Over the past decade, instrumental trio Stearica (Torino, Italy) have gained a cult following in the independent music underground, touring and performing live with the likes of Girls Against Boys, NoMeansNo, Dälek, Tarentel, Damo Suzuki, Coliseum, and forming the Acid Mothers Temple and Stearica Orchestra, which recorded a full-length album during the last day of a glorious one-month European tour together.
The key to Stearica’s success is their powerful and adventurous sound, which is geometrical yet visceral: so intense that there is no need for words – much like “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. This is especially the case live, whether in clubs, crowded festivals such as “Primavera Sound” and “Villette Sonique” or in their live film soundtrack of the 1920 silent horror masterpiece “Der Golem” (commissioned by and performed at the National Cinema Museum and winner of the “Audience Award” in the 2014 Rimusicazioni Film Festival).
Stearica’s second album, Fertile, was released worldwide by Monotreme Records last Spring, the season of renewal and fertility in many parts of the world including the historical region where the sun rises known as ‘The ‘Fertile Crescent’, the birthplace of some of the earliest human civilizations, and also the scene of the revolutionary political uprisings that swept across the Middle East in 2011 known as the ‘Arab Spring’.
Both the concept of ‘fertile’ as ‘life-giving’ and the revolutionary impulses of the Arab Spring and the Indignants protests in Barcelona provided inspiration for this latest work from Stearica who began their creative process by freely improvising for several hours. These torrents of sound were then edited into finished songs, just as a receding flood leaves behind fertility-bringing silt. Fertile captured the primordial nature of the sound that the trio creates in their dynamic live performances. At times brutal, chaotic, mysterious, tranquil; Fertile was music born of our time: instinctively revolutionary.
Watch the new video for ‘Bes’ –
The band are now set to tour the UK later this month including an appearance at Raw Power Festival in London.
22-May Brighton, The Joker
24-May Glasgow, Bloc
25-May Bradford, Delius Art & Cultural Centre – Threadfest, lead-in show
26-May Bristol, Stag & Hounds
27-May Nottingham, JT Soar
28-May Cardiff, Strange Daze Festival
29-May London UK, Raw Power Festival
“Primordial, primitive, powerful… [a] gigantic, physically crushing sonic assault…capturing a very essential sense of conflict and struggle.” – CLASH
“An adventure through sound…a head-rush of distortion, groove and skewed mathematics…whether it’s moving the listener through its ferocity, its tender heart or its unbridled sense of joy, it never hesitates for a moment. Welcome back STEARICA – don’t leave us again.” – Rock-A-Rolla
“An epic, beautifully chaotic work…still manages to actually ‘rock’, even having hurtled through several galaxies and back” – Prog
“…storming, hypnotic…as inscrutably dark as anything Battles have put out while always keeping one eye on the (industrial-loving) dance floor.” – Q Magazine
“STEARICA showcase an impressive command of rhythm on ‘Fertile’, whether the trio are pounding akin to Russian Circles or distorting grooves like Don Caballero.” (8/10) – Terrorizer
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