On Friday, June 5th, Sub Pop & Hardly Art artists past and present – Bully, Corridor, Downtown Boys, The Helio Sequence, Hot Snakes, Shannon Lay (with Steve Gunn), METZ, Mudhoney, Pissed Jeans, Protomartyr, Shabazz Palaces (with Stas THEE Boss), and Weyes Blood – will be offering a variety of special sales and deals through Bandcamp’s “No Revenue Share Day.” Additionally, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s excellent new album Sideways to New Italy, released today, will be available on the site for the first time.
Sub Pop and Hardly Art will be passing through 100% of digital sales revenue on Bandcamp to all of our active artists today.
The Helio Sequence Acoustic Live at the Triple Door Pay-what-you-want with a $10 minimum, $1/track for individual songs.
Hot Snakes “They Put You Up to This” The track from their 2018 split single w Mudhoney, released as a limited-edition 7” for Sub Pop’s 30th anniversary, is being released digitally for the first time ever for one day only on Bandcamp on June 5. Pay-what-you-want on June 5th.
METZ “Acid” b/w “Slow Decay” “M.E.” “Escalator Teeth/On and On” “Eraser” b/w “Pure Auto” “Can’t Understand” “Dirty Shirt” b/w “Leave Me Out” All of METZ’s currently available singles (listed above) will be pay-what-you-want on June 5th.
Mudhoney Live Mud First digital release of Mudhoney’s long out of print limited-edition vinyl-only release from 2007, only on Bandcamp. 11 tracks of Mudhoney live from Mexico City, recorded Dec. 10, 2005, by Brett Ellason at Patacio de los Deportes Pay-what-you-want on June 5th.
Pissed Jeans “Don’t Need Smoke to Make Myself Disappear” b/w “Love Clown”* “Sam Kinison Woman” b/w “L Word”** *2006 Sub Pop debut 7”, available for the first time on Bandcamp. **Pissed Jeans’ 2010 7”, finally available on Bandcamp Pay-what-you-want on June 5th. All funds raised Friday to go to www.phillybailout.com.
Protomartyr Old Spool and Gurges 1 This release includes “Born to Be Wine,” originally released as a single from Adult Swim, and “French Poet,” which initially appeared on the Sub Pop 1000 compilation. $1/track, $2 total
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Sideways To New Italy The band’s second album for Sub Pop will be available Friday, June 5th.
Shabazz Palaces ft. Stas THEE Boss “MEGA CHURCH” Previously unreleased single. Pay-what-you-want on June 5th, $1/track after.
Shannon Lay & Steve Gunn “Clay Pigeons” In these transformational times we must find new ways to connect and create together. Steve Gunn and Shannon Lay are on opposite sides of the country but exchanged recordings and covered this song in honor of John Prine and Blaze Foley. All proceeds on June 5th will go to the Black Visions Collective in Minnesota in support of racial equity. [Steve Gunn appears courtesy of Matador Records.] Pay-what-you-want on June 5th, $1/track after. All proceeds will go to the Black Visions Collective in Minnesota in support of racial equity. www.blackvisionsmn.org.
Weyes Blood Titanic Rising Rough Trade Session Pay-what-you-want for June 5th only.
This exclusive limited edition T-shirt was designed by Seattle artist, Arel Watson. All net proceeds from the sale of this shirt will benefit The Seattle Artist Relief Fund organized by Ijeoma Oluo and LANGSTON, and will be directed specifically to Black artists who have applied for relief. If you’d like to learn more about the fund or make an additional donation please contact LANGSTON directly or visitwww.gofundme.com/f/for-artists.
This shirt will only be available for purchase via Bandcamp and Sub Pop Mega Mart through July 3rd and will not start printing until the sale has concluded. We expect to start shipping roughly July 22nd.
While this donation will be specifically directed to Black artists, this fund is generally aimed at helping those artists in the greater Seattle arts community who have been financially impacted by cancellations due to COVID-19.
Where your funds go: 100% of these funds will go to Black artists who have lost income due to cancellations and work stoppage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is emergency funding to help artists in need with rent, food, utilities, and medical needs.
Washed Out’s Purple Noon, his first full-length in three years, will be available on CD/LP/CS/DSPs on August 7th, 2020 worldwide through Sub Pop. The 10-track effort which features the lead single “Time to Walk Away,” along with standouts “Too Late,” and “Paralyzed,” was produced and recorded by Ernest Greene and mixed by Ben H. Allen in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Time to Walk Away” is also the subject of a new video from Australian director Riley Blakeway. The video is a reinterpretation of a personal short film Blakeway shot years ago, now presented in music video form, beautifully (and painfully) telling the story of a relationship crumbling.
Preorders of Purple Noon are now available from Sub Pop. LP preorders through megamart.subpop.com, Washed Out’s official website, and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on clear vinyl. Meanwhile, preorders in the U.K. and Europe through select independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on purple vinyl. There will also be new t-shirt designs available.
About Washed Out’s Purple Noon:
Washed Out is Atlanta-based producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Ernest Greene. Over the course of three uniquely enchanting, critically-lauded albums and an EP, the music he makes has proved both transportive and visual, each new effort inviting listeners into immersive, self-contained universes. With Purple Noon, his fourth album, and return to Sub Pop, he delivers the most accessible Washed Out creation to date.
Life of Leisure, the first Washed Out EP, set the bar for the Chillwave era, shimmering in a warm haze of off-the-cuff Polaroids and pre-IG filters. Within and Without, his full-length debut on Sub Pop, found Washed Out’s sound morphing into nocturnal, icy synth-pop and embraced provocative imagery. Paracosm is Greene’s take on psychedelia, with a full live band and kaleidoscopic light show, and saw him playing to the largest audiences of his career. The sample-heavy Mister Mellow delivered a 360 audio/visual experience, with cut-n-paste and hand-drawn animation to match the hip hop influences throughout the album. With each release, Greene has approached his evolving project with meticulous detail and a steadfast vision.
For Purple Noon, Greene again wrote, recorded, and produced the entirety of the album, with mixing handled by frequent collaborator Ben H. Allen (Paracosm, Within and Without). Production of the album followed a brief stint of writing for other artists (most notably with Sudan Archives on her debut Athena) which enabled Greene to explore genres like R&B and modern pop for the first time. These brighter, more robust sounds made their way into the songs of Purple Noon and mark a new chapter in Greene’s growth both as a producer and songwriter. The vocals are front and center, tempos are slower, beats bolder, and overall, a more comprehensive depth of dynamics that has yet to be heard on a Washed Out record. One can hear the luxuriousness of Sade, the sonic bombast of Phil Collins, and the lush atmosphere of the great Balearic beat classics.
The coastlines of the Mediterranean inspire Purple Noon, and Greene pays tribute to the region’s distinct island culture – with all of its rugged elegance and old-world charm – and uses it as a backdrop to tell the album’s stories of passion, love, and loss (Purple Noon’s title comes from the 1960 film directed by Rene Clement, which is based on the novel “The Talented Mister Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith). Much like the romantic Hollywood epics, the melodrama throughout is strong – a serendipitous first meeting in “Too Late”; the passionate love affair in “Paralyzed”; the disintegration of a relationship in “Time to Walk Away”; the reunion with a lost love in “Game of Chance.” Each Washed Out release has been rooted in a form of escapism, but coupled with this new layer of emotional intensity, Purple Noon takes Washed Out’s music to dazzling new heights.
Tracklisting:
1. Too Late 2. Face Up 3. Time to Walk Away 4. Paralyzed 5. Reckless Desires 6. Game of Chance 7. Leave You Behind 8. Don’t Go 9. Hide 10. Haunt
Following on from the release of their critically acclaimed second album, Sideways To New Italy, earlier this month on Sub Pop, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever return today with the video for recent single ‘Cameo.’ One of the record’s anthemic high points, ‘Cameo’ begins with open guitar strums and Fran Keaney’s lone voice before building to a swirling roar, showcasing a band at the peak of their powers both instrumentally and lyrically.
“This is a love song. It’s about reaching through time portals,” says Keaney. “The lyrics were pieced together over about a year like a little puzzle. I found the first pieces in Rushworth, and the last pieces in Darwin.”
The accompanying video - directed by Nick Mckk - finds the band in a particularly playful mood as they perform in a dimly lit club, sporting turtlenecks in the glare of spotlights and bursting through walls on office chairs. Look beyond the hi-jinx, however, and there’s romance afoot here, perfectly in keeping with the glistening love song at ‘Cameo”s core.
“We made this video with Nick Mckk, who shares our vision for the earnest and the absurd,” explains Keaney. “This is our first video to feature skivvies, a wall of cardboard boxes and a human-powered rotating stage.”
“Fran had the idea to separate each body part playing, disembodied like the famous Queen artwork,” says Mckk. “I think it was Tom who really wanted to dress like Molloy, the cat burglar from The Simpsons. White sneakers, black pants and a turtleneck. I was very for this.
“Because I’m a fool and I don’t know how to work a gimbal (stabiliser), I ended up shooting a lot of the clip on rollerblades, which let me zoom around the spinning stage. Set Designer Grace Goodwin and I created the big bricks that the band could smash through, representing the disintegration of memory and the rebuilding of recollection. I mean, it was that for me, I can’t speak for the band!”
Earlier this month, the band announced a big run of UK and Ireland tour dates for March 2021, including their biggest ever headline UK show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on March 5th. Main support on all dates [excluding Dublin] comes from the hotly-tipped Dutch quartet Pip Blom.
UK/IE Tour Dates:
Mar 4th | Brighton, UK - Concorde 2* Mar 5th | London, UK - O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire* Mar 6th | Birmingham, UK - O2 Institute* Mar 7th | Oxford, UK - O2 Academy Oxford* Mar 9th | Bristol, UK - SWX* Mar 10th | Leeds, UK - Leeds Irish Centre* Mar 11th | Manchester, UK - O2 Ritz Manchester* Mar 12th | Edinburgh, UK - The Liquid Room* Mar 13th | Glasgow, UK - Queen Margaret Union (QMU)* Mar 15th | Dublin, IE - Vicar Street Mar 17th | Cardiff, UK - Tramshed* Mar 18th | Nottingham, UK - The Level* Mar 19th | Sheffield, UK - The Foundry*
