Contact
- US press: Daniel Gill at Force Field PR [email: daniel@forcefieldpr.com, tel: 818-331-0830]
Bio
The Blow’s new album, Brand New Abyss, is a lightning rod. A wild assembly of frequencies produced out of a thrust of electroacoustic punk energy, the album is a search for a new sound of rebellion in an environment where the aesthetic of punk has been commodified into submission along with most everything else. Brand New Abyss was written and produced by The Blow (Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich) using a production rig that the duo painstakingly developed over the past four years; a mothership of patched-together modular synthesizers, ancient samplers and audio production gear.
Like wizards in a craggy laboratory, they worked in seclusion, teaching themselves to control the raw material of sound using basic elements of electronic synthesis. Their aim was to be able to channel frequency into new shapes that would be useful to them, like tools to break through the algorithmic limits they were growing bored of. Says Dyne, “After having worked heavily with a samples in the past we got to a place where we wanted to treat electronic sound more acoustically, like something more alive. We wanted to make waves that we could ride and play around in- newer waves.”
The songs on Brand New Abyss were for the most part tracked in The Blow’s downtown Brooklyn apartment, next to the construction sites, in the early months of 2017. All songs were written, performed and produced by The Blow, and engineered and mixed by Melissa Dyne. To cheer themselves along in the process of producing the album, the duo created the project WOMANPRODUCER, a multi-platform archive highlighting the history and present of female and gender nonconforming sonic innovators (hosted at womanproducer.com and @womanproducer everywhere else). Last fall they held a series of performances and talks in New York City bringing together producers from across a broad range of genres and eras, with the participants Zola Jesus, Neko Case, Pauline Oliveros, Suzi Analogue and Deradoorian, among many others. The Blow composed Brand New Abyss as a companion to their 2013 release The Blow, which was featured on both of the New York Times’ Best Songs of 2013 lists, as well as selected as a top album of the year by Bob Boilen of NPR’s All Songs Considered. They will be co-headling an extensive US tour this fall with fellow new style punk EMA.
Current Release
The Blow
Brand New Abyss
(Self-Released)
Street Date: Sept. 22, 2017
Track List:
1. Peaceful Easy Feeling
2. Dark Cold Magic
3. So There
4. Greatest Love
5. The Woman You Want Her To Be
6. Get Up
7. Think About Me
8. Summer
Pics (click for high res)
Photo credit: Daniel Rampula