Knife Knights have delivered a new video for “My Dreams Never Sleep,” a standout from 1 Time Mirage, their Sub Pop debut. The slightly NSFW and psychedelic visual was directed by animator Joe Garber (illustrator for Foo Fighters The Making of Concrete and Gold) and is a meditation on love, loss and letting go both on a mortal plane and in the afterlife. Garber offers this on the video, “In a dream, she calls him onward, and in sleep, she calls him back.”
Knife Knights Tour Dates + Ticket Links
Knife Knights (Ishmael Butler, Erik Blood, and OCnotes) have also announced their first-ever North American tour in support of 1 Time Mirage, which begins April 25th in Tacoma at the Tacoma Elks Temple and currently ends May 24th in Oakland at The New Parish. On select dates along the tour, there will be special guest appearances from the 1 Time Mirage universe. And from May 1st through May 24th, the group will be joined by Mello Music Group recording artist Lando Chill as direct support.
Apr. 25 - Tacoma, WA - Tacoma Elks Temple Apr. 26 - Victoria, BC - Eventide Music Series at Centennial Square Apr. 27 - Vancouver, BC - Fortune Sound Club May 01- Milwaukee, WI - Colectivo Coffee Back Room * May 02 - Minneapolis, MN - Icehouse * May 03 - Chicago, IL - Sleeping Village * May 04 - Detroit, MI - The Lager House * May 05 - Bloomington, IN - The Bishop Bar * May 06 - Columbus, OH - Ace of Cups * May 07 - Lakewood, OH -Mahall’s 20 Lanes * May 09 - Providence, RI - Columbus Theatre (small room) * May 10 - Brooklyn, NY - Knitting Factory * May 11 - Washington, DC - The Pie Shop Bar at Dangerously Delicious Pies * May 13 - Atlanta, GA - Aisle 5 * May 14 - Tallahassee, FL - Club Downunder * May 15 - Oxford, MS - Proud Larry’s * May 17 - Austin, TX - Empire Control Room * May 18 - Dallas, TX - Ruins * May 21 - Tuscon, AZ - Club Congress * May 22 - Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom * May 23 - Los Angeles, CA - Bootleg Theatre * May 24 - Oakland, CA - The New Parish * * w/ Lando Chill
1 Time Mirage is out now on CD/LP/DL/CS worldwide from Sub Pop. The long-player features the highlights the aforementioned “My Dreams Never Sleep” along with “Give You Game,”“Seven Wheel Motion,”“Light Up Ahead (Time Mirage)” and “Low Key,” and was as produced by Ishmael Butler and Erik Blood at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle. 1 Time Mirage includes guest appearances from labelmates Shabazz Palaces and Porter Ray, along with Stas THEE Boss, OCnotes, Thaddillac, El Mizell, Marquetta Miller, Gerald Turner, and Darrius Willrich.
1 Time Mirage orders through megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers and Knife Knights shows will receive the limited Loser edition on blue vinyl (while supplies last). The album cover also features gorgeous artwork from Robert Beatty.
2019 International tour schedule includes North American headlining shows and appearances at Boston Calling, Governors Ball, and Bonnaroo (May 24th-June 13th)
After a landmark 12 months for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, who released their debut album Hope Downs to worldwide critical acclaim in June 2018 – Sub Pop is excited to reveal new music from the Melbourne band in the form of single, “In the Capital.” The track (which is now live on all digital platforms) will also feature on a limited edition 7-inch alongside a B-side titled “Read My Mind.” The vinyl will be released on Friday, April 26th and is available to pre-order here from Sub Pop.
Rolling Blackouts C.F.’s Fran Keaney describes how “In the Capital” came together: “I first had the idea for the melody and some of the lyrics when I was swimming. It’s taken a while to finish the song, to make it feel like the initial feeling. I can’t neatly describe it, but something like connection despite distance. I was thinking about transience and water and death and big cities and fishing towns and moon river.”
In the Capital / Read My Mind Tracklisting: A. In The Capital B. Read My Mind
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Tour Dates + Ticket Links
To celebrate the arrival of new music, Rolling Blackouts C.F. has extended their 2019 international tour schedule with newly added North American, UK, and European headlining shows and festival appearances.
Rolling Blackouts C.F’s North American shows begin May 24th in Boston for Boston Calling and end June 13th in Manchester, TN at Bonnaroo. The group’s European and the UK run begins July 3rd at in Roskilde, DK’s Roskilde Festival and ends July 27th in Thirsk, UK at the Deer Shed Festival. Additional international festival highlights for the May-July timeframe include Governors Ball (May 31st), Lattitude Festival (May 31st), Down the Rabbit Hole (July 5th), and Mad Cool Festival (July 12th).
Mar. 10 - Tasmania, AU - Panama Fest Mar. 16 - Adelaide, AU - Adelaide Fest Apr. 24 - Brisbane, AU - Triffid May 03 - Castlemaine, AU - Theatre Royal May 04 - Melbourne, AU - Croxton May 10 - Sydney, AU - Manning Bar May 24 - Boston, MA - Boston Calling May 25 - Boston, MA - Boston Calling May 26 - Boston, MA - Boston Calling May 28 - Philadelphia, PA - Underground Arts May 29 - Washington, DC - U Street Music Hall May 31 - New York, NY - Governors Ball Jun. 02 - Toronto, ON - The Mod Club Jun. 04 - Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall Jun. 06 - Seattle, WA - The Crocodile Jun. 07 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theatre Jun. 08 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge Jun. 10 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall Jun. 11 - Los Angeles, CA - The Lodge Room Jun. 13 - Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo Jul. 03 - Roskilde, DK - Roskilde Festival Jul. 05 - Ewijk, NL - Down the Rabbit Hole Festival Jul. 07 - Paris, FR - Le Point Ephémère Jul. 09 - Liverpool, UK - Invisible Wind Factory Jul. 11 - Dublin, IE - The Iveagh Gardens Jul. 12 - Madrid, ES - Mad Cool Festival Jul. 13 - Lisbon, PT - NOS Alive Jul. 15 - Glasgow, UK - St. Luke’s Jul. 16 - Sheffield, UK - The Leadmill Jul. 18 - Cardiff, UK - Clwb Ifor Bach Jul. 19 - Bedford, UK - Esquires Jul. 21 - Suffolk, UK - Latitude Festival Jul. 22 - Birmingham, UK - Mama Roux’s Jul. 23 - Reading, UK - Sub89 Jul. 27 - Thirsk, UK - Deer Shed Festival
[Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana]
To say 2018 was a big year for Rolling Blackouts C.F. is an understatement. The release of the band’s lauded debut album Hope Downs– which featured singles “Mainland,” “Talking Straight,” “An Air Conditioned Man,” “Time In Common,” and “Sister’s Jeans” – was embraced by lovers of their early EPs, Talk Tight and The French Press, and new fans alike. The record quickly became one of the most internationally acclaimed Australian albums of the year, appearing in many sought after Best of 2018 lists, coming in at #5 on Rough Trade’s Albums of the Year list, #3 on MOJO’s Album of the Year List (+ was named MOJO’s “Debut Album of the Year”), #2 on UNCUT’s Albums of the Year & many more. The band kicked off 2019 by being shortlisted for the prestigious Australian Music Prize Award.
Rolling Blackouts C.F. also enjoyed tremendous support from the likes of KCRW, KCSN, KEXP, WXPN, Sirius XMU, The Current, WFPK, WNRN, KJAC, OpenAir, triple j, Double J, FBi Radio, PBS, Triple R,Pitchfork, The Guardian, PASTE,NME, Rolling Stone,BBC 6 Music, Stereogum, DIY, and countless others.
Meanwhile, the band’s renowned live show led to selling-out their mammoth Hope Downs Australian tour, as well as sold-out performances in London, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, New York City and more. The huge touring schedule also included shows at the world’s biggest music festivals, from Coachella, The Great Escape, Primavera, and Shaky Knees to Lowlands, Pukklepop, Green Man and Splendour in the Grass.
Sub Pop has signed Trupa Trupa from Gdańsk, Poland for a worldwide deal, and will release new music from the group in 2019. While we await details of that release, the band have delivered an official video for “Dream About” a new song that features a honeyed falsetto that totters over a menacing bassline, and the frisson between them so hypnotic it renders the title phrase as an existential mantra, a lifeline.
Director Benjamin Finger had this to say of the “Dream About” visual: “The video was shot on Super 8, a format I am strongly connected to, and I think it fits the music of Trupa Trupa. There is something poetic about the music, and I think it matches the images in a good way. The “Dream About” video is also about seeing the world through the eyes of the child. The video features footage shot on location in Vancouver, Paris and Buenos Aires.”
Trupa Trupa will tour the world in 2019, beginning with appearances at SXSW in Austin, Texas (March 14th-16th), and Slovakia and Poland (April 25th-27th). Additional shows will be announced soon.
Mar. 14 - Austin, TX - SXSW / Hotel Vegas / LEVITATION SXSW presented by CREEM Magazine (12:20 am) Mar. 15 - Austin, TX - SXSW / Austin Convention Center / Flatstock Stage (3:30 pm) Mar. 16 - Austin, TX - SXSW / Venue TBC Apr. 25 - Gdańsk, PL - Ziemia Apr. 26 - Poznań, PL - Spring Break Festival Apr. 27 - Bratislava, SK - Sharpe Festival
MICHAL SZLAGA
About Trupa Trupa:
The music that Polish quartet Trupa Trupa creates lands like anthems, with barbed hooks driven deep by an italicized rhythm section or turned into a fantasy by crisscrossing harmonies. During “Dream About,” honeyed falsetto totters over a menacing bassline, the frisson between them so hypnotic it renders the title phrase as an existential mantra, a lifeline. Their music is an embarrassment of riches, a string of hits in Trupa Trupa’s idiosyncratic, self-made universe.
But just beneath the surface of Trupa Trupa’s bright and indelible songs, there is a world teeming with nihilistic considerations, slyly dark humor, and survivalist self-assurances, all subtly nestled into these refrains and reflected back by secretly complex textures.
The setting of Gdańsk is a crucial philosophical and aesthetic touchstone for Trupa Trupa. A city with a convoluted history of German and Polish rule and self-sovereignty, it is itself a living testament to the turnover of human toil. It’s also the homeland of Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher whose system of metaphysical will inspired Nietzsche and, in turn, Trupa Trupa. Klaus Kinski was born nearby, too; Kwiatkowski considers his Werner Herzog-directed film, Fitzcarraldo, one of the best movies ever made. Kinski tries in vain to amass a fortune by piloting a steamship over a mountain into the rubber bonanza of the Amazon. It is a portrait of great effort and pathetic failure, of strain sublimating into nothing. Along with the notions of Beckett, hints of the Beatles, and the knotty complications of Radiohead, these emotions ripple through Trupa Trupa’s music.
Trupa Trupa is the second Polish band to sign to Sub Pop this year, following the February release of Perfect Son’s debut, Cast. As with Perfect Son, Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman, who has long taken a personal interest in the culture and history of Poland, has been following Trupa Trupa for years. In a 2013 interview with Pitchfork, he even mistook their second album, ++, for a set of demos when explaining that he was trying to decide whether or not he liked it. Apparently, he did.
But Trupa Trupa has grown inordinately in both confidence and execution during the last half-decade. Spurred on by a democratic process, where no one is the real leader and all ideas and influences are funneled into the same rich sound, Trupa Trupa channel a multiverse of feelings into its captivating music. They stare into the dark and summon a light of their own, making all our tedium and toil feel not just tolerable but deceptively triumphant.
Sub Pop welcomes Richmond, VA’s Minor Poet who will release The Good News, his label debut on LP/DL on May 17th, 2019. The six-song collection, which features the ebullient lead single “Tropic of Cancer,” was produced by Andrew Carter and Adrian Olsen (Natalie Prass, Foxygen) at Montrose Recording in Richmond.
After spending years writing and recording music by himself in various bedrooms and basements, Andrew Carter hit his stride with the debut Minor Poet album, And How!. Made on a creative whim with no outside expectations, the eleven-song collection combined Carter’s love of carefully-crafted pop with a loose, fun, off-the-cuff recording aesthetic. The album was released in 2017 and developed a small but loving fan base, and Minor Poet has grown from a passion project into a cross-country touring band with write-ups in publications such as American Songwriter, Magnet, The Wild Honey Pie, Impose, and more.
Minor Poet’s second album, The Good News, is a six-song collection that expands the boundaries of what constitutes the band’s sound. In just twenty-two minutes, the songs take apart the standard formulas of guitar-based rock and infuse them with vibrance and energy. On opener “Tabula Rasa,” interlocking guitars and a Farfisa organ carry the song through until everything drops suddenly into a doo-wop section that wouldn’t be out of place on a 1950’s greatest hits compilation. Warped noise envelops a tropicalia-flavored Casio beat in “Tropic of Cancer” before a slick groove and sliding bass line lead into the chorus’ pure pop bliss of horns and vocal harmonies. “Museum District” begins with a drum intro reminiscent of an off-kilter “Be My Baby,” and “Bit Your Tongue/All Alone Now” features a midsection with a glam-rock guitar solo amidst trumpet fanfare. These are just a few of the infectious moments on an EP filled with many more.
The Good News was made over four days at Montrose Recording, in Minor Poet’s hometown of Richmond, Virginia. In the past, Carter played all the instruments and handled all the production, but he knew that he had to reach outside himself to do justice to these songs. “I couldn’t capture the sounds I heard in my head,” Carter explains. “I wanted something that was vast and expansive but that at the same time could hit you immediately in the gut.” Paying homage to the “wall of sound” techniques made famous by Brian Wilson and Phil Spector, Carter and co-producer Adrian Olsen (Natalie Prass, Foxygen) overdubbed layer after layer of Carter playing an array of guitars, pianos, organs, synths, and percussion, as well as singing all the harmonies. The members of Minor Poet’s touring band were brought in to perform the core rhythm section, and local musicians stopped by to add crucial flourishes, such as the harmonizing guitar riffs in “Reverse Medusa” and the saxophone solo that closes out “Nude Descending Staircase.”
At the center of everything is Carter’s voice, singing lyrics that seamlessly mix allusions to religion, mythology, art, and philosophy as he questions himself, his place in the world around him, what he owes to his relationships, and, in turn, what he needs to ask of others in order to stay healthy. “Tabula Rasa” is a concept that argues that humans are born blank slates, shaped through experience and environment. The last two years couldn’t have felt more applicable for Carter, who started out as a fresh face with little-to-no experience in the music industry and slowly grew into himself as a stage performer and bandleader through both good and bad times. During this period he began to come to terms with lifelong struggles, such as the depression that permeates “Tropic of Cancer” and the social anxiety that runs through “Museum District.” Rather than be one-dimensional, however, Carter dives deeper into himself and his motivations, such as in “Reverse Medusa” when he sings, “Hide my love in poetic half-truths/never was one to dwell on my issues.” Carter’s ability to balance emotional honesty with a tongue-in-cheek self-awareness adds to the richness and originality of the music. Short but memorable, catchy yet meaningful, The Good News is another promising step forward for Minor Poet.
The Good News Tracklisting
1. Tabula Rasa 2. Tropic of Cancer 3. Museum District 4. Reverse Medusa 5. Bit Your Tongue / All Alone Now 6. Nude Descending Staircase
The current and fourth edition of the Sub Pop Singles Club will close at 11:59 pm PST on Sunday, March 3rd.
The series of 12 limited-edition 7” singles will now include a single by the almost-unspeakably good singer-songwriter Julien Baker, along with records including previously announced artists OCnotes, HIDE, Pallbearer, Uranium Club, Kikagaku Moyo, Man Man, Shannon Lay, Omni, Dream Decay, and more.
Subscribe here now - or at least by March 3rd - to ensure you don’t miss out!
And, if you need evidence of past glory to convince you to hit that buy button, you can now see the entire discography of Sub Pop’s prior Singles Clubs here.
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Singles Club Vol. 4 Overview ATTENTION RECORD NERDS AND MUSIC FANS! We are now taking subscriptions for the fourth – and, who knows, perhaps the best! –incarnation of the legendary Sub Pop Singles Club. Are you desperate to hear new and exciting music? Do you pine for exquisitely packaged, colored-vinyl artifacts? Do you break into a sweat at the thought of missing out on limited-edition tchotchkes to hold over your friends’ heads? Well, subscribe by March 3rd, 2019 to feed your need!
Attentive oldsters may recall the first edition of the Singles Club, which coincided with the launch of Sub Pop as a semi-functioning (and we do mean semi) record label, and featured Nirvana, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, L7, and countless (ok, around 75, to be more precise) other era-defining artists from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Fans of a more youthful age may remember the second and third editions, which ran from 1998-2002 and 2008-2009, respectively, and together included hitmakers like Iron and Wine, Bright Eyes, The White Stripes, Death Cab for Cutie, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Get Up Kids, The Dutchess and the Duke, Om, Thee Oh Sees, and many more.
All of this ancient history is to say: 1. WE INVENTED THIS SHIT! 2. We’ll get you lots of great music, and there’s a good chance you’ll wind up with some highly sought-after rarities. And, 3. We’re seasoned pros at this and we’ll definitely probably get all your records delivered to the correct address right on time.
For the eminently reasonable postpaid (meaning shipping is included in the price; tax is not) price of $130 for the U.S., $170 for Canada, $185 for Mexico, and $195 for the rest of the world, you will receive twelve (12) 7” singles, shipped directly from Sub Pop HQ in Seattle to you, starting in April of 2019. These singles will feature exclusive tracks by artists from all over the map, both literally and figuratively, but tied together by the common thread of being great at what they do and inspiring to us. We hope you’ll feel the same. This offer is valid until11:59 pm PST, Sunday, March 3rd, 2019.
Things to know:
Subscribing by March 3rd, 2019 is the only way to get the physical 7”s. They will not be available in stores.
You can subscribe from anywhere in the world.
You can purchase a subscription as a gift – simply enter the recipient’s name and address in the delivery address fields for your order.
Each single will be available for streaming and digital purchase two weeks after that single ships. But by then you will not be able to go back in time, subscribe, and get that single. So sign up now if you want vinyl!
Subscriptions are exempt from any Mega Mart sale discounts.
You can buy a subscription in the same order as other items you wish to purchase from us. We will ship the rest of your order as soon as possible, but no Singles Club 7”s will ship until April 2019, when you’ll get the first two, with successive singles to follow in pairs every other month thereafter. (We are shipping two singles at a time, every other month, because shipping is expensive and we want this subscription to be relatively affordable.)
Singles Club subscriptions cannot be sent to your local store and are not part of the Sub Pop Local program. As such, there is no free-shipping option for the Singles Club.
If you need to change your address at any point during your subscription, please email websales@subpop.com.
