Strange Wilds’ ear-splitting debut album Subjective Concepts is now available on CD / LP / DL worldwide and can be yours today.
In celebration of today’s release, the band also presents an official video for “Pronoia,” the album’s lead single. Director David Hoejke and young shredders Strange Wilds will test the limits of your eyes, ears and speakers with this audiovisual assault (see FLOOD videp premiere July 24th). Strange Wilds have a few Pacific Northwest shows - see below - in support of Subjective Concepts (including one in their hometown of Olympia, WA) from July 24th through August 10th, including two Seattle record-release shows today, July 24th: an instore at Everyday Music (at 5pm) and a performance at Capitol Hill Block Party’s Barboza stage (at 7:30pm). Do yourself a favor if you’re a lucky Pacific Northwesterner and watch them crush it in person.
We also suggest purchasing the album Subjective Concepts from Sub Pop Mega Mart, iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp or your friendly neighborhood record store. FYI - All customers who order the LP version of Subjective Concepts from Mega Mart and Bandcamp will receive the limited “Loser Edition” on white vinyl, with a limited-edition poster, while supplies last. (There’s also a new T-shirt design available individually or as part of a bundle with the record. Yeah, we thought you’d like that.)
It Seems ‘They’ Have Something To Say About Strange Wilds’ Album Debut:
“The album is a wake-up call to rock above the hazy summer daze, but then, just like that, it’s gone—a 35-minute sing-along tornado demanding to be played again immediately.” - FLOOD
“Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia, essentially the happy delusion that there is a conspiracy that exists to help people. It’s also the name of the hellish four-minute blast of noise that’s the best song on this debut album by Seattle trio Strange Wilds. The follow-up to 2014’s four-track ‘Wet’ EP, Subjective Concepts sounds like it was raised on ‘Bleach’-era Nirvana and aligns the band with their Washington peers Milk Music and Naomi Punk. They build a monumental wall of hardcore noise on ‘Egophillia’, before taking a wrecking ball to it and screaming wildly into the mess. Elsewhere, there are tight grooves on ‘Disdain’ and ‘Terrible’, and the guttural riffs on ‘Starved For’ offer plenty for bleeding gums to gnaw on.” -NME
“Touch And Go-style post rock with early grunge.” - The AV Club
“Northwestern American trio tap into grunge’s collective unconscious, channeling crushing riffs and ancestral memories of hardcore.” MOJO
“Loud, sneering, and heavy-set, Subjective Concepts could come wrapped in a rain-soaked plaid shirt.” - LOUD & QUIET
“Taut, virile hardcore punk with a seething intelligence… It’s an absolute gem.” - CLASH MUSIC
“An undeniably exciting listen.” - UNCUT
“While the barbed, razor-sharp riffs and tightrope bass thuds ofBleach largely inform the scrappy nature of key tracks like caustic opener “Pronoia” and the pensive “Oneirophobe,” there is an influential undercurrent of the signature sounds of their own city back in the day as well. Shades of K Records classics from Beat Happening and Some Velvet Sidewalk additionally factor into the more melodic elements of Subjective Concepts, particularly within the structures of college radio-ready songs like “Don’t Have To” and “Lose and Found.” - PASTE
“They are a powerful outfit, and Subjective Concepts is cohesive and fierce.” - Pitchfork
“Toggles between a coiled-snake groove and the kind of full scream-along ferocity that makes you want to thrash around in a small, dark room with a bunch of sweaty strangers. This is noisy, heavy, grimy music, and it’s great.” [“Pronoia”] - Stereogum
“A sludged-out mess of hardcore that slam dances with the Seattle label’s past and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see them on a tour run that’s stacked with Mogwai, METZ, or Pissed Jeans” [“Pronoia”] - BLARE
“‘Starved For’ sounds exactly like what you’d want to be listening to if you lived inside of a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game.” - Noisey
Tour Dates Jul. 24 - Seattle, WA - Everyday Music in-store (5pm) Jul. 24 - Seattle, WA - Capitol Hill Block Party (7:30pm) Aug. 09 - Seattle, WA - Chop Suey ^ (EARLY) Aug. 09 - Olympia, WA - Old School Pizzeria # (LATE) Aug. 10 - Tacoma, WA - New Frontier Lounge
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ new 7” single “Sweet Disorder!” b/w “Stars” is available at this very moment, so go ahead and bring some sweet Southern rock into your life. Have a listen to the track below, and acquire this fine record for your collection.
Both tracks are new and previously unreleased. The 7” single is available for purchase now via the Sub Pop Mega Mart and iTunes.
“Sweet Disorder!” was produced by Tim Kerr, cut by Jeremy Ferguson, mixed by Bains and Ferguson at Battletapes in Nashville, TN. The b-side, “Stars,” is a cover of Birmingham, AL group Primitons, and recorded by Lee on Lee’s phone in Atlanta, GA, then shined up by Ferguson at Battletapes.
Lee Bains III has this to say about the new single: “The song “Sweet Disorder!” is about disrupting systems that have proven to fall short of, if not completely undermine, their purported missions (e.g., criminal justice, mental health, the church, language) for the sake of realigning them with those missions. The song developed out of months spent revisiting the Objectivist poets, binging on early Clash albums, and observing the Atlanta actions surrounding the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and other unarmed people of color. The song is the first completed work in a group of songs, tentatively titled Juvenile Detention, aimed at investigating questions of socialization, youth, identity, law, privilege, religion, culture, place, causality and memory.”
The song “Stars” was originally performed by the Birmingham band Primitons, and was released on their self-titled, Mitch Easter-produced 1982 masterpiece EP. The song is a result of the powerful songwriting team of non-performing lyricist Stephanie Truelove Wright and singer/tunesmith Mats Roden – an original pillar of our city’s punk/independent scene, a pioneering openly gay hometown musician, a gentle, self-deprecating soul, and a brilliant songwriter and bandleader who managed to craft melodies out of whimsy and nostalgia, sweetness and fire, sophistication and trash in such a way that could only have taken shape on the Southside of Birmingham. Mats passed away in 2014, and this record is dedicated to his memory and to his songs.”
Tour Dates: Aug. 21 - Alpharetta, GA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park* * w/ Alabama Shakes
In 2011, prior to the release of Dum Dum Girls’ second album Only In Dreams, Dee Dee met up with friend and director Sam Macon while visiting New York City to shoot a video for song “Coming Down.” “Bedroom Eyes” was tapped as the lead single (Macon also directed that video), but everyone felt “Coming Down” warranted its own introduction. In true DIY fashion, Dee Dee, Sam, and a few friends spent a day shooting in Chinatown, chasing light across the Williamsburg bridge.
Having only previously worked with director Christin Turner on more aesthetically obscure videos, Dee Dee admits, “I couldn’t handle starring in such a straight forward, HD role — it was just too much me. I felt exposed and that made me uncomfortable.”
Against the urging of Macon, Sub Pop, and her management, Dee Dee made the call against releasing it and it was canned. (Future bass player Malia James eventually made the official video for the song.)
Fast forward to 2015 and a sync of the song on the acclaimed television series Orange Is The New Black. Soundtracking Natasha Lyonne’s character in a heartbreaking scene brought on an overwhelming response to the song, and this renewed interest found Dee Dee being asked, yet again, to release the initial video.
“I look like a kid in it,” Dee Dee comments. “I look as young and vulnerable as I actually was at that point in my life — it’s probably the most honest visual I’ve done to date, which is probably why I fought it,” she laughs. She reached out to Macon and he replied simply, “I’ve been waiting for this text for four years (see Stereogum video premiere July 21st)
Dum Dum Girls’
digital single for “Coming Down” (radio edit) b/w “Girls Intuition” is now
available for purchase through Sub Pop Mega
Mart, iTunes and
all streaming services.
The wise and kind folks at the AV Club are now streaming the full album by Northwest rippers Strange Wilds here. Enrich your life by giving the album a listen, then preorder it at the Sub Pop Megamart. And, for those of you lucky enough to be in the great Northwest this Friday, go see them play a free, all-ages in-store at Seattle’s Everyday Music, then catch them again at Capitol Hill Block Party. Trust us, it will be worth both your time and your money.
You can now sooth your ears and eyes as you watch the video for THEESatisfaction’s “EarthEE”,
the title track from the group’s stellar 2nd album, premiering via I-D
Magazine.
The new video, which director Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes calls a “A
short visual meditation on the textile traditions of home, sacred Geo Metrics,
theta based communication and the whirling dervish. A sonically driven
work of ancient Afro continuum…” stars the group alongside label mates Porter
Ray and Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces.
I-D says of “EarthEE”: “Utterly mesmerizing, this four minute video
employs compelling graphics that helps propel the song even further into the
light fantastic.”
In other news, Pitchfork recently included THEESatisfaction’s EarthEE in
it’s “Overlooked Records 2015”, and said: “You could imagine
THEESatisfaction—the Seattle boho rap duo of Cat Harris-White and Stasia
Irons—recording in accordance with the phases of the moon. Their second album, EarthEE,
is alluringly cosmic, no doubt, but their neo-soul has more resonance given its
powerful sociopolitical critique…Unbound by genre or modes of thinking, EarthEE keeps
tugging at the shapes of music and minds to come (see Pitchfork July
2nd).
THEESatisfaction’s current summer tour schedule in support of EarthEE resumes
Tuesday, July 21st in Madrid, ES at Sala Siroco and ends August 29th in
Seattle, WA with a Black Weirdo DJ Set at Northwest African American History
Museum. Additionally, THEESatisfaction’s SassyBlack has a few DJ sets and
individual performances coming up as well.
Jul. 21 - Madrid, ES - Sala Siroco
Jul. 23 - Lisbon, PT - Galeria Ze dos Bois
Jul. 24 - Barcelos, PT - Milhoes de Festa
Jul. 29 - Madeira, PT - Estalagem da Ponta do Sol
Jul. 30 - Azores, PT - Walk & Talk Fest
Aug. 07 - Seattle, WA - South Lake Union Block Party
Aug. 27 - Victoria, BC - Eventide Music Series @ Continental Square
Aug. 28 - Vancouver, BC - Fortune Sound Club
Aug. 29 - Seattle, WA - Black Weirdo DJ Set @ Northwest African American
History Museum*
*w/ Chocolate Chuck, Topspin
DJ SETS / SOLO PERFORMANCES :: SASSY BLACK
Aug. 01 - Sitka, AK - Homeskillet Fest
Aug. 06 - Seattle, WA - Neumo’s
Aug. 21 - Seattle, WA - KEXP
