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Tough Love Records

  • Autobahn 'The Moral Crossing' - Cargo Records UK

    Tough Love Records

    Autobahn 'The Moral Crossing'

    £11.99

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    Tough Love Records

    Autobahn 'The Moral Crossing'

    £11.99

    'Melancholy and darkness, and dissonant, uncomfortable music, resonates with us, for whatever reason,' says singer and spokesman Craig Johnson. 'The new record is more melancholy than dissonant. I feel we're just opening up a bit more on this record.'
     
    A sliver of strings, a squeal of feedback, pulsing drums, sheets of steely guitar and sonorous bass, and a rough, declamatory voice - from these primary components, Leeds quintet AUTOBAHN unfurl their second album, The Moral Crossing, which adds more finesse, dynamic and colour to the commitment and energy shown on their 2014 debut Dissemble - an album that Louder Than War described as, 'driving, powerful and passionate - ¦ tapping into addictive darkness of our past and reminding us that that we cannot escape its attractive desolation.'
     
    While Dissemble was made by imagining what the late, great producer Martin Hannett would do, The Moral Crossing is the sound of what AUTOBAHN would do. To capture the new sonic details of the band, lead singer and principal songwriter Craig Johnson, guitarists Michael Pedel and Gavin Cobb, bassist Daniel Sleight and drummer Liam Hilton decided to give up their practice room that doubled as a hardcore/punk venue (which influenced their original sound, as did a love of The Birthday Party) and build their own studio space.
     
    They found a former double-glazing firm, under a disused bridge, in Holbeck (Leeds'red light district), and despite having no experience of such a job, they undertook this feat. It took a year from ripping out the existing contents to finishing the album - which was then mixed in New York by Ben Greenberg, known for his work with the Sacred Bones label.
     
    On top, Johnson taught himself how to make a record after the studio was built. 'I was down there nearly every night,' Johnson recalls. 'It was pretty horrible at times, but worth the pain to have control over everything. We've had the chance to create the sound we want, at times it's more melancholic, and romantic.'
     
    Part of the shift comes from Johnson's newly honed melodies such as Vessel'and Torment', part from a greater use of electronics, such as the synthesiser underpinning a haunting Future', evoking neon-lit rainy-nocturnal rides through a cityscape, likewise the album's title track, which is one song to benefit from the judicious addition of violin and cello. '!'d been listening to classical music, and I'd seen the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra doing Beethoven's Ninth, which was mint, but I felt out of place, that people were looking down at me,' Johnson recalls. 'So, it's good to bring some of that to the record. A couple of tracks, Torment'was one, we ended up replacing the guitars with strings - whatever was best for the song. Like the French female voice in Torment'too, it just felt right.'
     
     
    This time around, AUTOBAHN decided to create their fearsome depth charges by building the tracks as they went along rather than working on completed songs. As a name, AUTOBAHN has been a bit misleading, as they sound quintessentially Leeds, not Munich or Dusseldorf, but Johnson chose the name because he loved the repetition of rhythm. With Hilton - surely one of the best young drummers alive - driving, Johnson requested they all, 'imagine they were all different part of a machine: a steam engine, say. Again, it just felt right. And then we put it all together. The lyrics came right at the end.'
     
    Johnson's lyrics on The Moral Crossing combine to form a whole: the theme of a birth, 'but that person had no choice in the decision. And then it's about the different outcomes that could happen. Which could be glorious or torturous.'
     
    The words and songtitles suggest more torture than glory - for example, 'A selfless crucifixion / You've nailed in the hard sell' in the manic Obituary': 'Pain out of control' in Torment': 'With your withered hand / Drag me deeper into the fallen ground' in the escalating drama of Fallen'- a word, alongside 'fall', that crops up in several songs. Though Johnson points out that another line from 'Fallen', 'Give a break to that child in the noose' is an example of AUTOBAHN's, 'dark northern humour' (another example was the billboard ad for Dissemble: a hearse, parked outside a funeral parlour, with the band's name in flowers, next to a group of kids holding balloons - ¦)
     
    And though Johnson admits to sudden negative episodes (documented by Low/High', another slowburner that eventually bursts into flames), 'they don't last long. Actually, as a band, we're more optimists. I don't find talking about this stuff as dark', but it's stuff people don't usually want to talk about - execution, rising from the dead, depression, feeling utterly lost and unsure where to go. To understand the moral crossing, to go one way or the other, and how it can change your life. For me, saying this stuff out loud give the feeling that there's a future.'
     

    On Low/High', Johnson sings, 'You're floating higher now / No more discontent' and in the part-spoken word litany that is Creation', 'I want to be there for you / I want to rise on through.' To reinforce the optimistic feeling, gospel singers from the local church sing on both tracks. 'I wouldn't call it holy'but some of the lyrics they were singing were about going to a higher place, even if the whole lyric might contradict that,' says Johnson.
     
    AUTOBAHN have checked their own moral compass, and chosen the hard way - not just building their own studio, but to keep confronting the dark stuff. But their music is infused with the joy of exorcising the darkness: to be there, and rise on through. There is a future, and AUTOBAHN and The Moral Crossing are very much part of it.
     
    Martin Aston, August 2017

    Tracklisting :
    1. Prologue
    2. Obituary
    3. Future
    4. The Moral Crossing
    5. Torment
    6. Low/High
    7. Execution/Rise
    8. Creation
    9. Fallen
    10. Vessel

    Release Date: 03/11/2017
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  • Autobahn 'Autobahn' - Cargo Records UK

    Tough Love Records

    Autobahn 'Autobahn' Vinyl 12"

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    Tough Love Records

    Autobahn 'Autobahn' Vinyl 12"

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    Ltd one sided 12'.

    'They're really fucking good' - CRACK

    'Tense and aggressive Bauhaus-misery' - NME

    'A band who sound like they truly mean it' - Loud & Quiet

    Leeds-based five-piece AUTOBAHN follow last year's sold out debut EP, 1., with a second 3-track 12', out 7th July. 2. channels the same aggressive post-punk of their debut, but feels sharper, more focused in its intent. And it's hardly surprising - the first EP was a document of the band's first three songs.

    Time has afforded the chance to hone the creative process with an almost military precision: cut the excess; find the point; hammer it home. If that approach recalls the crack-the-whip intensity of early Greg Ginn-led Black Flag rehearsals (legend states that Ginn would have the band practice 8 hours a day, 6 days a week), then it's fitting of the conditions in which the music was conceived. AUTOBAHN's practice room also plays host to Leeds'DIY hardcore/punk venue, and elements of that lifestyle have filtered into these new songs, in spirit if not aesthetic. Indeed, AUTOBAHN should not be mistaken for a hardcore band and its associated dogma.

    There's too great a range of influences at play - current listening includes Chron Gen, Tubeway Army and Rowland S. Howard. This breadth of influence has informed the band from conception, but it's never been as manifest as on 2. You can hear it on the krautrock-inspired EP closer, Ulcer', with its metronomic intensity and subtle-but-persistent synth line, and in the myriad of guitar lines that close Pale Skin'.

    A nod must also be made here to producer Matt Peel, who the band credits for pushing their songwriting in new directions.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Pale Skin
    2. Unhinged
    3. Ulcer
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  • AUTOBAHN 'Dissemble' - Cargo Records UK

    Tough Love Records

    AUTOBAHN 'Dissemble'

    £8.99

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    Tough Love Records

    AUTOBAHN 'Dissemble'

    £8.99



    'I don't have any repressed emotions that I know of. The world I write about is a jaded version of reality, but where it comes from isn't quite apparent to me yet'

     Following the release of two self-titled EPs over the past 12 months, AUTOBAHN announce details of debut album, Dissemble, out on 21st August via Tough Love. Dissemble was recorded with Matt Peel at The Nave, a hometown studio situated in the wholly appropriate setting of a disused church. The band co-produced the record with Peel over six intense weeks at the start of 2015, dedicating all of their time to the studio and taking potentially unhealthy cues from the legacy of notorious obsessive, Martin Hannett. The result is an album that pushes the band through various degrees of light and shade, but ultimately into new, unexpected sonic spaces. 

     'You need to remember all of this world I write about is a warped reality of people I've known or experiences I've been in. I think you can just tell when a bands from Leeds, can't you?'

    Motivated by the encouragement of a supportive local scene, AUTOBAHN formed in Leeds in early 2013, and immediately began playing live across the north of England. Those early forays across the Pennines were vital in not only helping the band form their own sound, but also hold a symbolic role in understanding their genesis. The North as both idea and identity is integral to what AUTOBAHN are, where post-industrial landscapes intersect with sudden wide open spaces, a place where community is central, but loneliness can be palpable. There's a dark, oppressive edge to their music, but a hopefulness too. Sisters of Mercy, yes, but also brothers in arms.

     'The first track was intended to be a link to the past records. We leave the past behind after that.'

     AUTOBAHN first came to the attention of Tough Love via a local support slot with Tampa romantics, Merchandise, and reached the wider world with the release of two now sold out 12's. Those first recordings suggested a classic modern punk band with a penchant for death and glamour, and an impatience to be heard. Time and touring has afforded them the ability to shift gear significantly, and the renewed ambition of Dissemble stands as testament to that. The band were immediately a thrilling live force, but on this album they're wider, more urgent when they want to be, more thoughtful when required. Dissemble is an appropriate title (meaning to conceal one's true motives), because there's something canny at work here. The surface suggests despair, but scratch deeper and the lyrics display a lightness of touch that skewers the over-earnest and overly-serious.   

     'Dissemble is a twisted romantic view of how AUTOBAHN think: don't take life too seriously'

     Life is a joke, but AUTOBAHN aren't laughing. How could they?

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