On September 14th, Sub Pop will release 1 Time Mirage, the otherworldly debut long-player from the hermetic duo Knife Knights. The 11-track album features standouts “My Dreams Never Sleep,” and “Light Up Ahead (Time Mirage),” along with the previously released introductory single (+ official video) for “Give You Game [see here].” 1 Time Mirage features 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. The album was produced by Ishmael Butler and Erik Blood at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle.
In further exciting news, Knife Knights make their live debut on KEXP in Seattle today. Watch now [see interview & live stream July 19th; noon PST]!
Knife Knights 1 Time Mirage will be available on CD/LP/DL/CS worldwide from Sub Pop. Preorders of the album through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers will receive the limited Loser edition pressed on blue and white marbled vinyl.
Knife Knights 1 Time Mirage Tracklisting
1. Bionic Chords (feat. OCnotes & Darrius Willrich) 2. Drag Race Legend 3. Give You Game (feat. Marquetta Miller & Stas Thee Boss) 4. Light Up Ahead (Time Mirage) [feat. Porter Ray, Gerald Turner, Darrius Willrich, OCnotes & Shabazz Palaces] 5. Seven Wheel Motion 6. Low Key (feat. Shabazz Palaces) 7. My Dreams Never Sleep (feat. OCnotes, Marquetta Miller & Shabazz Palaces) 8. Light Work (feat. El Mizell) 9. Can’t Draw the Line (feat. OCnotes) 10. Come On Let’s Go (feat. OCnotes & Marquetta Miller) 11. Mr. President
[Photo Credit: Justin Henning]
Knife Knights were born of the love of mystery.
A decade ago, Ishmael Butler—the architect of the groundbreaking but long-disbanded hip-hop group Digable Planets—was preparing at last to emerge from years of near-complete silence. He unveiled his new outlet, Shabazz Palaces, in the summer of 2009 through a pair of self-released EPs, surrounding his hyperlinked verses with webs of psychedelic textures and refracted rhythms. From the start, confidentiality seemed essential: Butler wanted Shabazz Palaces to stand on its own strength, not his outsized reputation, so he adopted a nom de plume for himself.
As the project’s network expanded, though, he needed new monikers for his partnerships. Knife Knights is the name he gave to his work with Seattle engineer, producer, songwriter, and film composer Erik Blood, a vital force in the Shabazz Palaces universe. Now, after more than a decade of collaboration and the development into of a rich friendship, Butler and Blood have made a proper full-length record together as Knife Knights: 1 Time Mirage, an eleven-track odyssey that finds the pair and a cast of their friends weaving together a singular world of soul and shoegaze, hip-hop and lush noise, bass and bedlam. 1 Time Mirage represents a playground for Butler and Blood, a free space for unfettered exploration, and a radically adventurous start to something much more than a mere production duo or side project.
Butler and Blood met in 2003 at a Spiritualized show in Seattle, introduced by a mutual friend who was soon set to record Butler in his studio. A Digable Planets zealot, Blood was floored, passing a bootleg copy of Blowout Comb to his friend for an autograph (which Butler dutifully provided). For the next few years, they’d run into one another by chance and sometimes make small talk about working together. When Butler finally sent him a few tunes to mix, the kinship seemed obvious and immediate. Though Butler had grown up as a hip-hop student, he’d started absorbing shoegaze rock and ambient soundscapes, too. Blood, meanwhile, was an ardent hip-hop fan who had always been an inclusive listener. On every Shabazz Palaces album, Butler and Blood have delighted at that artistic intersection, constantly indoctrinating hip-hop in new worlds of sound. “He takes my ideas and clarifies and pronounces them, helps me realize them,” explains Butler. “He helps me get to the essence.”
Recorded in three fertile sessions interrupted by Shabazz Palaces tours and Blood’s recording projects, 1 Time Mirage is a profound fulfilment of that partnership, realized at the crossroads of Butler’s and Blood’s mutual enthusiasms. Their shared interests have been split into pieces and fused together with enviable imagination. Take “Give You Game,” where Butler and Blood weave their distant voices through a landscape of synthesizers and drums that bubble up sporadically, like geysers. Marquetta Miller and THEESatisfaction’s Stasia Irons soon join, their round tones lacing around those sounds and giving them shape. It is an abstract anthem to astral love.
“Low Key” suggests a radiant daydream, with kaleidoscopic synthesizers and faded harmonies pirouetting over puzzle pieces of dizzying percussion and understated funk. “Can’t Draw the Line” rushes headlong like some narcotized disco fantasy, with its four planted firmly on the floor but Butler’s breathy voice and an armada of synthesizers stretching skyward. They splice doo-wop harmonies to scattered dub rhythms during “Light Up Ahead (Time Mirage),” hard-edged verses to industrial din during “ Mr. President.” Colossal drums puncture walls of labyrinthine noise sculpted from deranged synthesizers and mutated guitars during “Seven Wheel Motion,” an absolute powerhouse. Butler seems to rap in dialogue with himself, detailing a threatening streetscape and shaping the experience into personal realizations. “Smooth landings, queens in tandems, cash in grand sums,” he declares at one point. “Life is random/I roll the dice and bet on me.”
In the decade since Butler launched Shabazz Palaces and first christened his partnership with Blood as Knife Knights, much of that project’s external mystery has, of course, fallen away. And 1 Time Mirage is a very public step forward for the pair. That early sense of secrecy has given way to a spirit of friendship and creative candor, to the doors of experimentation being thrown open by old pals thrilled by the prospect of testing new ideas.
Still, these eleven songs retain a core of intrigue and, indeed, mystery; each listen reveals yet another connection between infinite and interlocking pieces. To wit, Robert Beatty’s brilliant cover for 1 Time Mirage depicts a futuristic vehicle, being coolly steered with one hand into some great, mildly ominous unknown. That’s how these songs feel, too—confident conquests of the dark that unlock sounds and spaces you have yet to imagine.
In celebration of the bands impending tour dates, Frankie Cosmos have delivered a new video “Duet” which was directed by Eliza Doyle. The new visual stars Greta Kline and depicts a CPR Training video, one in which she becomes completely smitten with an object, and a one-sided romance is born.”
Road warriors Frankie Cosmos have spent the better part of 2018 on tour in support of their latest and greatest, Vessel, available now worldwide via Sub Pop. The band currently have a handful of overseas dates in August including an appearance at the UK’s Green Man Festival on August 19th.
Then on September 13th, Frankie Cosmos will then begin a 20-date North American run with shows in Baltimore, Durham, Atlanta, New Orleans, Austin, Detroit, Pittsburgh, returning to their hometown of New York, playing area shows at White Eagle Hall in New Jersey on October 5th, Music Hall of Williamsburg on October 6th and The Bowery Ballroom on October 7th. These shows will mark the bands first headlining dates in NYC since the release of Vessel.
Frankie Cosmos will follow the early fall run with a string of west coast dates, beginning on November 2nd at the Regent Theater in Los Angeles. They will make their way up the coast, with an appearance at Tropicalia Festival in Long Beach, Calif (Nov. 3rd), with shows at The Fillmore in San Francisco, Wonderland Ballroom in Portland, The Biltmore in Vancouver and The Neptune Theater in Seattle. Along the way, the band will be joined by Kero Kero Bonito (Nov. 2nd, 5th-10th).
Jul. 27 - Denver, CO - Underground Music Showcase
Jul. 28 - Denver, CO - Underground Music Showcase
Jul. 29 - Denver, CO - Underground Music Showcase
Aug. 17 - Paredes de Coura, PT - Vodafone Paredes de Coura
Aug. 19 - Brecon Beacons, UK - Green Man Festival
Aug. 21 - Belfast, UK - Voodoo Belfast !
Aug. 22 - Galway, IE - Roisin Dubh !
Aug. 23 - Dublin, IE - Button Factory !
Sep. 13 - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar *
Sep. 14 - Durham, NC - Motorco Music Hall *
Sep. 15 - Asheville, NC - Mothlight *
Sep. 16 - Atlanta, GA - Masquerade *
Sep. 17 - Birmingham, AL - Saturn Birmingham *
Sep. 19 - New Orleans, LA - Gasa Gasa *
Sep. 20 - Houston, TX - Satellite Bar *
Sep. 21 - San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger *
Sep. 22 - Austin, TX - Barracuda *
Sep. 23 - Dallas, TX - Deep Ellum Art Company *
Sep. 24 - Oklahoma, OK - Tower Theater *
Sep. 26 - Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line Music Cafe *
Sep. 27 - Milwaukee, WI - Back Room @ Collectivo Coffee *
Sep. 29 - Champaign, IL - Pygmalion Festival
Sep. 30 - Detroit, MI - El Club *
Oct. 01 - Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop *
Oct. 02 - Pittsburgh, PA - Cattivo *
Oct. 03 - Harrisburg, PA - Stage on Herr *
Oct. 05 - Jersey City, NJ - White Eagle Hall *
Oct. 06 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg *
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s debut full-length Hope Downs, was released just over a month ago, and the critics seem to agree that it’s one of the best of the year. In fact, it’s currently sitting at 84 on Metacritic, making it the 39th best album of the year according to aggregate scores. This included big love from The AV Club, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Paste, SPIN, Uncut, Mojo, Under The Radar, and more. Luckily, the fans agree, which led to a big opening week for the band and a virtually sold-out US tour back in April.
[Photo by Maclay Heriot]
The band is gearing up to return, and in advance of this, they’re sharing a new Austin Wilson directed video for their brief-but-wonderful song “Time In Common.” It captures a band on the move, a group of friends rolling up their sleeves, touring the world, and putting in the work (with no small measure of fun, of course).
Sun. July 22 - North Byron Parklands, AU @ Splendour in the Grass Sat. Aug. 4 - Katowice, PL @ Off Festival Tue. Aug. 7 - Aarhus, DK @ Tape Wed. Aug. 8 - Copenhagen, DK @ Pumperhuset Fri. Aug. 10 - St. Gallen, CH @ Sur Le Lac Festival Sat. Aug. 11 - Rees-Haldern, DE @ Haldern Pop Festival Mon. Aug. 13 - Munich, DE @ Milla Tue. Aug. 14 - Luxembourg, LU @ Rotondes Thu. Aug. 16 - Trondheim, NO @ Pstereo Festival Fri. Aug. 17 - Bigginghuizen, NL @ Lowlands Festival Sat. Aug. 18 - Kiewit, BE @ Pukkelpop Festival Sun. Aug. 19 - Brecon Beacons, UK @ Green Man Festival Tue. Aug. 21 - Dublin, IE @ Whelans Sat. Aug. 25 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar Mon. Aug. 27 - Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom Tue. Aug. 28 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent Thu. Aug. 30 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Fri. Aug. 31 - Vancouver, BC@ Fox Cabaret Sat. Sep. 1 - Seattle, WA @ Bumbershoot Mon. Sep. 3 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court Wed. Sep. 5 - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge Fri. Sep. 7 - St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club Sat. Sep. 8 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall Mon. Sep. 10 - Detroit, MI @ El Club Tue. Sep. 11 - Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern Wed. Sep. 12 - Montreal, QC @ Le Ministère Thu. Sep. 13 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair Fri. Sep. 14 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s Sat. Sep. 15 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom Mon. Sep. 17 - Washington, DC @ Black Cat Thu. Sep. 27 - Brisbane, AU @ Brisbane Festival Fri. Sep. 28 - Sydney, AU @ Factory Theatre Sat. Sep. 29 - Wollongong, AU @ Yours & Owls Fri. Oct. 5 - Perth, AU @ Rosemount Sat. Oct. 6 - Adelaide, AU @ Jive Bar Fri. Oct.12 - Geelong, AU @ Workers Club Sat. Oct.13 - Melbourne, AU @ Corner Hotel Fri. Oct. 19 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Academy 2 Sun. Oct. 21 - Leeds, UK @ Stylus Tue. Oct. 23 - Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2 Wed. Oct. 24 - Portsmouth, UK @ Wedgwood Rooms Thu. Oct. 25 - Oxford, UK @ 02 Academy Mon. Oct. 29 - London, UK @ Koko Sat. Nov. 3 - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Noord Sun. Nov. 4 - Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje Wed. Nov. 7 - Oslo, NO @ John Dee Thu. Nov. 8 - Stockholm, SE @ Nalen Fri. Nov. 9 - Lund, SE @ Mejeriet Tue. Nov. 13 - Cologne, DE @ MTC
Now Hear Two Tracks “Rick and Morty Theme” & “Goodbye Moonmen”
Sub Pop and Adult Swim are releasing a 26 track soundtrack from the critically-acclaimed series Rick and Morty featuring music from the show’s composer Ryan Elder, and songs from Chaos Chaos, Blonde Redhead, Mazzy Star, and Belly, plus two brand new tunes from Chad VanGaalen and Clipping inspired by the show.
Listen here to two album tracks via your digital service of choice:
The Rick and Morty Soundtrack can be pre-ordered digitally now through iTunes, and pre-release singles will be available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. The album will be available in the following formats on these dates:
September 28, 2018
A standard CD
A double LP pressed on colored vinyl featuring two single-pocket LP jackets housed together in a custom die-cut slipcase.
A full digital release of all of the material on the CD and double LP
November 23. 2018
A deluxe double LP that will include the standard LP pressed on an exclusive colored vinyl housed in a box with a plexiglass window and LED lights which make it glow. The box also contains a custom poster, a patch, a sticker, and a bonus 7” single (featuring an extended mix of the screaming sun from the 2nd season finale.)
(Did we mention Standard LP and deluxe LP box set orders from megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers will be pressed on exclusive colored vinyl? Yes? Ok good.)
A traditional cassette tape
Adult Swim will also have their own exclusive colored vinyl variant of the deluxe box set (limited edition of 1,000) available for pre-order during San Diego Comic-Con at the Adult Swim campground; plus, a separate exclusive variant pre-order of the double LP will be sold at the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles on October 5-7, 2018.
Rick and Morty follows a sociopathic genius scientist who drags his inherently timid grandson on insanely dangerous adventures across the universe. Rick Sanchez is living with his daughter Beth’s family and constantly bringing her, his son-in-law Jerry, granddaughter Summer, and grandson Morty into intergalactic escapades. Can the family survive Rick’s insanity and all the chaos the universe throws at them?
Rick and Morty stars Justin Roiland, Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell and Spencer Grammer. The series is created by Dan Harmon and Roiland who also serve as executive producers.
The Rick and MortySoundtrack Tracklisting 1. Rick and Morty Theme Song 2. Jerry’s Rick 3. The Small Intestine Song 4. The Flu Hatin’ Rap 5. African Dream Pop 6. Look On Down From The Bridge - Mazzy Star 7. The Rick Dance 8. Goodbye Moonmen 9. Summer and Tinkles 10. Do You Feel It - Chaos Chaos 11. Unity Says Goodbye 12. Get Schwifty (C-131) 13. Raised Up (C-131) 14. Stab Him in the Throat - clipping. 15. Help Me I’m Gonna Die 16. Let Me Out 17. Memories - Chaos Chaos 18. Stuttering Light - Chad VanGaalen 19. Alien Jazz Rap 20. For The Damaged Coda - Blonde Redhead 21. Fathers and Daughters 22. Seal My Fate - Belly 23. Terryfold - Chaos Chaos 24. Tales From The Citadel 25. Rick and Morty Score Medley 26. Human Music
Cullen Omori supports The Pillows on their FLCL “Mono Me You Sun Tour,”presented by Adult Swim through July 19th.
Cullen Omori has shared the kaleidoscopic closer, “A Real You,”from his sophomore effort, The Diet, available worldwide from Sub Pop Records on August 17th. Omori shares that “a lot of the parts were scattered around in different songs during the New Misery sessions. The song has been incubated since 2014, and I’d always mess around with a version of the song at sound checks and during interludes in the live set. The song coalesced last year and it came together in a way where it’s familiar but also weird and new and I think that’s a philosophy I applied to the whole album. You can listen to “A Real You” here.
The Diet is a powerful modern indie-rock album that is buoyed by warped, analog pedals/transistors and tailor-made guitar tones. Omori’s winsome vocals crisscross ‘70s art rock and classic songwriting all within the span of 40 minutes.
Omori is currently on tour with Japanese alternative rock band The Pillows. These shows are presented by Adult Swim to celebrate the highly-anticipated return of the channels cult-anime hit FLCL. The tour continues with a sold-out show, tomorrow, July 12th at NYC’s Grammercy Theatre and will wrap on July 19th in Los Angeles at the Mayan Theatre.
Jul.12 - New York, NY - Gramercy Theatre * [Sold Out] Jul. 13 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza * [Sold Out] Jul.15 - Seattle, WA - Neptune * [Sold Out] Jul.16 - Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom * Jul.18 - San Francisco, CA - August Hall * [Sold Out] Jul.19 - Los Angeles, CA - The Mayan * [Sold Out] * w/ The Pillows & Noodles
Pre orders forThe Dietare available now through Sub Pop right here. LP pre orders throughmegamart.subpop.comandselect independent retailerswill receive the limited Loser edition on lavender swirl vinyl (while supplies last). You can also bundle the album with the accompanying new T-Shirt design.
