Sonic Cathedral
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Reveries is Zach Frizzell, Marc Ertel and Damien Duque’s first album for over three years, and follows the success of their debut Liberamente. Together, the trio craft delicately textured and slowly unfurling sonic vistas, occupying a unique aural domain that lies between guitar-driven drone music and modern classical compositions.Visit product page →
With their individual projects they are incredibly prolific, but Dawn Chorus releases are few and far between and Reveries represents a refined evolution, leaning more heavily toward string-based arrangements and compositional virtuosity. It is the very essence of what they are calling “dronegaze”, pushing the boundaries of the ambient genre while embracing a profound auditory expression.
According to the trio, the six, long tracks on Reveries are “heavily reliant on improvisation, intuition, and allowing the compositions to exist in their own moment; the aim was a feeling of fluidity and a sense that every instrument has its place and purpose”.
And they’re right. The opening title track emerges quietly in a swirl of strings; lead single ‘Deus’ eases its fittingly reverent grain into a glorious minor-key immensity; ‘Cadere’ pulls together a cast of orchestral instruments into a comforting devotional; ‘Somnium’ plays out in diffuse, shimmering melodic rounds; ‘Vale’ blossoms from a pair of sparse, alternating chord swells; and ‘Aufero’ is the perfect coda that reprises the low-end rumble of the album’s overture before being swept away on a sea of dissonance.
“We live in an era of infinite distraction,” says Zach Frizzell, “where often the most valuable thing you can find is a respite for the soul.” How right he is. This, truly, is music from a higher place.
Tracklisting:
1. Reveries
2. Deus
3. Cadere
4. Somnium
5. Vale
6. Aufero -
Visit product page →Release Date: 21/06/2024
Moon Diagrams – the solo project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses Archuleta – returns with a second album, Cemetery Classics, on June 21.
The 12-track album is a co-release between Sonic Cathedral (in the UK and Europe) and Angus Andrew from Liars’ new label No Gold (in the US and the ROW) and was mixed by James Ford. It features guests including Anastasia Coope, Patrick Flegel (Cindy Lee) and Josh Diamond (Gang Gang Dance).
It’s Moses’ first new music since 2019’s Trappy Bats mini-album and the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed debut Lifetime of Love and everything seems a bit more extreme – from the Basinski-esque degradation of ‘Neptune’ to the Faustian industrial noise of ‘Listen To Me’ via Art of Noise-style postmodern pop (the first single ‘Very Much My Promise to You’), Daft Punk bangers (‘Fifteen Shows at One Time’), trip-hop, shoegaze, Jan Hammer, Depeche Mode, late Leonard Cohen and more.
“It’s about finding out your arms are too short to box with god,” says Moses of the emotional force that courses through Cemetery Classics. “It’s the inverse of a desert island disc – a graveyard disc. Songs to take into the afterlife.”
Tracklisting:
1. NRG
2. Mousetrap
3. Fifteen Shows at One Time
4. Metallics in Fur
5. Big Ref
6. Rewop
7. Brand New Effie
8. Neptune
9. Very Much My Promise to You
10. Listen to Me
11. Left Hand of God
12. Fragment Rock -
Lifetime of Love is the debut album by Moon Diagrams, the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Gradually pieced together over a ten-year period, it finds Archuleta processing various stages of love, loss and regeneration via forlorn outsider pop, minimal techno and warm, weightless experimentation.Visit product page →
Hymnal opener 'Playground' has echoes of Eno and Grouper; lengthy workouts such as 'The Ghost and the Host' recall long-lost Harmonia outtakes, or something from one of Warp's Artificial Intelligence compilations; the bitter pill pop of 'End of Heartache' has the scratchy guitar of New Order circa Brotherhood and the square pegness of Dazzle Ships-era OMD. Several songs are instrumental, while 'Bodymaker' features Sian Ahern (Eaux, Sian Alice Group).
Subtly grandiose and quietly epic, Lifetime of Love really does live up to its title: a hopeful and curious beginning makes way for a morose middle, before a bittersweet, optimistic end.
Tracklisting:
1. Playground
2. Moon Diagrams
3. Nightmoves
4. Blue Ring
5. The Ghost and the Host
6. Magic Killer
7. Bodymaker
8. End of Heartache -
Sold outSpectres release their second album Condition'via Sonic Cathedral on March 10. The follow-up to their acclaimed 2015 debut, Dying', it was recorded by Dominic Mitchison in the band's adopted home city of Bristol and mastered by Frank Arkwright (Mogwai, 65daysofstatic) at Abbey Road in London.Visit product page →
It's louder and more abrasive than their debut, but also a real progression. It sounds huge and adds a genuinely innovative and confrontational edge, partly inspired by last year's remix album, Dead', which saw everyone from Factory Floor to Richard Fearless instructed to 'kill' the songs from Dying'.
'There were discussions about experimenting with electronics, but the idea soon petered out when we realised we still wanted to experiment with guitars,' reveals singer and guitarist Joe Hatt.
As a result tracks such as End Waltz'have a relentlessly pounding, almost techno structure, in contrast to the kinetosis-inducing dirge of Dissolve' - the first single from the album that came with a suitably stomach-churning video late last year.
Elsewhere the almost restrained (by Spectres'standards) white noise and wordplay of A Fish Called Wanda'and the sprawling Colour Me Out'are counterbalanced by brutal assaults such as Neck'and Welcoming The Flowers', which keeps threatening to drown itself in its own roiling diamond sea.
'On this album we became even less interested in actually playing guitar,' explains Hatt, 'which meant that we got more into experimenting with the sounds we could get out of them when brutalising them and letting the feedback do the talking.'
Tracklisting:
1. The Beginning Of An End
2. Rubber Plant
3. Dissolve
4. Neck
5. A Fish Called Wanda
6. Welcoming The Flowers
7. Colour Me Out
8. End Waltz
9. Coping Mechanism
