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"Dutch band Iguana Death Cult's rip-roaring melodies are built to jettison far beyond their homebase of Rotterdam." - FADER
"Frenetic, intense sonic assaults, they turn psych punk into astonishingly concise three-dimensional documents." - CLASH
"Jangly, angular guitars fight for space in the track with a bobbing bassline holding it all in together...This jam would fit on your playlists with Parquet Courts, Ty Segall or Television and is a catchy starting point to get a feel for their well-executed blend of rock and roll fringe." - KCRW
"With a carousel of outlandish and frisky guitar tones, Iguana Death Cult curate something absurd and sportive, yet illuminating."- Paste
About the single, the band explains:
After the pandemic hit, and the people of the world suddenly grew wary and suspicious of one another, Iguana Death Cult, one of Europe’s most exciting rock exports, became more than just a band to its members—it became therapy. “I think for the first ten times we went to jam,” says guitarist/vocalist Tobias Opschoor, speaking about the process of making the new album Echo Palace, “we just drank wine and talked about it, and just kept on talking for hours—and then were like, ‘OK, I have to go because I have to work tomorrow.’”
Taking place at frontman Jeroen Reek’s apartment in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, these gatherings slowly shifted from talking about this surreal chapter of their lives—the days of quiet streets and cramped buildings—to making music about it. “I was living in a really crappy, leaky, ready-for-demolition apartment,” explains Reek, “with just one heat source—like a really old-school, gas stove kind of thing.” Working on cold nights, they had to gather around that heater together—a cozy approach that ultimately got their creative flow going, fast.
Armed with the talents of Justin Boer on bass and Arjen van Opstal on drums, and tapping the keys work Jimmy de Kok for the first time on album, the band took their trademark melodic garage-rock style and expanded it out to make it vibier and looser, with each member contributing ideas to develop the sound palette in full. “We all get into this sort of blender and then everybody gives a little bit of a flavor to it,” says Opschoor.
The sounds they started to make tapped into the band’s acerbic bite established on their first two LPs, 2017’s The First Stirrings of Hideous Insect Life and 2019’s Nude Casino—albums that sometimes felt like Parquet Courts colliding with Super Furry Animals. (Paste described Nude Casino as evoking “the colorful mischief of nights out where even a humdrum accountant can feel like a Clint Eastwood desperado.”) Their explosive performances of these records turned them into a cult live act among psych fans, who have thrashed to the band everywhere from Amsterdam to Austin. (It was during a particularly bananas set at SXSW that the band won over Innovative Leisure.) But working on this new album, huddled together as the world split apart, everything began to flutter like Remain in Light.
Echo Palace may be the Iguana Death Cult music that’s most overtly about the strange cause and effect of groupthink, but the theme has been lurking there since the very beginning, when the band was first formed by childhood friends Reek and Opschoor over ten years ago. The name of Iguana Death Cult is a partial nod to Reek’s fascination with cults in general—and the “Iguana” part is a nod to Iggy Pop, whose first band was the Iguanas. Watching the pandemic paranoia and conspiracy theories steeping across their country, Reek wrote lyrics reflecting the scene in front of him: “Purple, veiny soccer mommies,” he sings in a deep, foreboding voice on the song “Echo Palace,” “Sharpening their guillotines.” It’s a cut so infectious that it betrays the density of its lyrics, which were adapted from a poem Reek wrote about the repercussions of “shutting yourself off from everyone outside of your own ideology.”
When it came time to record the full set, the band headed to PAF Studio in Rotterdam, and then had the self-produced album subsequently mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Dummy) at Studio 22 in Los Angeles and mastered by Dave Cooley (Tame Impala, Yves Tumor). As the instruments swirl and trade solos on “I Just a Want House,” a funky millennial nihilist anthem, you can practically hear the growth of a group that’s been pushing itself further and further with every tour and every Belgian-stove fuelled jam session. The album is a big swing, stretching Iguana Death Cult beyond its garage rock origins and taking them to a new realm. It’s the type of project that warranted having legendary Dutch saxophonist Benjamin Herman stop by to add to the squall on tracks like “Oh No” and “Sensory Overload,” heady thrashers that morph into calculated freakouts; that warranted Reek and Opschoor knowing when screaming their guts out on tracks like “Pushermen,” and Boer and van Opstal knowing when to bring the rhythm section to a jazzy simmer on tracks like “Paper Straws.”
The end result of Echo Palace is an appropriately worldly album from a group breaking past the confines of its home country. That’s not to say that Iguana Death Cult aren’t proudly Dutch; the group takes from the trademark hard work ethic of their Rotterdam base and applies it to their approach with music. But it’s 2022, and we’re less defined by our borders than ever before. “When we play in other countries, for me that gives the same amount of pleasure—or even more—than when we play in the Netherlands,” says Opschoor.
“We’re not just little countries anymore, everything is global,” adds Reek, speaking about society at large—but he might as well be speaking about Iguana Death Cult itself. “We’re turning into a global thing.”
Nick Waterhouse releases new heartbreak soul single "Play To Win" off his forthcoming album The Fooler out April 1 on Innovative Leisure / PRES. The Fooler is an immaculate record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin. The record is partly a farewell to and reclamation of a version of Waterhouse’s past existence framed by a city that is part dream, part reality and part potential - a tale of city haunted by song - a place filled with 45s produced by people like Bert Berns or released on Scepter, Wand, Atlantic and Verve and heard on the jukeboxes in iconic San Francisco institutions like Tosca, Specs and Trieste in North Beach.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter releases new album single and visualizer for "Play To Win,” which Waterhouse says is "a heartbreak type of tune with co-writer Doc playing the piano and producer Mark Neill both taking me to a place I have never been in my career before. This is about what it’s like in the din and chatter of city apartment parties, bars, sitting rooms, and loneliness from the seat one’s sitting in looking at the insouciant world around." Last month the artist shared album singles/videos for “Hide And Seek" and "The Fooler." "Hide And Seek" puts you in the city of dreams that The Fooler unfolds in - and the sound is the place. And title track "The Fooler" is about how your own heart and your memories can betray you in really nice ways. Waterhouse also created another way fans can tune in to the music. As depicted in the "Hide and Seek" music video, people can dial into his The Fooler radio show on KFLR and request the three new songs. Lines are open at (833)777-KFLR.
Tim Hill releases his new album Giant on Innovative Leisure / Calico Discos, a collection of cowboy tunes and Americana ballads that feel forged out of the embers of a desert campfire and steeped in affection for artists like Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, and Neil Young.
On “Candlestick,” Tim takes his graceful chords and melody and applies them to a poem written by his friend, the artist Ry Welch who also directed the video.
Jonah Yano performs a Take Away Show for Blogoteque with 'song about the family house' from his latest album portrait of a dog.
The wooden stairs of a house, a friendly dog and an intimate song. Canadian artist Jonah Yano - famous for his jazz-inflected soul-pop - delivers a sweet rendition of 'song about the family house'. This track is a tribute to a place which he holds close to his heart. A house everyone in his immediate family has lived in at one point or another that's about to get torn down. "And how do I keep / The living room intact / Exactly as it was / If I have to commit it and rebuild it in my memory." Lonesome guitar lines and weary vocal melodies sublimate this affecting song we captured just for you.
Accompanied by his bandmates from BADBADNOTGOOD, Leland Whitty performs "Glass Moon" live on Blogoteque. "Glass Moon" is from his recently released debut solo album, Anyhow.