Mistletone

Mistletone is thrilled to present Spiritualized, performing two Australian shows only presenting their new album, Everything Was Beautiful.

SPIRITUALIZED TOUR DATES:

Thursday June 16 – Vivid Sydney. tickets on sale now.
Friday June 17 – Dark Mofo, Hobart. tickets on sale now.

While some people imploded in the lockdowns and isolation of the epidemic, others were thriving. 

“I felt like I’d been in training for this my whole life” said J Spaceman in a text conversation last June or so.  

He was referring to his fondness of isolation and when you reframe loneliness as “beautiful solitude” then it isn’t so bad. 

He would walk through an empty “Roman London” where “even the sirens had stopped singing” and where the world was “full of birdsong and strangeness and no con-trails.” 

He used the birdsong walks to listen and try and make sense of all the music playing in his head. The mixers and mixes of his new record, a ninth studio album, weren’t working out yet. 

Spaceman plays 16 different instruments on Everything Was Beautiful which was put down at 11 different studios, as well as at his home. Also he employed, more than 30 musicians and singers including his daughter Poppy, long-time collaborator and friend John Coxon, string and brass sections, choirs and finger bells and chimes from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. So, there’s a lot going on. 

“There was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me. Not like you’re spiraling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of… achieve. Well, you get there.” 

Eventually the mixes got there and Everything Was Beautiful was achieved.  

The result is some of the most “live” sounding recordings that Spiritualized have released since the Live At The Albert Hall record of 1998, around the time of Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space. 

The opening track “Always Together With You” is a reworking / supercharging of a track originally released in demo quality in 2014. This new version is a perfect Spiritualized song; a breathtaking, hard edged, psychedelic pop tune where themes of high romance and space travel collide. In one of the most sublime refrains of the band’s career, the backing singers call out “if you gotta lonely heart too”.  

And don’t we all? Sometimes? 

On “Best Thing You Never Had”, we meet characters who blew their mind but “never had a mind to blow” over backing instrumentation that sounds like a New Orleans funeral procession band who’ve been drinking thinners all night. It’s possible this Stones at Exile-erastomp is auto-biographical, but maybe not. It’s hard to remember. 

“Let It Bleed (For Iggy)’’ is heavy eye-lids and the romantic intricacies of emotional intimacies, a honeyed song that careers into choir-fueled intensity. A country number “Crazy” is even sweeter, a lorazepam Tammy Wynette ballad with backing vocals by Nikki Lane.  

Spaceman: “When we were mixing, I relied a little bit on what I knew of Ladies And Gentlemen…, that if you start throwing mixes together, it stops sounding like what you already know from the past. Some people have a method of making records like jamming Lego bricks together into something they already know but I wanted to do this differently. 

“And like the last record (And Nothing Hurt) was made to go out and perform live, we did the same thing with this, but even more so. We’ve tried to play stuff from this album live before but it never really worked but now we’ve got the record how we want it to be, we have something to launch from.” 

Of all the songs on Everything Was Beautiful, the three contained on the b-side are the ones that already sound close to the intensity of Spiritualized’s live shows. The final piece of the recording process involved adding some clarinets and vocals to give “it all a sense of proper chaos”.

Spaceman wrote the lyrics to “The Mainline Song” one night while watching the protests happening in America on TV. And if that track is like driving your car too fast with the one you love in a city you’ve never been before, then the following tune The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” is driving that thing off the edge of the world.  

A stupendously epic tale of “words that are old as the hills / cooked on a diet of mushrooms and pills / One man’s crime is another man’s thrill and we’re gone”, it’s a mountainous song, a glorious noise; screeching sax, clarinets, free jazz, improvised chaotic squall, a seething mass of Spaceman rock and roll and its seven minutes are over far too soon. 

The last (nine minute) tune “I’m Coming Home Again” recalls the atmosphere of “Cop Shoot Cop” from Ladies and Gentlemen; a brooding, repetitive, swamp song, building and building, abetted by a choir to get deeper and darker over time, with lyrics like: “I’ve kind of had it with philosophy cos I’m thinking I am but I’m failing to be”.  

“The last track was always the thing that the record, hinged around. I wanted it to be almost like a dub, something that just hung in the air. 

“It develops quite slow and it seemed to be an almost easy option to sort of make it a really screaming free form thing but it’s kind of restrained and held back and it just kind of hangs.” 

It hangs, it floats and then it’s over.  

And you can go back and do it all over again because there are so many layers and layers of sound in this thing that to listen to it once would be selling yourself short. 

The artwork is designed once again with Mark Farrow. If you buy the vinyl you can pop a pill box out of the sleeve, revealing gold foil underneath, and assemble the Braille-embossed little thing and put it somewhere in the house. The box set has 8 of them. Literally a boxset. It looks more beautiful in the flesh.  

About the boxes: “Farrow and I were talking about what we should do and we just said, ‘It’s called Everything Is Beautiful, how could you not have a pill?’” 

All these layers, all these details, the year-long mixes, the making sense of it all and the lives lived within these lyrics; for somebody so famously unconfident of his own abilities, isn’t this a punishing thing to keep doing? 

“Yeah, but I like what I do. There’s a line from Jonathan Meades that’s about having all the attributes to being an artist. ‘Paranoia, vanity, selfishness, egotism, sycophancy, resentment, moral nullity and more idiot than idiot savant.’ 

“And that’s what it feels like, this kind of thing. You’re your own worst enemy and biggest supporter.  

“There’s a ‘Of course this is worth it. It’s me’ and then this kind of deep doubt of ‘What the fuck is this all about?’ 

“And then ‘Why is it important?’ and then knowing there’s no easy answer.  

“But it’s there. I know it’s there.” 

Mistletone proudly presents the return of Perfume Genius with special guests, Hand Habits.

PERFUME GENIUS TOUR DATES:

Thursday June 9, Friday June 10 – Melbourne Recital Centre with Hand Habits.  Tickets on sale now.
Saturday June 11 – Vivid Sydney @ Carriageworks with Hand Habits.  Tickets here.
Wednesday June 15 – Princess Theatre, Brisbane with Hand Habits. Presented by Jet Black Cat Music. tickets on sale now.
Friday June 17 – Dark Mofo, Hobart. Perfume Genius only; tickets on sale now.
Saturday June 18 – Dark Mofo, Hobart. Hand Habits only; tickets on sale now.

The bold and tender artistic practice of Perfume Genius embodies fragility and empowerment, love and sexuality, trauma and triumph, with emotional honesty and rock-star swagger. Mike Hadreas and his band bring the electrifying Perfume Genius live show to Australia for the first time since 2018, sharing songs from Set My Heart on Fire Immediately along with his beloved previous four albums. Opening for Perfume Genius will be Hand Habits, aka Los Angeles musician Meg Duffy, performing songs from their brilliant art-pop album Fun House (Milk! Records) with a full band for the first time in Australia.

As author Ocean Vuong wrote in his liner notes for  Set My Heart on Fire Immediately:
“Can disruption be beautiful? Can it, through new ways of embodying joy and power, become a way of thinking and living in a world burning at the edges? Hearing Perfume Genius, one realizes that the answer is not only yes—but that it arrived years ago, when Mike Hadreas, at age 26, decided to take his life and art in to his own hands, his own mouth. In doing so, he recast what we understand as music into a weather of feeling and thinking, one where the body (queer, healing, troubled, wounded, possible and gorgeous) sings itself into its future. When listening to Perfume Genius, a powerful joy courses through me because I know the context of its arrival—the costs are right there in the lyrics, in the velvet and smoky bass and synth that verge on synesthesia, the scores at times a violet and tender heat in the ear. That the songs are made resonant through the body’s triumph is a truth this album makes palpable. As a queer artist, this truth nourishes me, inspires me anew. This is music to both fight and make love to. To be shattered and whole with. If sound is, after all, a negotiation/disruption of time, then in the soft storm of Set My Heart On Fire, the future is here. Because it was always here. Welcome home.​”

Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas grew up in Seattle and started his music career in 2008. He released his debut album Learning in 2010 via long-time label home Matador, and it instantly caught the attention of critics. “The songs on Hadreas’ full-length debut are eviscerating and naked,” said Pitchfork, “with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterizations delivered in a voice that ranges from an ethereal croon to a slightly cracked warble.” These descriptors became the hallmarks of Perfume Genius — Hadreas’ unique ability to convey emotional vulnerability not only lyrically, but with his impressively nuanced vocals.

His following album, Put Your Back N 2 It was released in 2012 and continued to build both his audience and critical acclaim. 2014’s Too Bright exhibited a massive leap forward in both production and confidence. Co-produced by Adrian Utley of Portishead, the album featured the stand-out single, “Queen.” The track quickly became a queer anthem and a powerful statement of being. Hadreas performed the song on Late Night with David Letterman.

In 2017, Perfume Genius released the GRAMMY-nominated No Shape, an album that would crystalize his fanbase world-wide and bring mainstream awareness to his art. The record was produced by Blake Mills (Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes). “If you listen to the four Perfume Genius albums in chronological order, you can hear Hadreas healing himself in real time, moving toward an emancipation that seems, suddenly, to have come to pass,” said The New Yorker. “The center of his music has always been a defiant delicacy — a ragged, affirmative understanding of despair. ‘No Shape’ finds him unexpectedly victorious, his body exalted.” Over the course of the campaign he appeared on multiple late-night television shows and graced the cover of The Fader.

Perfume Genius’ music has played a central role in a number of films and television including The Goldfinch, The Society, 13 Reasons Why, Booksmart and Eighth Grade. He has collaborated with artists including Christine And The Queens, Sharon Van Etten, Weyes Blood, Cate Le Bon, Anna Calvi, King Princess and more. Hadreas has also collaborated with brands like Prada and W Hotels on special projects. His albums have been nominated for a GRAMMY Award and a GLAAD Media Award and have topped numerous decade-end lists including Billboard’s, Pitchfork’s, Crack’s, Paste’s and more.

Produced by Blake Mills, his fifth studio album, 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately sees Perfume Genius explore themes of queerness, with homages to 80s pop, classic rock, synth-pop, funk, shoegaze and many other genres. 

‘If you listen to the four Perfume Genius albums in chronological order, you can hear Hadreas healing himself in real time, moving toward an emancipation that seems, suddenly, to have come to pass… The centre of his music has always been a defiant delicacy- a ragged, affirmative understanding of despair’ – The New Yorker 

CATE LE BON TOUR DATES:

Thursday June 9 – Vivid Sydney @ Carriageworks. Tickets and more info here.
Saturday June 11: Hot Dreams @ Princess Theatre, Brisbane. Tickets on sale here.
Sunday June 12: Natural Bridge @ Eltham Hotel, Eltham NSW. Tickets on sale here.
Thursday June 16 – The Corner, Melbourne with special guest BATTS. tickets on sale here. co-presented by ALWAYS LIVE and Triple R.
Friday June 17 – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine with special guest The Glass Picture. tickets on sale here. co-presented by ALWAYS LIVE and Triple R.
Sunday June 19 – Dark Mofo, Hobart. tickets on sale now, more info here.

Indie icon Cate Le Bon and her band return to Australia in celebration of Pompeii, her sixth full-length studio album, and one of this year’s most acclaimed releases, with accolades from Pitchfork Best New Music to Triple R Album of the Week. 

The past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?), John Grant (Boy From Michigan), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline, and playing a prominent guest role on new albums by Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile. 

As Bradford Cox aptly noted about Le Bon, “there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.”   More succinctly, Perfume Genius tweeted, “Cate Le Bon the only cool person left!“

Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated Reward, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,” Sound doesn’t go away / In habitual silence / It reinvents the surface / Of everything you touch.

Pompeii is sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon’s studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.

Enter Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slippage away from meaning. In “Remembering Me,” she sings: In the classical rewrite / I wore the heat like / A hundred birthday cakes / Under one sun. Reconstituted meltdowns, eloquently expressed. This mirrors what she says about the creative process: “as a changeable element, it’s sometimes the only point of control… a circuit breaker.” She’s for sure enlightened, or at least more highly evolved than the rest of us. Hear the last stanza on the album closer, “Wheel”: I do not think that you love yourself / I’d take you back to school / And teach you right / How to want a life / But, it takes more time than you’d tender. Reprimanding herself or a loved one, no matter: it’s an end note about learning how to love, which takes a lifetime and is more urgent than ever.

To leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.

The songs of Pompeii feel suspended in time, both of the moment and instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed (The fountain that empties the world / Too beautiful to hold), escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.

The past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?), John Grant (Boy From Michigan), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline. She’s not so much a gun for hire as a multi-faceted artist and producer who can both steer the ship and tap into a collective mindset; in 2019, she joined John Cale for a three-night live stretch in Paris, and 2021 will see a bass appearance on the track “If I Don’t Hear from You Tonight” from Courtney Barnett’s Things Take Time, Take Time. As Bradford Cox aptly notes about Le Bon, “there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.”

Mistletone is proud as punch to release Process, the brilliant second album by Pinch Points, out now via Mistletone (AU / NZ) and Exploding in Sound (USA). Listen and buy vinyl here.

• “Riveting post-punk that seethes with righteous anger” – NME AUSTRALIA ★★★★
• “Rip-roaring punk with an important message” – TONE DEAF: VIDEO OF THE WEEK
• GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA: AUSTRALIA’S BEST NEW MUSIC
• 2SER + 4ZZZ Feature Album • RTR Sound Selection • PBS “top tracks we’re loving”
• NME interview and review
• Tone Deaf interview
•Post Trash interview

PINCH POINTS TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Saturday, April 2 @ The Corner: album launch with MOD CON, Alien Nosejob, Our Carlson. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now.
• BALLARAT: Friday, April 15 @ The Eastern with Expo + Tor.
• BEECHWORTH: Friday April 29 @ Tanswells with Delivery.
• CASTLEMAINE: Saturday April 30 @ The Bridge Hotel with Delivery + Heir Traffic.
• NATIONAL: on tour with IDLES, Oct 31 – Nov 8, dates here.

Process melds catchy cultural critique with a hard-hitting personal expression of empathy and shared grief. A true collaboration, finding consensus from the experiences of four individual humans, Pinch Points embody music-making as an act of friendship and community, upholding the band’s shared belief in the music scene as a real-life platform for connection, strength and solidarity.

Pinch Points burst forth from the Melbourne underground with their 2019 debut Moving Parts, and were hailed by Double J as “the sharpest new band in the country” and Music Victoria’s Best Breakthrough Act of 2020. The band toured with Tropical Fuck Storm, supported Amyl and the Sniffers, Kikagaku Moyo, Viagra Boys, RVG and Cash Savage and the Last Drinks, and opened 2020’s Golden Plains to a packed amphitheatre. “Reasons to be Anxious”, the first single from Process, was launched to a packed Max Watt’s for Melbourne Music Week.

The band recorded Process with Anna Laverty (Courtney Barnett, Nick Cave, The Peep Tempel), taking a momentous leap forward into full-force post-punk empowerment. The album’s 10 songs engage with the fractures in so-called ‘Australia’ — from catastrophic bushfires, gendered violence, mental health struggles to First Nations incarceration and deaths in custody — with clear-eyed directness, along with an uncommon nuance and empathy.

PINCH POINTS are Acacia Coates, Adam Smith, Jordan Oakley and Isabella Orsini.

Resonating with the shaky mental health state of the nation, the warm-hearted video for “Am I Okay?”  (directed by Michael Ridley – Rolling Blackouts, Alex Lahey, Violent Soho, etc), depicts the four band members plus four doppelgängers.

Embodying mental health self-care, the musicians give some TLC to help their alter egos through a rough patch. “It’s good to ask yourself  ‘Am I Okay?’”, each band member counsels their downhearted double. “Look after yourself, for a change!”

TONE DEAF ~ VIDEO OF THE WEEK:
“The vocals are raw and realistic, delivered precariously and shakily, the way four young people in the midst of an undefined and uncertain global time should sound. “Look after yourself for a change! / I know the world is fucking crap / But you didn’t cause that / So give yourself a hug,” is the sage advice on offer. ‘AM I OKAY?’ focuses on the same themes as previous single, the self-explanatory ‘Reasons To Be Anxious’,drawing attention to the need for care and comfort in these difficult times. It feels timely, with no hint of irony or insouciance; the point at the heart of the song is clearly of too much importance” 

The band describes “Am I Okay?” as a continuation of previous single “Reasons To Be Anxious”, building on the theme of the endemic anxiety and uncertainty of our times, with a call to be kind to yourself and remember you’re loved and worthy. 

“We stepped a little out of our normal songwriting comfort zone with this track”,  the band said in a statement. “We wanted to be very direct and sincere, without any irony or character-driven lyrics.

“Musically, we leaned into a softer jangle feel too. We really enjoyed exploring a new side of the Pinch Points sound. It was one of the only tracks on the album where we were still finalising the lyrics in the studio, on the day we recorded it. It came together really naturally though, and ended up being one of our collective faves”, the band agreed. 

 

Mistletone is rapt to present the return of Parquet Courts this July! all shows selling fast!

PARQUET COURTS TOUR DATES:

Sunday July 24 – Splendour In The Grass (sold out).
Tuesday July 26 – The Forum Melbourne w/- Romero + Green Child DJs. Tickets on sale now.
Friday July 29 – The Metro Theatre, Sydney w/- Loose Fit. Tickets on sale now.
Sunday July 31 – The Rechabite, Perth w/- Erasers + DJ Anna Savage. Tickets on sale now.

Parquet Courts return Down Under this July to perform tracks from their latest album Sympathy For Life, out now via Rough Trade Records & Remote Control.

Sympathy For Life sees the Brooklyn band at their most instinctive and electronic, spinning their bewitching, psychedelic storytelling into fresh territory, yet maintaining their unique identity. Built largely from improvised jams, inspired by New York clubs, Primal Scream and Pink Floyd and produced in league with Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Hot Chip, David Byrne), Sympathy For Life was always destined to be dancey. Unlike its globally adored predecessor, 2018’s Wide Awake! – the focus fell on grooves rather than rhythm.

“Most of the songs were created by taking long improvisations and moulding them through our own editing,” explains Austin Brown. “The biggest asset we have as artists is the band. After 10 years together, our greatest instrument is each other. The purest expression of Parquet Courts is when we are improvising.” In a very real sense, the band sampled themselves, moulding and chopping their rhythmic and melodic jams to create these songs, to manifest something new. 

Parquet Courts – ‘Walking at a Downtown Pace’ (Official Video):

Beach House have unfolded five cosmic new songs, Chapter 2 of their forthcoming LP Once Twice Melody, out February 18 on Mistletone Records via Inertia. Pre-order the gold vinyl box or silver vinyl double LP, here.

watch lyric animations for each song from Chapter 3, below;

watch lyric animations for each song from Chapter 2, below;

watch lyric animations for each song from Chapter 1, below;

Once Twice Melody features 18 tracks, and in the leadup to the physical release, will be presented in four chapters, with lyric animations for each song. The first four-song chapter of Once Twice Melody will be available on all digital service providers from 4pm AEDT today, November 10. The entire chapter and song release schedule will be as follows:

Chapter 1 on November 10, 2021

1. Once Twice Melody
2. Superstar
3. Pink Funeral
4. Through Me

Chapter 2 on December 8, 2021

5. Runaway
6. ESP
7. New Romance
8. Over and Over

Chapter 3 on January 19, 2022

9. Sunset
10. Only You Know
11. Another Go Around
12. Masquerade
13. Illusion of Forever

Chapter 4 (full album release) on February 18, 2022

14. Finale
15. The Bells
16. Hurts to Love
17. Many Nights
18. Modern Love Stories

Once Twice Melody is available to pre-order in the following formats:

• Limited “GOLD” Edition 2xLP in a gold-embossed, hinged box on gold and clear vinyl with full-color booklet and 2 exclusive posters
• “SILVER” Edition 2xLP in a silver embossed black sleeve, on classic black vinyl with double-sided exclusive poster

Beach House have unfolded four cosmic new songs, Chapter 2 of their forthcoming LP Once Twice Melody, out February 18 on Mistletone Records via Inertia. Pre-order the gold vinyl box or silver vinyl double LP, here.

watch lyric animations for each song from Chapter 2, below;

watch lyric animations for each song from Chapter 1, below;

Once Twice Melody features 18 tracks, and in the leadup to the physical release, will be presented in four chapters, with lyric animations for each song. The first four-song chapter of Once Twice Melody will be available on all digital service providers from 4pm AEDT today, November 10. The entire chapter and song release schedule will be as follows:

Chapter 1 on November 10, 2021

1. Once Twice Melody
2. Superstar
3. Pink Funeral
4. Through Me

Chapter 2 on December 8, 2021

5. Runaway
6. ESP
7. New Romance
8. Over and Over

Chapter 3 on January 19, 2022

9. Sunset
10. Only You Know
11. Another Go Around
12. Masquerade
13. Illusion of Forever

Chapter 4 (full album release) on February 18, 2022

14. Finale
15. The Bells
16. Hurts to Love
17. Many Nights
18. Modern Love Stories

Once Twice Melody is available to pre-order in the following formats:

• Limited “GOLD” Edition 2xLP in a gold-embossed, hinged box on gold and clear vinyl with full-color booklet and 2 exclusive posters
• “SILVER” Edition 2xLP in a silver embossed black sleeve, on classic black vinyl with double-sided exclusive poster

(photo: David Belisle)

Mistletone proudly presents Welsh-Cornish musician Gwenno returning to Australia for her first shows since 2019, to perform her stunningly atmospheric live score for Mark Jenkin’s BAFTA-winning film BAIT; and to give audiences a glimpse at her much-anticipated new album, due for release in mid-2022, with a string of solo shows.

GWENNO TOUR DATES:

Saturday Jan 22 – MONA FOMA, Launceston: solo show. tickets / info here.
Tuesday Jan 25 – ACMI, Melbourne: BAIT live score. tickets / info here. 
Friday Jan 28 – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine: BAIT live score + solo show. tickets / info here. 
Saturday Jan 29 – MONA FOMA, Hobart: BAIT live score. tickets / info here.
Friday Feb 4 – City Recital Hall, Sydney: BAIT live score + solo show. tickets / info here. 

Gwenno Saunders is a renowned sound artist, composer, DJ and radio presenter. Political, feminist and passionate about the preservation of the Welsh and Cornish languages, she is charting her own defiant course, producing brilliant music that’s free of commercial shackles. Having performed the BAIT live score at Brighton Festival and End of the Road UK, Gwenno also recently created and performed a new music score of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle for Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru (National Theatre of Wales), and remixed Manic Street Preachers and Paul Weller. In 2015, Gwenno won the Welsh Music Prize for her groundbreaking Welsh and Cornish language album, Y Dydd Olaf. Her 2018 follow up, Le Kov, was performed exclusively in Cornish (her first language) – and so the stars aligned, when Mark Jenkin asked her to be part of his extraordinary Cornish film.

click below to watch/share the trailer for BAIT:

Winner of a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut, Jenkin filmed BAIT in his native Cornwall on a vintage 16mm camera using monochrome Kodak stock. Deliberately using archaic cinematic techniques to tell a very modern story of culture clash and economic crisis in a Cornish fishing village, BAIT is a humorous, yet poignant film which will resonate with any community dealing with the impacts of gentrification and unwelcome change.

Gwenno’s electric soundscape for BAIT weaves synth loops, guitar drones and live vocals, with accompaniment by renowned Canberra experimental artist Sia Ahmad. In a statement, Gwenno said: “I’m looking forward to performing our live score to BAIT in some beautiful Australian venues, creating an ambient sonic adventure, mixing ancient, living Celtic languages with electronic textures.” 

Hailed by The Guardian as “one of the defining British films of the decade”, BAIT centres on the tension between a struggling fishing community and the influx of holidaymakers who have changed the face of the area. Modern-day Cornish fisherman Martin is struggling to buy a boat while coping with family rivalry and the influx of London money, Airbnb and stag parties to his harbour village. The summer tourism season brings simmering tensions between the locals and newcomers to boiling point, with tragic consequences. 

“What Gwenno did was take the film in ways that I wasn’t able to take it in,” said Mark Jenkin  in conversation with directorsnotes.com. “Not just technically or musically but thematically. I think she really transformed Martin at times into a mythical godlike figure. She also mythologised the physical processes of fishing… turned them into something that was almost like a spiritual moment, which I loved. There were moments where I almost felt like standing up out of my seat, not to applaud, just through a physical reaction to the film.”

Gwenno’s accompanist for the BAIT live scores, Sia Ahmad uses guitar, keyboard, voice and electronics to create idiosyncratic sounds, most recently her new album Facade; along with sound design for dance, theatre, installation pieces and contemporary chamber composition, inspired by 20th-century avant-classical works, Indian raga form and minimalist electronic music. Gwenno and Sia Ahmad share a magical and intuitive capacity for music as a language of atmosphere and storytelling. Together, their live score performance forBAIT will bring new, emotionally potent dimensions to this tour de force of social realism.

Also not to be missed are Gwenno’s solo performances of her own crystalline music, which comes highly recommended for fans of Broadcast, Cate Le Bon and Stereolab. Gwenno’s latest solo album Le Kov swirled with ancient myths, modern themes and retro-futuristic synth lines tumbling over Krautrock and pop rhythms. Recorded entirely in Cornish, the language she learned as a child, Gwenno expounds on the joy of singing in a language that only 600 people in the world are supposed to be fluent in: “Tonally,” she says, “Cornish is a dark language, very close to Breton, a lot more Zs and Ks and Vs, which gives it a very different texture. It probably reflects the harsh landscape of Cornwall. And it’s almost like an emotional shield. Singing in Cornish, I thought, ‘Wow, no one understands me!’ I can get lost, and everyone else has to get lost, because what else can they do? It allows me to escape and find freedom in music. There’s something magical about that.”

Gwenno’s Australian tour is supported by the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season.

Mistletone is super proud to announce that we will be releasing the brilliant new album by Melbourne post-punk four-piece, Pinch Points. Process by Pinch Points will be released on March 18 on Mistletone Records (Australia/New Zealand) and Exploding in Sound (USA).

MELBOURNE 7″ LAUNCH: Pinch Points launch their debut 7″ single for Mistletone, “Reasons to be Anxious” b/w “Boy” on Sunday, December 5 for Melbourne Music Week at Max Watt’s House of Music with special guests CLAMM + Delivery + Zig Zag. tickets on sale here.

“  
This band — if you’re into punk, you’re going to love them. They are so, so fun. It’s spiky, angular, awesome punk music” – ZAN ROWE, DOUBLE J

check out the life-affirming video for the first single, “Reasons to be Anxious”, directed by Jasper Fearnley & starring Brenton Aylward:

“The video is a high intensity ride, that gels perfectly with the tone of the song, following a crop-top wearing, pink haired Brenton Aylward dancing around Melbourne in an almost anxiety inducing mania to match the lyrics” – BEAT

“ ” one of the most relatable songs I’ve heard in the past two years” – FEE B SQUARED, TRIPLE R ON “REASONS TO BE ANXIOUS”

Pinch Points burst forth from the Melbourne underground with their 2019 debut Moving Parts, and were hailed by Double J as “the sharpest new band in the country” and Music Victoria’s Best Breakthrough Act of 2020. The band toured with Tropical F*ck Storm, supported Amyl and the Sniffers, Kikagaku Moyo, Viagra Boys, RVG and Cash Savage and the Last Drinks, and opened 2020’s Golden Plains to a packed amphitheatre. 

The hotly-anticipated new Pinch Points album Process was recorded with Anna Laverty (Courtney Barnett, Nick Cave, The Peep Tempel) and is a momentous leap forward into full-force post-punk empowerment, with 10 songs engaging with the fractures in so-called ‘Australia’ — from catastrophic bushfires, gendered violence, mental health struggles to First Nations incarceration and deaths in custody — with clear-eyed directness, along with an uncommon nuance and empathy.

The album opens with “Reasons to be Anxious”, an all-too-relatable laundry list of the fight-or-flight triggers that frazzle our nervous systems;

“I get anxious when I get a text / I get anxious when I don’t get a text / I get anxious when my doorbell rings / I get anxious about f**king anything / I get anxious when I take time off / I get anxious that I’m not good enough / I get anxious going to therapy / to try and treat my anxiety”.

The B-side, “Boy”, dives deep into the cesspool of toxic masculinity and the repressed emotions that boys are socialised to deny, with disastrous outcomes for everyone. 

As the album title suggests, Process is a commentary on structural collapse; the systemic failures and baked-in inequalities that are ravaging ecosystems, the mental health system, the gig economy workforce and all aspects of our lives. The title Process also recognises the emotions processed and channelled in the songs, as a collective expression of empathy and shared grief.

A true collaboration, finding consensus from the experiences of four individual humans, Pinch Points embody music-making as an act of friendship and community, upholding the band’s shared belief in the music scene as a real-life platform for connection, strength and solidarity.

PINCH POINTS are Acacia Coates, Adam Smith, Jordan Oakley and Isabella Orsini.

Nothing is normal — but PINCH POINTS are here.

On February 18, 2022, Beach House will release their eighth album, Once Twice Melody, on Mistletone Records via Inertia (AU/NZ), Sub Pop (USA) and Bella Union (UK/Europe). Pre-order the gold vinyl box or silver vinyl double LP, here.

Once Twice Melody, the first album produced entirely by Beach House, was recorded at Pachyderm studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota; United Studio in Los Angeles; and Apple Orchard Studios in Baltimore. For the first time, a live string ensemble was used, with arrangements by David Campbell. Once Twice Melody was mostly mixed by Alan Moulder, but a few tracks were also mixed by Caesar Edmunds, Trevor Spencer, and Dave Fridmann.

Once Twice Melody features 18 tracks, and in the leadup to the physical release, will be presented in four chapters, with lyric animations for each song. The first four-song chapter of Once Twice Melody will be available on all digital service providers from 4pm AEDT today, November 10. The entire chapter and song release schedule will be as follows:

Chapter 1 on November 10, 2021

1. Once Twice Melody
2. Superstar
3. Pink Funeral
4. Through Me

Chapter 2 on December 8, 2021

5. Runaway
6. ESP
7. New Romance
8. Over and Over

Chapter 3 on January 19, 2022

9. Sunset
10. Only You Know
11. Another Go Around
12. Masquerade
13. Illusion of Forever

Chapter 4 (full album release) on February 18, 2022

14. Finale
15. The Bells
16. Hurts to Love
17. Many Nights
18. Modern Love Stories

Once Twice Melody is available to pre-order in the following formats:

• Limited “GOLD” Edition 2xLP in a gold-embossed, hinged box on gold and clear vinyl with full-color booklet and 2 exclusive posters
• “SILVER” Edition 2xLP in a silver embossed black sleeve, on classic black vinyl with double-sided exclusive poster

(photo: David Belisle)