MERCURY REV
annunciano il nuovo album
BORN HORSES
in uscita il 6 settembre su Bella Union
Disponibile ora il singolo
PATTERNS
La leggendaria rock band americana Mercury Rev annuncia oggi il nuovo album Born Horses, in uscita il 6 settembre via Bella Union e disponibile per il pre-order qui. La nuova raccolta dell'iconica band è una scintillante ricerca psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient che mette in risalto la sofisticata strumentazione del gruppo, offrendo al contempo una nuova prospettiva poetica. Per accompagnare l'annuncio, la band ha condiviso il primo singolo “Patterns” - guarda il video QUI.
Commentando il brano i Mercury Rev affermano: “Quando di notte guardiamo le stelle nel cielo, le luci tremolanti sembrano casuali. Se potessimo fare uno zoom e vedere tutte le galassie che ruotano l'una intorno all'altra, vedremmo l'ordine. Ci sono solo modelli su modelli...”.
Inoltre, i Mercury Rev hanno annunciato date di tour internazionali, tra cui un tour europeo autunnale e altri spettacoli nel Regno Unito all'inizio del 2025. Le date sono elencate di seguito.
Nell'Upstate di New York, tra le Catskill Mountains e la Hudson Valley, emerge un suono ricco e incantato, che si gonfia e scorre come il fiume Esopus Creek, o come la corrente del più grande Hudson, trasportando i resti delle nostre speranze, sogni e paure. Un suono composto da organico ed elettronico; chitarre, tastiere, ottoni, archi, fiati, tamburi e una voce incantata che attinge a flussi di coscienza che allo stesso modo si agitano e scorrono.
Spiritualmente, letteralmente, psico-geograficamente: da dove altro può scaturire il nono album dei Mercury Rev, Born Horses? L'album è caratterizzato da un suono con accordi essenziali e ondate di auto-riflessione, che vivono grazie alle nozioni e ai movimenti del tempo e della realtà, in qualche modo legati al loro esaltato passato e allo stesso tempo del tutto diversi da qualsiasi cosa abbiano creato prima.
Grasshopper: “When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”
Il titolo dell'album, che prende il nome dalla maestosa sesta traccia “Born Horses”, è stato scelto perché le sue parole risuonano nell'intero disco, racchiudendo l'idea del volo (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) e la frase “You and I” che compare in diversi punti dell'album. Non si tratta del concetto di due persone separate, ma di due parti di se stessi.
Jonathan Donahue: “When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”
Born Horses opens with ‘Mood Swings’. A trumpet, evoking bohemian mariachi and the windswept terrain of the desert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan’s intimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped. The track establishes Born Horses’ tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by the metaphor of a bird, most clearly in ‘Bird Of No Address’ and the album’s pulsating finale ‘There Has Always Been A Bird In Me’.
More inspiration was provided by the spirits of the art minimalist Tony Conrad and beat poet Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was a member of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate along with John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground. Creeley was one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century as well as an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.
Jonathan: “Since our beginning in the mid 80’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make Born Horses by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”
Since forming in 1989, Mercury Rev has made a career out of boldly exploring the fringes of artistic perception, channelling colours and sounds and visions that always seem just beyond our mortal reach. The Guardian hailed the group as “a rarity in indie rock: a band who have continually evolved their sound, pushing at the boundaries of what rock music actually means over 25 years, borrowing from jazz, funk, doo-wop, techno, folk and more along the way,” while Rolling Stone praised their “majestic chaos”. The band’s 1991 debut, ‘Yerself Is Steam,’ landed on Pitchfork’s rundown of the Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time, and their 1998 breakthrough, ‘Deserter’s Songs,’ was named NME’s Album of the Year upon its release. Major festival and television performances around the world solidified their status as that rare group capable of straddling the line between mainstream appeal and progressive musical and technological experimentation.
Album Tracklist
1. Mood Swings
2. Ancient Love
3. Your Hammer, My Heart
4. Patterns
5.A Bird Of No Address
6. Born Horses
7. Everything I Thought I Had Lost
8. There’s Always Been A Bird In Me
Micro
annunciano il nuovo album
BORN HORSES
in uscita il 6 settembre su Bella Union
Disponibile ora il singolo
PATTERNS
La leggendaria rock band americana Mercury Rev annuncia oggi il nuovo album Born Horses, in uscita il 6 settembre via Bella Union e disponibile per il pre-order qui. La nuova raccolta dell'iconica band è una scintillante ricerca psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient che mette in risalto la sofisticata strumentazione del gruppo, offrendo al contempo una nuova prospettiva poetica. Per accompagnare l'annuncio, la band ha condiviso il primo singolo “Patterns” - guarda il video QUI.
Commentando il brano i Mercury Rev affermano: “Quando di notte guardiamo le stelle nel cielo, le luci tremolanti sembrano casuali. Se potessimo fare uno zoom e vedere tutte le galassie che ruotano l'una intorno all'altra, vedremmo l'ordine. Ci sono solo modelli su modelli...”.
Inoltre, i Mercury Rev hanno annunciato date di tour internazionali, tra cui un tour europeo autunnale e altri spettacoli nel Regno Unito all'inizio del 2025. Le date sono elencate di seguito.
Nell'Upstate di New York, tra le Catskill Mountains e la Hudson Valley, emerge un suono ricco e incantato, che si gonfia e scorre come il fiume Esopus Creek, o come la corrente del più grande Hudson, trasportando i resti delle nostre speranze, sogni e paure. Un suono composto da organico ed elettronico; chitarre, tastiere, ottoni, archi, fiati, tamburi e una voce incantata che attinge a flussi di coscienza che allo stesso modo si agitano e scorrono.
Spiritualmente, letteralmente, psico-geograficamente: da dove altro può scaturire il nono album dei Mercury Rev, Born Horses? L'album è caratterizzato da un suono con accordi essenziali e ondate di auto-riflessione, che vivono grazie alle nozioni e ai movimenti del tempo e della realtà, in qualche modo legati al loro esaltato passato e allo stesso tempo del tutto diversi da qualsiasi cosa abbiano creato prima.
Grasshopper: “When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”
Il titolo dell'album, che prende il nome dalla maestosa sesta traccia “Born Horses”, è stato scelto perché le sue parole risuonano nell'intero disco, racchiudendo l'idea del volo (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) e la frase “You and I” che compare in diversi punti dell'album. Non si tratta del concetto di due persone separate, ma di due parti di se stessi.
Jonathan Donahue: “When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”
Born Horses opens with ‘Mood Swings’. A trumpet, evoking bohemian mariachi and the windswept terrain of the desert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan’s intimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped. The track establishes Born Horses’ tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by the metaphor of a bird, most clearly in ‘Bird Of No Address’ and the album’s pulsating finale ‘There Has Always Been A Bird In Me’.
More inspiration was provided by the spirits of the art minimalist Tony Conrad and beat poet Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was a member of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate along with John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground. Creeley was one of the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century as well as an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.
Jonathan: “Since our beginning in the mid 80’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make Born Horses by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”
Since forming in 1989, Mercury Rev has made a career out of boldly exploring the fringes of artistic perception, channelling colours and sounds and visions that always seem just beyond our mortal reach. The Guardian hailed the group as “a rarity in indie rock: a band who have continually evolved their sound, pushing at the boundaries of what rock music actually means over 25 years, borrowing from jazz, funk, doo-wop, techno, folk and more along the way,” while Rolling Stone praised their “majestic chaos”. The band’s 1991 debut, ‘Yerself Is Steam,’ landed on Pitchfork’s rundown of the Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time, and their 1998 breakthrough, ‘Deserter’s Songs,’ was named NME’s Album of the Year upon its release. Major festival and television performances around the world solidified their status as that rare group capable of straddling the line between mainstream appeal and progressive musical and technological experimentation.
Album Tracklist
1. Mood Swings
2. Ancient Love
3. Your Hammer, My Heart
4. Patterns
5.A Bird Of No Address
6. Born Horses
7. Everything I Thought I Had Lost
8. There’s Always Been A Bird In Me
Micro
Radio
×