HOUSEWIVES
Announce new album, Twilight Splendour
Due 22nd March via Blank Editions
Share new single “SmttnKttns”
Live dates in March / April
London five-piece Housewives return for more anarchic genre-blending adventures on their second LP, Twilight Splendour; a synthesized collage written in Wetherspoons, cafes and anywhere away from their houseboats where they could find a permanent electrical supply.
Exploring the possibilities of electronic sound, this new LP marks a turning point for the band – who sold their guitars to buy midi equipment and swapped London rents for water habitation. Bringing to mind the digital meditations of legendary producer Oneohtrix Point Never and the claustrophobic sampling of Animal Collective and Battles, Twilight Splendour presents a love letter from an early AI to its owner, its concept-led songs strewn with “ecstatic messages of frustration and a desire to connect”.
Their latest single ‘SmttnKttns’ follows on from where November’s album teaser ‘Speak to Me’ took off, drenching the palette in huge waves of triangular beats, saccharine vocal samples, pulsating sub bass and Ben Vince‘s desert sax.
In the video made by the band and label head David Blanco, we find Housewives bathed in the HD surroundings of our new digital age. Images now more familiar than our natural landscape; blissful scrolling on smart phones, aspirational family time, representations of love and ecstatic VR computer playing all presented in anodyne advert quality soft focus under the watchful eye of drones.
The album occupies a dystopian world where real emotions have been eclipsed by complex coded simulations. From the dead-behind-the-eyes chanting on ‘Speak to Me’ to the heavily processed vocals on the sax-loaded ‘SmttnKttns’ – which dazzles with vocoder and pop shine – the band’s signature dark, psychedelic chaos and nihilism has been cast into an unnerving new technological light.
On opener, ‘Beneath the Glass’, Housewives set the scene for the alternate world occupied throughout Twilight Splendour: “Slip with me, under the glass and into the light / I only choose content that I know you’ll like”—beckoning the listener to retreat away from the mundanity of everyday life and into the warm comforting glow of digital anaesthesia.
With ‘Dormi’, Housewives create skin-crawling tension and atmosphere from pulsing rhythms, dub-infused bass, clock chimes and a haunting MIDI choir, while ‘Texu’s’ off-beat drumming forms the backdrop of the track’s mythology—an ancient alien making a mixtape of mediocre jazz for a lover.
Diverted creative energy is explored with the chaotic tension of ‘Sublimate pt. I’ which flows into the cathartic bliss of ‘Sublimate pt. II’ using maniacal vocal samples in a challenging take on a life not lived ‘never dream for more than boredom, now defines us’. Closing the record out on a new age note, ‘Hexadecimal Wave / Binary Rock’ swells with deep organ-led euphoria; a moment of respite on an album buzzing with industry.
Since forming five years ago, Housewives have drawn from such diverse scenes as post-punk, jazz, drone, electronic and avant-garde. 2013 saw the release of an eponymous debut EP via Brighton label Faux Discx, while their first-full length record, ‘Work’—recorded at a barn in a desolate corner in the south of France—arrived two years later.
2017 live album FF06116 (Rocket Recordings)marked the band’s first collaboration with experimental saxophonist Ben Vince. Following on from these early statements, Housewives are now set to unleash their game-changing new album—turning away from performance-based writing, the human, and facing the cold light of computers head on.
Live dates: 27th March – London – Concrete (Album launch) 28th March – Sheffield – Picture House Social 12th April – Brighton – Hope & Ruin 13th April – Bristol – Crofters Rights 19th April – Manchester – Soup Kitchen 20th April – Milton Keynes – MK Gallery 24th April – Kortijk – De Kreun 25th April – Brussels – Magazin 4 27th April – Hamburg – Schute 28th April – Aarhus – Tape 30th April – Gothenburg – Skjulet 2nd May – Copenhagen – Alice 4th May – Bamberg – Pizzini 5th May – Prague – Kasárna Karlín 6th May – Bratislava – Kulturák Klub 7th May – Krakow – Klub Re 8th May – Brno – Kabinet Muz 9th May – Ljubljana – Križanke 11th May – Faenza – Clandestino 12th May – Geneve – Cave 12 13th May – Zurich – Boschbar 15th May – Lyon – Ground Zero 16th May – Strasbourg – Stimultania 17th May – Reims – L’appart Café 18th May – Nantes – Les Ateliers de Bitche 22nd May – Paris – Supersonic 23rd May – Rouen – Les 3 Pieces 24th May – Rotterdam – Worm 25th May – Groningen – Vera Preorder link: http://smarturl.it/TwilightSplendour |
Tracklist:
1. Beneath the Glass
2. Speak to Me
3. Dormi
4. SmttnKttns
5.
6. Sublimate pt. I
7. Sublimate pt. II
8. Hexadecimal Wave / Binary Rock
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