Sacred Bones Rock & Indie 123 Items

Whether scoring a film or making a solo album, Daniel Davies thinks cinematically. Images and story - on a movie screen, on a canvas, or flashing through his mind - inform the shape of his compositions and the sounds he uses to bring them to life. For Signals, his first solo record for Sacred Bones, the inspiration for his musical narration was a collaboration with visual artist Jesse Draxler, whose otherworldly mixed media works grace the cover and the booklet."I had an instant connection to Jesse's art," Davies explains. "One of the main concepts for this album was working with the feeling of uncertainty. Jesse's art illustrates that perfectly with his disruptive shapes. At first, they are foreign to the landscapes they live in, but over time we become used to them, we adjust. The foreign objects force us to evolve, to accept and live with the uncertainty they create."Using Draxler's images as his jumping off point, Davies created eight richly textured compositions that created a soundtrack for the unsettling world of the artwork. "Musically, I wanted to capture that same contrast - melodies evolving out of drones, haunting beds of tension with beautiful shimmering melodies laid above. What were once conflicting emotions became harmonious."As the songs move through the landscape, Davies calls on whatever instrumentation he needs to serve their journey. He utilizes the warbling synths and slicing guitar that have characterized his soundtrack work, but he's also preternaturally at ease when he busts out a harpsichord and a vocal synth on lead single "Phantom Waltz." On "Destructive Field," he leaves space for his Halloween collaborator John Carpenter to lay down his signature sound. With the exception of that passage, all the music on the record is recorded by Davies himself.While the results indeed feel cinematic, Davies is liberated by the absence of a film to score: "While scoring a movie, I serve the director's vision and focus on telling a specific story. When working on an album, I'm fre...

New York band The Men have always been genre-morphic and unpredictable, but on their eighth album Mercy they have truly done something new as a band. For the first time since forming, they have now created three straight records with the same lineup, and the result is a sound that feels developed and continuous despite running the gamut of mood, in true Men fashion. Having this lineup stability has allowed the band to deepen and finesse the sounds they were exploring on 2017's Drift and produce tracks that have a unique and distinct voice.Mercy was recorded live at Serious Business studio to 2" tape with Travis Harrison. The band did minimal overdubs, contributing to the urgent feel of the recording. The album is simply the sound of a band that has a deep and unjaded passion for songwriting and creation, working at the peak of their collaborative connection.Mercy takes the listener on a cinematic journey throughout its seven tracks, beginning with the soothing but lonesome country rock opener 'Cool Water.' This track, like many on the record, feels timeless, illustrating the band's ability to write songs you are convinced you've heard before on the B-side of your favorite record from the '70s. You are then pulled into its longest song, the 10-and-a-half minute psychedelic blues rock opus of 'Wading in Dirty Water.' The band explore some new territory on Mercy, and they also revisit the Suicide-style sound they have been working on for a while through Drift and also with one of their side projects Dream Police, resulting in the highlight 'Children All Over the World,' a song that could stand next to any classic rock hit but with The Men's unique artistic savvy. It wouldn't be a contemporary Men record without a total fuzzed-out stomper a la their Open Your Heart-era sound, and this record's offering, 'In the Breeze,' shows the band's complete command of this urgent and pulverizing style.

Devour marks the fourth full-length record from Margaret Chardiet's project Pharmakon and her most intense output to date. Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans. Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance the agony. The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio. The A and B sides were each recorded as a continuous take with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout. Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date. As one of the premiere vanguards of modern industrial and power electronics, Chardiet continuously pushes the genres and everyone involved in them, and with the release of Devour, she has once again changed the game. Artist Statement:"Devour" uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression. Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at "balancing feedback", within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual, but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them - to keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines, bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any means necessary, but respite is always brief- nothing can dampen the glare from behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. "ABOUT THE SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY"... To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making.

At first listen, The Practice of Love, Jenny Hval's seventh full-length album, unspools with an almost deceptive ease. Across eight tracks, filled with arpeggiated synth washes and the kind of lilting beats that might have drifted, loose and unmoored, from some forgotten mid-'90s trance single, The Practice of Love feels, first and foremost, compellingly humane. Given the horror and viscera of her previous album, 2016's Blood Bitch, The Practice of Love is almost subversive in its gentleness_a deep dive into what it means to grow older, to question one's relationship to the earth and one's self, and to hold a magnifying glass over the notion of what intimacy can mean. As Hval describes it, the album charts its own particular geography, a landscape in which multiple voices engage and disperse, and the question of connectedness_or lack thereof_hangs suspended in the architecture of every song. It is,an album about "seeing things from above_almost like looking straight down into the ground, all of these vibrant forest landscapes, the type of nature where you might find a porn magazine at a certain place in the woods and everyone would know where it was, but even that would just become rotting paper, eventually melting into the ground."Prompted by an urge to find a different kind of language to express what she was feeling, the songs on Love unfurl like an interior dialogue involving several voices. Friends and collaborators Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Felicia Atkinson surface on various tracks, via contributed vocals or through bits of recorded conversation, which further posits the record itself as a kind of ongoing discourse. "The last thing I wrote, which was my new book, had quite an angry voice," says Hval, "The voice of an angry teenager, furious at the hierarchies. Perhaps this album rediscovers that same voice 20 years later. Not so angry anymore, but still feeling apart from the mainstream, trying to find their place and their community. With that voice, I wanted to push my writing practice fu...

Sand color vinyl limited to 2500 copies.At first listen, The Practice of Love, Jenny Hval's seventh full-length album, unspools with an almost deceptive ease. Across eight tracks, filled with arpeggiated synth washes and the kind of lilting beats that might have drifted, loose and unmoored, from some forgotten mid-'90s trance single, The Practice of Love feels, first and foremost, compellingly humane. Given the horror and viscera of her previous album, 2016's Blood Bitch, The Practice of Love is almost subversive in its gentleness_a deep dive into what it means to grow older, to question one's relationship to the earth and one's self, and to hold a magnifying glass over the notion of what intimacy can mean. As Hval describes it, the album charts its own particular geography, a landscape in which multiple voices engage and disperse, and the question of connectedness_or lack thereof_hangs suspended in the architecture of every song. It is,an album about "seeing things from above_almost like looking straight down into the ground, all of these vibrant forest landscapes, the type of nature where you might find a porn magazine at a certain place in the woods and everyone would know where it was, but even that would just become rotting paper, eventually melting into the ground."Prompted by an urge to find a different kind of language to express what she was feeling, the songs on Love unfurl like an interior dialogue involving several voices. Friends and collaborators Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Felicia Atkinson surface on various tracks, via contributed vocals or through bits of recorded conversation, which further posits the record itself as a kind of ongoing discourse. "The last thing I wrote, which was my new book, had quite an angry voice," says Hval, "The voice of an angry teenager, furious at the hierarchies. Perhaps this album rediscovers that same voice 20 years later. Not so angry anymore, but still feeling apart from the mainstream, trying to find their place and their community. With that voic...

ged as a
figurehead-- a self-produced, self-designed, self-taught independent woman. Zola Jesus
is not a singer; she is a musician. Zola Jesus is not a band; it is a solo project. That is
not to say the people who have helped her along the way were not deeply important.
Her irreplaceable live band, whose drummer Nick Johnson lends a hand on several
tracks here, and her friend Brian Foote who co-produced this album in addition to the
live string players (Sean McCann, Ryan York) who contribute here were all crucial in
the process. Nika, however, is a woman who can command a room, any room,
without needing a band, a stage, or even a microphone. Her voice is unmistakable; it
cuts right to the core. Conatus is a huge leap forward in production, instrumentation
and song structure. It says it all in the definition of the title: the will to keep on, to
move forward. From thumping ballads to electronic glitch, no sound goes unexplored
on her new record. It is an icy exploration in refined chaos and controlled madness,
an effort to break through capability and access a sonic world that crumbles as it
shines.

There is a limited version available on clear vinyl. In Spring 2017, Uniform was
asked to support fellow noisy, boundary-pushing duo The Body for a European
tour. Having been longtime fans of the band, Uniform vocalist Michael Berdan
and guitarist Ben Greenberg jumped at the opportunity. During the planning phase
of the tour, Berdan and Lee Buford from The Body started corresponding
regularly. Ultimately, Berdan asked Buford if he and The Body cofounder Chip
King would be interested in making a collabªorative record with Uniform.
Buford enthusiastically assented, and the seed of "Mental Wounds Not Healing"
was sown. A few months after the genesis of the idea, Berdan and Greenberg went
to the legendary underground Providence studio Machines With Magnets, where
The Body were finishing up work on their latest LP. King and Buford had a ton
of cool beats and music ready that Berdan played synth bass lines over. Greenberg
then played guitar over Berdan's bass lines, and the songs began to take shape.
After the Machine With Magnets session, engineer Seth Manchester sent
Greenberg stems of the tracks to work on back in Brooklyn. Berdan recorded
vocals in the hallway of Greenberg's tiny apartment, and the raw intensity of that
makeshift session served as the perfect counterpoint for King's unmistakable voice.
Effectively, every song on "Mental Wounds Not Healing" is a duet between Berdan
and King. The collaboration pushes both bands far beyond their roots in industrial
music and metal, creating an immersive listening experience that truly transcends
genre. The title of the record is a line stolen from the chorus of Ozzy Osbourne's
"Crazy Train." Most of the titles are culled from horror literature and cinema, with
specific nods to Shirley Jackson, Jack Ketchum, and Elem Klimov. Thematically, the
songs have to do with feeling trapped in one's own mind, projecting images over
and over again of a future in shambles before it even gets a chance to hapªpen. It is
about hopelessness, anxiety, and depression so familiar that they seem like
permanent fixtures of one's psyche and identity.

Criminal', The Soft Moon's fourth studio album, is a confessional
work. Through the stark lens of shame and guilt that has followed
Luis Vasquez since a violent childhood growing up within the
humming ambient sprawl of '80s Mojave Desert, here he
documents the gut-wrenching sound of going to war with himself.
Battling with his own sanity, self-hatred, insecurity, selfentitlement
and grappling with the risk of these things
transforming him into a person he despises, Vasquez has laid his
feelings bare with this: his confession and most self-reflective
work to date.

While the previous Amen Dunes records have all been largely improvisational first-take affairs, recorded in a matter of weeks at most, the forthcoming full-length Love is the product of close to a year and a half of continuous work by Damon McMahon. Unlike McMahon's earlier Amen Dunes recordings, which were almost always a solo affair, the music on Love was performed by a variety of musicians, including his longtime collaborators Jordi Wheeler on guitar and piano, and Parker Kindred on drums. McMahon chose to hold the main recording sessions for Love in Montreal with Dave Bryant and Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. In addition to recording the sessions that McMahon produced, members of Godspeed also played on several of the songs. So did saxophonist Colin Stetson and Elias Bender-Ronnenfelt of Iceage, who duets with McMahon on two tracks. This project has always seen McMahon guided by traditional song and sound, but Love is the first work in which this clearly shines through. The result is definitively the most substantial Amen Dunes record to date. These are elemental songs about time, love and memory, as much about the listener as they are about the writer: pure, open, and beautiful.

German Exclusive Coloured Edition! Black&White swirl vinyl! Sacred Bones is pleased to release Okovi, the new album from ZOLA JESUS. For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as ZOLA JESUS. She's been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label. Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova's longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from PEDESTRIAN DEPOSIT, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi's textural universe. With Okovi, ZOLA JESUS has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album peaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well. ,This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I'll ever have to blood-bound family." - Zola Jesus

Their latest album!