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Chelsea Wolfe has always been a conduit for a powerful energy, and while she has demonstrated a capacity to channel that somber beauty into a variety of forms, her gift as a songwriter is never more apparent than when she strips her songs down to a few key components. As a result, her solemn majesty and ominous elegance are more potent than ever on Birth of Violence.
There is a core element to Chelsea Wolfe's music'a kind of urgent spin on America's desolation blues'that's existed throughout the entirety of her career. At the center, there has always been Wolfe's woeful longing and beguiling gravity, though the framework for compositions has continuously evolved based on whatever resources were available. Her austere beginnings were gradually bolstered by electronics and filled out with full-band arrangements. The music became increasingly dense and more centered around live performances. Her latest album, Birth of Violence, is a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings
'I've been in a state of constant motion for the past eight years or so; touring, moving, playing new stages, exploring new places and meeting new people'an incredible time of learning and growing as a musician and performer,' Wolfe says of the era leading up to Birth of Violence.
'But after a while, I was beginning to lose a part of myself. I needed to take some time away from the road to get my head straight, to learn to take better care of myself, and to write and record as much as I can while I have Mercury in my hands,'as a wise friend put it.'
Birth of Violence is the result of this step out of the limelight. The songs stem from humble beginnings'little more than Wolfe's voice and her Taylor acoustic guitar. Her longtime musical collaborator Ben Chisholm recorded the songs on a makeshift studio and helped fill them out with his modern production treatments and the occasional auxiliary flourish from ongoing contributors Jess Gowrie (drums) and Ezra Buchla (viola).
The album opens with 'The Mother Road,' a harrowing ode to Route 66 that immediately addresses Wolfe's metaphoric white line fever. It explains the nature of the record'the impact of countless miles and perpetual exhaustion'and the desire to find the road back home, back to one's roots. Songs like 'Deranged for Rock & Roll' and 'Highway' offers parallel examinations on the trials and tribulations of her journeys while the ghostly 'When Anger Turns to Honey' serves as a rebuttal to self-appointed judges.
While the record touches upon tradition, it also exists in the present, addressing modern tragedies such as school shootings in the minor-key lullaby 'Little Grave' and the poisoning of the planet on the dark wind-swept ballad 'Erde.'
But the record is at its most poignant when Wolfe withdraws into her own world of enigmatic and elusive autobiography. Much like Alan Ginsberg's hallucinatory long-form poem Howl, the tracks 'Dirt Universe' and 'Birth of Violence' weave together specific references from her past into an esoteric overview of the state of mankind. Though the lyrical minutiae remain secret, the overall power of the language and delivery is bound to haunt the listener with both its grace and tension.
'These songs came to me in a whirlwind and I knew I needed to record them soon, and also really needed a break from the road,' Wolfe says.
'I've spent the past few years looking for the feeling of home; looking for places that felt like home. The result of that humble approach yields Wolfe's most devastating work to date.
Tracklisting:
1. The Mother Road
2. American Darkness
3. Birth of Violence
4. Deranged for Rock & Roll
5. Be All Things
6. Erde
7. When Anger Turns to Honey
8. Dirt Universe
9. Little Grave
10. Preface to a Dream Play
11. Highway
12. The Storm -
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'When musicians have this intensity in them, they often get to it sooner and stay put. Ms. Wolfe sounds like she's using it by choice, not disposition; she can use different kinds of darkness as colour or tincture." - NY Times
'The reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock.' Rolling Stone
Hiss Spun is Chelsea Wolfe's sixth album. Following her acclaimed 2015 album Abyss, Hiss Spun is at once dynamic, heavy, and raw. NPR shared the song '16 Psyche,' saying, 'Wolfe has always possessed a talent for dynamic song writing, particularly concerning the theatre of the soul. But the masterful "16 Psyche" is a full-on ride, and one that finds her at her most commanding and climactic yet."
Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge), the album was conceived as an emotional purge, a means of coming to terms with the tumult of the outside world by exploring the complexities of one's inner unrest. 'I'm at odds with myself,' she explains. 'I got tired of trying to disappear. The record became very personal in that way. I wanted to open up more, but also create my own reality.' Hiss Spun features prominent guitar contributions by Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, Failure) and a guest spot from Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, SUMAC).
Digging beneath the mess of the world to find the beauty underneath is perhaps the most consistent theme in Chelsea Wolfe's expansive discography. 'I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free.' 'You're just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasonsl, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it's been fucked for a long time, it's been fucked since the beginning. It's overwhelming and I have to write about it.' Hiss Spun was recorded by Kurt Ballou. While past albums operated on the intimacy of stripped-down folk music or the throbbing pulse of supplemental electronics, Wolfe's latest offering wrings its exquisiteness out of a palette of groaning bass, pounding drums, and crunching distortion. It's an album that inadvertently drew part of its aura from New England winter, though the flesh-and-bone of the material was culled from upheavals in Wolfe's personal life. Aside from adding low-end heft with gratuitous slabs of fuzz bass, long-time collaborator Ben Chisholm contributed harrowing swaths of sound collages.
The album opens with the sickening bang of 'Spun', where a lurching bottom-heavy riff provided by Chisholm and Troy Van Leeuwen serves as a foundation to a sultry mantra of fever-dream longing and desire.
The first third of Hiss Spun'whether it's the ominous twang and cataclysmic dynamics of '16 Psyche', the icy keyboard lines, restless pulse and harrowing bellows of Aaron Turner on 'Vex', or the patient repetition and devastating choruses of 'The Culling'all carry the weight of desperation, lost love, and withdrawal. Wolfe's introspection and existential dread turns outwards to the crumbling world around us with 'Particle Flux', an examination of the casualties of war.
The electronic thump of 'Offering' serves as an ode to the Salton Sea and the encroaching calamities stemming from climate change. The obsession with white noise and global destruction carries over into 'Static Hum', where the merciless percussive battery of Wolfe's current drummer Jess Gowrie helps deliver the dire weight of a sonnet dedicated to a 'burning planet.'
By the time the album closes with 'Scrape', Wolfe has come full circle and turned her examinations back inward, reflecting over her own mortality with arguably the most commanding vocal performance in her entire oeuvre.
Every Chelsea Wolfe album is cathartic, but never before has both the artist and her audience so desperately needed this kind of emotional purging.
Tracklisting:
1. Spun
2. 16 Psyche
3. Vex
4. Strain
5. The Culling
6. Particle Flux
7. Twin Fawn
8. Offering
9. Static Hum
10. Welt
11. Two Spirit
12. Scrape
Release Date: 22/09/2017 -
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Available on limited light Blue Double Vinyl and CD.
'Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album yet . . . a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics.' Rolling Stone
Sleep paralysis plagues singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, and that strange intersection of the conscious and the unconscious has inadvertently manifested itself within her work.
Across the span of her first four albums, there is an underlying tension, a distorted and nebulous territory where dark shadows hover along the edges of the sublime and the graceful.
But until now, Wolfe's trials and tribulations with the boundaries between dreams and reality have only been a subconscious influence on her work. With her fifth album, Abyss, she deliberately confronts those boundaries and crafts a score to that realm she describes as the 'hazy afterlife - ¦ an inverted thunderstorm - ¦ the dark backward - ¦ the abyss of time.'
Chelsea Wolfe's material has always felt intensely private, from the almost voyeuristic bedroom-production aesthetic of her debut album The Grime and the Glow to the stark themes and atmospheres of 2013's Pain Is Beauty. 'Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious,' says Wolfe.
To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar. The ensemble traveled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent).
In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.' The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing. 'Sleep and dream issues have followed me my whole life,' remarks Wolfe as she revisits notes from the writing and recording sessions. In a way, these issues have become a part of Chelsea Wolfe's identity, for whom the notion of sleep as an escape has been subverted.
Abyss captures this dichotomy, this battle between the soothing and the upsetting, and demonstrates why Chelsea Wolfe has become one of the most intriguing songwriters of the decade.
Tracklisting:
1. Carrion Flowers
2. Iron Moon
3. Dragged Out
4. Maw
5. Grey Days
6. After the Fall
7. Crazy Love
8. Simple Death
9. Survive
10. Color of Blood
11. The Abyss -
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Sargent House is excited to re-issue both of Chelsea Wolfe's first two albums, The Grime and The Glow and Apokalypsis, on CD and LP for the first time. Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling. Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk'?a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph.
Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within. Originally hailing from Northern California, Wolfe's formative years were spent tinkering in her country musician father's home studio, however, she long lacked the confidence to share her work. Then, in 2009, an overseas excursion as part of a nomadic performance troupe ignited her passion for performing and initiated a renewed interest in writing and recording. After performing in cathedrals, basements and old nuclear plants to whoever would listen, she returned home with a new drive.
She began toting around an 8-track and recording as the mood hit, eventually editing her findings into a breathtaking debut album, 2010's The Grime & the Glow. Marrying the gentle intimacy of folk, the atmospheric voodoo of death rock, and the bleak, sullen nihilism of black metal, Wolfe's sound effectively cast a genre all her own: a cavernous rumble, marked by stuttering drums, ethereal synths, and a wash of guitar, all very much in the service of one of the most hypnotic, celestial voices in modern music. Described as both healing and harrowing, enchanting and narcotic, the album established Wolfe as a force on the rise. Inspired, Wolfe then relocated to Los Angeles and recorded her second album, 2011's Apokalypsis, which found her in an actual studio with her live band.
The songs captured therein maintained the strikingly visceral elements of her debut, further showcase Wolfe's unique songwriting ability, while adding a serious heaviness of sound that balanced eloquently with her transcendent voice. Its release was subsequently met with critical adoration, and rightly landed on numerous best of 2011 lists.
Tracklisting:
1. Primal/Carnal2. Mer3. Tracks (Tall Bodies)4. Demons5. Movie Screen6. The Wasteland7. Moses8. Friedrichshain9. Pale On Pale10. To The Forest, Towards The Sea -
Visit product page →CD Packaging: Digipak,
Vinyl Standard 12 LP + download card.
Sargent House is excited to re-issue both of Chelsea Wolfe's first two albums, The Grime and The Glow and Apokalypsis, on CD and LP for the first time.
Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling. Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk'?a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph. Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within.
Originally hailing from Northern California, Wolfe's formative years were spent tinkering in her country musician father's home studio, however, she long lacked the confidence to share her work. Then, in 2009, an overseas excursion as part of a nomadic performance troupe ignited her passion for performing and initiated a renewed interest in writing and recording. After performing in cathedrals, basements and old nuclear plants to whoever would listen, she returned home with a new drive.
She began toting around an 8-track and recording as the mood hit, eventually editing her findings into a breathtaking debut album, 2010's The Grime & the Glow. Marrying the gentle intimacy of folk, the atmospheric voodoo of death rock, and the bleak, sullen nihilism of black metal, Wolfe's sound effectively cast a genre all her own: a cavernous rumble, marked by stuttering drums, ethereal synths, and a wash of guitar, all very much in the service of one of the most hypnotic, celestial voices in modern music. Described as both healing and harrowing, enchanting and narcotic, the album established Wolfe as a force on the rise.
Track List :
1. Advice & Vices
2. Cousins of the Antichrist
3. Moses
4. Deep Talks
5. Fang
6. Benjamin
7. The Whys
8. Noorus
9. Halfsleeper
10. Bounce House Demons
11. Widow -
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Northern California native Chelsea Wolfe's sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling.
Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk '? a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph. Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life's darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within.
In a way, Wolfe is on a journey to the surface of her own music. 2012 finds releasing her first acoustic emanation on Sargent House, titled Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs.The experience is a secret shared, a side of our heroine rarely seen or heard, and the making was as intimate as it gets: recorded in the woods of Northern California and at Wolfe's L.A. home, co-produced by her bandmate Ben Chisholm, with players Ezra Buchla of Gowns (viola), Andrea CalderÃ"n of Corima (violin) and Daniel Denton of Gothic Tropic (bass).
Tracklisting:
1. Flatlands
2. The Way We Used To
3. Spinning Centers
4. Appalachia
5. I Died With You
6. Boyfriend
7. Our Work Was Good
8. Hyper Oz
9. Sunstorm -
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CD Digipak with 20 page booklet. Vinyl is 2LP in Gatefold jacket + download card.
Pain is Beauty is the third studio album from the Los Angeles-based artist and is a self-described love letter to nature. Many of the album's 12 tracks veer in a decidedly more electronic direction than previous recordings, while at the same time capitalizing on Wolfe's trademark penchant for the morose and otherworldly.
As Wolfe explains: "[The album] becomes an exploration of ancestry, how the mythology, landscapes and traditions of our ancestors affect our personalities today. Honesty is what initially drew me to music, and I've been more honest and open with myself than ever through these songs.
There is peace in truth. There is clarity in solitude. And there is power within simplicity and focus. Love is not always easy. Tormented love is something I understand more than society's skewed idea of what love should be. Love is indelible, severe, earnest, merciful. To push forward against the odds is to make history".
Chelsea Wolfe makes records that transcend time, avoid pigeonholing, and most importantly, allow a glimpse into the soul of a true visionary. Her work is free of the contrivances of lesser artists, the trivial "concepts" and pandering for attention at any cost. Hers is a dignified way of doing things, proven without any doubt by the sheer quality of her work.
Pain is Beauty presents not so much an auditory experience as it does an encompassing atmosphere with which the listener can surround themselves, a soul-stirring link with infinity.
Tracklisting:
1. Feral Love
2. We Hit A Wall
3. House Of Metal
4. The Warden
5. Destruction Makes The World Burn Brighter
6. Sick
7. Kings
8. Reins
9. Ancestors, The Ancients
10. They Clap When You're Done
11. The Waves Have Come
12. Lone