
• LPs and CDs include a digital album download, available on release day

Radiant Dawn‘s nine tracks meld raw analog hardware with frontman Dan Boeckner‘s distinctive voice to create an immersive cinematic sound. Interspersed between the tracks are instrumental inter-titles that amplify the album’s 1970s sci-fi dystopian feel.

For fans of Boeckner’s catalogue (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits) Radiant Dawn feels like the next logical step in the artist’s two decade career, while maintaining a completely fresh energy.

Pre-order the limited edition gold vinyl version from the Operators official store, Last Gang, or Amazon.

Tracklisting:
1. Days
2. I Feel Emotion
3. Faithless
4. (Public Void)
5. In Moderan
6. (Airlock)
7. Terminal Beach
8. (Object Sighting)
9. Despair
10. (Under Occupation)
11. Come And See
12. Strange
13. (The Radiant Dawn)
14. Low Life

Ride return with the 6th studio album of their career and their second since reforming in 2014 and signing to Wichita.

As with their previous album, Weather Diaries, Erol Alkan was in the producer’s chair, and Alan Moulder (with Caesar Edmunds) took care of the mixing (making this the fourth Ride album he has worked on).

Gathering influences from sources such as the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Barbican, and the post punk sound of The Fall and Sonic Youth, Ride have made an album which contains echoes of their earliest days as a band, while bringing these elements into 2019.

Both musically and lyrically, this is clearly an album made by a band who love being back together and who are at the very top of their game.

Double LP on limited edition green/blue vinyl (1000 copies) or black, includes a download code for album MP3s. This 2LP is released on Friday 16th August.

Pre-order here at Amazon or via the band’s Bandcamp site.

Tracklisting:

1. R.I.D.E.
2. Future Love
3. Repetition 
4. Kill Switch
5. Clouds Of Saint Marie
6. Eternal Recurrence 
7. 15 Minutes
8. Jump Ket 
9. Dial Up
10. End Game
11. Shadows Behind The Sun 
12. In This Room

Los Angeles psych-rock band Wand released their 5th album, Laughing Matter, on April 19th.

It moves away from their early garage rock / psychedelic sounds to a more alternative / experimental sound, though there are still elements of their earlier days here.

You can buy the album from their Bandcamp page here.

Since the 2015 release of Drab Majesty’s debut “Careless”, and the release of the acclaimed sophomore album “The Demonstration”the following year, artist Deb Demure and collaborator Mona D. have firmly established themselves amongst the pantheon of dark synth-pop greats, establishing a devoted fan base worldwide with their singular hypnotic sound and mysterious, constantly-evolving presence.

Following intense and extensive touring in support of the first two albums, Drab Majesty escaped to the inspirational landscapes of Athens, Greece to channel the songs for their most ambitious album creation yet: Modern Mirror.

Blowing the dust off the antiquarian myth of Ovid’s “Narcissus”, Drab Majesty uses its premise as groundwork for a modern reinterpretation. Each song tells a piece of the story, in which the listener’s own self-identity has become warped and dissociated through rapidly expanding technology, losing touch with the origins of their own personalities. Setting the stage as a romantic saga of antiquity, “A Dialogue” asks the listener if they are truly in love amid a building wash of guitars and reverb. Elements of classic tragedy weigh heavily in the reflection of Modern Mirror in songs like “The Other Side”, possessing a fundamental sound that is energetic, luminous and hopeful. Fusing the sonic aesthetics of predecessors like New Order and The Cure within the cautious instruction of Greek mythology and modern science fiction, Drab Majesty has birthed a hybrid of dreamy malaise, captured for a future moment.

The first single, “Ellipsis”, romantically plays up the distorted concept of courting through modern technology in a world that has yet to adapt, while on “Long Division”, Deb’s resounding guitar cascades around the chorus shared with No Joy frontwoman Jasamine White-Gluz, wistfully warning us against our vanity and self-obsession. Even when hope for everlasting love peeks through in “Oxytocin”, a sparkling and stoic track sung by Mona D., we are firmly reminded our fleeting existence.

Modern Mirror is a journey of self-reflection, nostalgia, love, beauty, and heartbreak told across eight addictive and emotional synth pop anthems – a seemingly classic tale delivered unblinkingly through the frame of the modern world.

Produced by Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv) and mastered by Dave Cooley, with appearances by Jasamine White-Gluz (No Joy) and Justin Meldal-Johnson (NIN, Beck, M83, Air). Packaging and design by Juan Mendez of Jealous God/Silent Servant. Photography by Nedda Afsari (Muted Fawn).

First edition pressing on 45 RPM hi-fi double LP, packaged in 24pt sturdy wide spine reverse board jacket with two reverse board euro sleeve lyric inserts.  CD comes packaged in classic clear jewelcase inside a spined reverse board slip-case with lyric booklet.

PREORDER – Release Date: July 12, 2019

Format / Vinyl Colorways: 

First pressing on 45 RPM hi-fi DOUBLE LP

• Coke Bottle Clear LP + T-Shirt Bundle | 200 edition
• Clear Blue Vinyl LP | 700 edition
• Clear Red LP | 800 edition
• Clear Vinyl LP | 1200 edition
• Black Vinyl LP
• Compact Disc