On May 6th, Chelsea Wolfe played a fantastic concert at the Trix in Antwerp. Before the concert, Phil Blackmarquis had the opportunity to meet Chelsea for an exclusive interview, done together with Michael Thiel, aka Weyrd Son, founder of Weyrd Son Records and a huge fan of the American singer/songwriter.
(Check the review of the concert here.)
PhB: Thank you very much for this interview. You are in the middle of your European Tour right now. How is it?
It’s been cool. It’s been different than usual because we’re doing a half acoustic, half electric set, so it’s been a little wierd sometimes to balance the energies of the two different sets. But it works out well.
PhB: Why did you decide to split the concerts in two sets?
We had the new(ish) acoustic album that had come out in October, so we incorporated a fair amount of it in the set but without doing an entire acoustic show, just to challenge the ‘old’ songs with something new… And we split the show in two sets…
Deafheaven prove to be nothing short of magical. Their blend of post-rock, shoe-gaze and black metal surprisingly translates perfectly live/ The band’s visceral and deeply personal performance is nothing short of wonderful. There’s a sense of artistry to the band that also doesn’t seem forced, mainly because of that tremendous and genuine passion with which they deliver their set. The moments of black metal intensity are as devastating as the more melodic post-rock elements are beautiful. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Deafheaven is how euphoric and uplifting much of the material is, not emotions or vibes normally associated with either black metal or post-rock as a rule. As such I see it as simply more proof as to how much Deafheaven have grown since the release of ‘Roads to Judah’ and how much the band have begun to develop an identity of their own that sets them apart from their peers in the post-black metal scene. If anyone saw this band tonight and isn’t at least considering checking out ‘Sunbather’ when it drops then they must have been deaf as opposed to deafened by such an excellent band.
DEAFHEAVEN is currently on tour see all dates HERE
In the first of our regular features on the importance of cover artwork, Loreana Rushe talks to L.A based visual artist Sonny Kay about the work he did on Street Meat by No Spill Blood and gains some insight into his creative process and inspirations.
Hi Sonny. Tell us about this cover.
It’s a digital collage created in Photoshop from photos I found online as well as some textures I made on paper with india ink and water, which I then scanned.
Can you describe the process?
I began with the frame since I knew I wanted something that felt in some ways like a mandala, radiating out from the center. The other images were layered-in using Photoshop, some filters were applied here and there, and a lot of experimenting was done with transparency and muting certain color channels. It was all basically trial-and-error.
What inspired the artwork for this record?
The book cover the band sent me (HP Lovecraft) coupled with my own interpretation of the music and the vague concept of “street meat”. It sounded like slang for some kind of drug, which led to the idea of a kind of psychedelic meat snack, like beef jerky or something crossed with LSD. I was inspired to try and portray the moment when the hallucinations begin, hence the mandala and the kind of geometric quality.
Tera Melos are on the road…. Don’t miss them SEE ALL DATES HERE
Building fresh fabric layer by layer, Henry Kohen as Mylets births a syncopatic slow-moving beast with a thousand whirring parts. Kohen is both the architect and the conduit for every sound that you will hear on his new release, Retcon – released digitally May 7th. Vinyl on June 25th. It’s no wonder Sargent House scooped him up before the crest of musical-pathfinding-as-a-business discovered the young man’s loop-based array of sound. Kohen uses pedals as a welder would use cast rivets, all the while being in a high-pressure build where the entirety of the structure is dependent on the strength of each part. The result is a lumbering alien giant of a release, spanning different weathers and continents while keeping an underlying vibratory signature of the creator’s soul – the way a great varied release should roam.
“I am AFRAID OF MY NAME. And the face it holds.”
Bosnian Rainbows is an Art/Experimental Rock band from El Paso. It’s composed of two members (guitarist and drummer) of “The Mars Volta” (R.I.P.). Even if the mastermind of Bosnian Rainbows is Omar Rodríguez-López, during the live show the scene was completely taken by barefoot singer Teri Gender Bender, who jumped, crawled and flipped for the whole performance. Her voice is amazing, and its merging with Omar’s guitar work made the show able to impress the audience.
Bosnian Rainbows’ music does not pertain to mainstream at all, and its proposal is not easy or catchy, but it goes directly inside you. We now just have to wait for the upcoming band’s album and hope to always have bands like this, trying to bring Rock a step forward.
SEE ALL BOSNIAN RAINBOWS SHOW INFO HERE - NOW ON TOUR
Sargent House is delighted to announce that Emma Ruth Rundle will be recording her debut solo album this year for release on Sargent House. Above is a video of her performing a new track “Oh Sarah” live from the Glassroom. (Shot & Edited by Spencer Rollins)
Earlier this year we had Emma in the Glassroom performing with her band Marriages another song that will now be on her solo album called “Shadows of My Name” below. (Shot & Edited by David Romo)
Both Videos audio was recorded, mixed and mastered by Chris Common for The Farm.
Get to know Emma Ruth Rundle on the interwebs…
Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Marriages , Red Sparowes , The Nocturnes
Check out Emma’s self Released Electric Guitar album HERE
Sargent House makes a point to sign artists with unique sounds…
LA’s own Mylets consists of Henry Kohen on vocals, Henry Kohen on guitar, and Henry Kohen on the sampling pad. The usual one-man-band thing can get tiresome, but Kohen nails it. His style of jittery, grungy, angsty rock is the kind of sound that he probably wouldn’t want any other musicians to ruin. Using delay pedals to loop guitar parts and sampled drums, he effortlessly creates a complete band right in front of your eyes. When I complimented him on his scream after his set, he replied “Yeah…it hurts,” the perfect self-depreciating response from a lone musician whose talent probably makes him as uncomfortable as it does proud.
- See full Show review Maps & Atlases, Young Man, Mylets here
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is a restless creative force, with endless musical projects as guitarist and producer, his own label and an accelerating sideline as an experimental filmmaker. In the past, he’s walked away from popular bands just to follow his muse into some unexpected directions, but says a brief reunion tour last year with At the Drive-In mattered more to him than many of us will ever know.
The raging, hard-rock quintet grew up together in El Paso, Texas, recorded for Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal label, traveled the world and had a frenzied radio hit with “One Armed Scissor” before breaking up in 2001. Their reunion tour was short, but the band is active in other ways. This week came the wide release of reissues of ATDI’s 1996 album debut, Acrobatic Tenement, and the career-defining (and final release) Relationship of Command on their brand new label, Twenty-First Chapter.
At the Drive-In – which also includes singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, guitarist Jim Ward, bassist Paul Hinojos and drummer Tony Hajjar – have scattered to other projects, leaving the future unknown. The Mars Volta, the post-ATDI post-punk/prog act led by Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala, is officially broken up, too, but the guitarist is already deep into Bosnian Rainbows, his band with singer Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes. Next week, Bosnian Rainbows begin a European tour with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (plus a few dates in Texas and California) and release a self-titled debut album on June 25th.
Rodriguez-Lopez spoke with Rolling Stone about his new band, making music and movies and his eternal attachment to At the Drive-In.
Black metal purists may reject San Francisco’s Deafheaven in much the same way, and for many of the same reasons, they reject Brooklyn’s Liturgy: Something about those bands’ respective approaches to the genre feels like cultural tourism, as if black metal were somehow beneath them, as if they were somehow bigger than black metal. For an insular culture in which elitism is frequently considered a virtue, in which authority must be earned and dogma must be respected, slumming hipsters are a risible presence. (William Bowers wrote a fantastic piece addressing this subject for Pitchfork last year; I highly recommend you read it.) But those bands — Liturgy and Deafheaven in particular — seem to be aware of this, and rather than appeal to the referees, they challenge them, maybe even … mock them? Liturgy frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s ridiculous manifesto may not be intentionally condescending but it has that effect just the same. Deafheaven, meanwhile, are straight trolling at this point. Their new album is called Sunbather, FFS! It has a pink and white cover! It looks like a chillwave record! If black metal has an antithesis, it is chillwave. This is not a subtle reference — on their second full-length, Deafheaven are pretty flagrantly rejecting the community that has largely denied them entry since Day One.
Bosnian Rainbows continue their non stop touring and will head back out starting on May 6th in Berlin with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing some club dates of their own before returning to the United States for Neon Desert Festival in El Paso on May 25th to kick off their Texas shows with Zorch. Newly announced album release shows are in June on the West Coast. Headlining US Tour dates in July will be announced soon. Then in August they head back to Europe for more Festivals and shows with Tomahawk. Bosnian Rainbows have also just been announced on this years Mountain Oasis Festival on October 26th (See Line Up Below). Their self titled debut album comes out on June 25, 2013 on Sargent House and in Europe on June 28, 2013 on Clouds Hill.
SEE ALL BOSNIAN RAINBOWS SHOW DETAILS HERE
BOSNIAN RAINBOWS 2013
May 06, 2013 - Berlin, Germany @ Columbiahalle w/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs
May 07, 2013 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
May 08, 2013 - Paris, France @ Olympia w/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs
May 09, 2013 - Brussels, Belguim @ Magasin 4
May 10, 2013 - Rotterdam, Netherlands @ Rotown
May 12, 2013 - London, UK @ 100 Club
May 14, 2013 - Hamburg, Germany @ Knust
May 25, 2013 - El Paso, TX @ Neon Desert Music Festival
May 28, 2013 - Dallas, TX @ Trees w/ Zorch
May 29, 2013 - Austin, TX @ Red 7 w/ Zorch
May 30, 2013 - Houston, TX @ HOB - Bronze Peacock w/ Zorch
June 24, 2013 - San Diego, CA @ Casbah
June 25, 2013 - Los Angeles, CA @ First Unitarian Church
June 26, 2013 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
June 27, 2013 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Aug 02, 2013 - Cork, Ireland @ Indiependent Festival
Aug 16, 2013 - Groningen, Holland @ Noorderzon Festival
Aug 17, 2013 - Hasselt, Belgium @ Pukkelpop Festival
Aug 31, 2013 - Copenhagen, DE @ Vega w/ Tomahawk
Sept 01, 2013 - Oslo, Norway @Rockefeller Music Hall w/ Tomahawk
Sept 02,2013 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Debaser Media w/ Tomahawk
Sept 04, 2013 - Helsinki, Finland @ Circus w/ Tomahawk
Sept 06, 2013 - Berlin, Germany @ Berlin Festival
Oct 26, 2013 - Asheville, NC @ Mountain Oasis 
Mylets, the one-man-band of Henry Kohen, recently released the first of his three part live performance videos for the Sargent House Glassroom Sessions, of which “Ampersand” (below) quickly went viral, racking up over 65-thousand views by word of mouth.
Today we have posted the third and final Mylets video “Seven Diamonds Plus One” (posted above at the top). The studio version of the song will be available on the forthcoming collection of songs remixed and remastered from three previous EPs as well as all three glassroom session tracks as bonus’. Retcon marks Mylets’ debut release on Sargent House and serves as a precursor to the full length debut currently in the works and planned for release early next year.
And Mylets is not only a pedal wizard as you can see in this acoustic glassroom video below of him performing “Slow Walker”.
Mylets will also play for the first time overseas at the Indiependence Festival in Cork, Ireland on August 2nd on the Sargent House stage along with Bosnian Rainbows, And So I Watch You From Afar, TTNG, No Spill Blood and more to be announced.
Retcon will be available for download on May 7th, 2013 and is available now for PRE-ORDER on vinyl coming out on June 25th, 2013 via Sargent House.
TTNG performing live in Oxford their son “I’ll Take The Minute Snake” - from their latest album 13.0.0.0.0. cheers to GreenDore Films for sharing. Don’t miss TTNG out now on tour with our very own Tera Melos - shows are selling out across the land!
SEE ALL TTNG SHOWS DETAILS HERE
TERA MELOS & TTNG TOUR 2013
Apr 28, 2013 - Toronto, ON @ The Garrison - SOLD OUT
Apr 29, 2013 - Montreal, QC @ Il Motore
Apr 30, 2013 - Hamden, CT @ The Space
May 1, 2013 - Allston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
May 2, 2013 - Brooklyn, NY @ Knitting Factory - SOLD OUT
May 3, 2013 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fire - (early show) SOLD OUT
May 3, 2013 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fire - (late show) SOLD OUT
May 4, 2013 - Washington, DC @ DC9 - SOLD OUT
May 5, 2013 - Raleigh, NC @ Kings Barcade
May 7, 2013 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
May 8, 2013 - Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbits
May 9, 2013 - Miami, FL @ Bardot
May 10, 2013 - Ybor City, FL @ Crowbar
May 11, 2013 - Orlando, FL @ Will’s Pub
May 13, 2013 - Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
May 15, 2013 - Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
May 16, 2013 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s
May 17, 2013 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
May 18, 2013 - Austin, TX @ Red 7
May 19, 2013 - San Antonio, TX @ The Korova
May 20, 2013 - El Paso, TX @ Low Brow
May 21, 2013 - Scottsdale, AZ @ Pub Rock
May 22, 2013 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
May 23, 2013 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
May 24, 2013 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Constellation Room
May 25, 2013 - San Francisco, CA @ The Bottom of the Hill
May 26, 2013 - Fresno, CA @ Star Palace Ballroom