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Ahead of Sam Blasucci's forthcoming debut solo album, Off My Stars, the artist releases a video for the final album single "Every Night On the Farm." Blasucci says, "some words that come to mind are outdoors, tear, persona, queen, veins, and crescent. This song feels important to where I feel we are going."
Off My Stars arrives June 2, the LP is infused with an honest, personal perspective about settling into adult life—about developing as a person and a partner and a family member—it's a record with classic songbook sparkle inspired just as much by the music of Ronnie Wood and Sade as the films of Ingmar Bergman and writing of Brian Doyle.
Sam Blasucci releases a cover version of "Linger" by The Cranberries, the third album single off his forthcoming debut solo LP Off My Stars. Blasucci reveals, "The Cranberries’ song "Linger" is one I’ve always loved and wanted to perform, but I never really found its place. When I spoke to Johnny Payne (producer) about making a solo record, I told him that I wanted to expose things in me as they are, without altering them to make me appear any certain way. I think that comes through in our version of this song. Some words that remind me of "Linger" are midnight, tide, rock, salt, and breath."
Pre-order Off My Stars at this link.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
7/15 - Las Vegas, NV - The Griffin
7/16 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
7/18 - Boise, ID - Neurolux
7/19 - Portland, OR - Holocene
7/20 - Seattle, WA - Sunset
7/21 - Eugene, OR - Whirled Pies
7/22 - Bend, OR - Volcanic Theatre
7/25 - Bolinas, CA - Smiley's
7/26 - San Francisco, CA - Cafe Du Nord
7/28 - Los Angeles, CA - Permanent Records Roadhouse
7/29 - Los Angeles, CA - Permanent Records Roadhouse
"Love Is Hard Work" is a continuous 29 minute recording and something that Sean Guerin from De Lux has been wanting to make for a while. According to Guerin: "Before De Lux, I used to write long songs, but never really finish them. Written and recorded in mid 2021 for two months, it felt like a breeze to make 'Love Is Hard Work' because I had been thinking and talking about it for so long. Influenced by a lot of artists from ‘79-‘82, like Peter Gordon, Electric Mind, Evans Pyramid or Dizzy K, the track is intended to feel like a continuous flow of dance music. Instead of a stream of consciousness in lyricism, this is more of a stream of consciousness in instrumentation and songwriting; where ideas flow from one to the other without too much thought."
Purchase the limited edition vinyl, download or stream the track.
L.A.'s De Lux are a post-disco dance-punk DIY duo that sound like they could have come out of 1979 or 1982 just as easily as today. Founders and multi-instrumentalists Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco didn’t meet so much as simply appear to each other, sometime before high school ended and after learning to correctly fall off skateboards began. Even at age 18, however, it was the kind of connection that had been years in the making. Sean had been writing songs since he was 15 and had spent recent years recording and re-recording his own songs. And Isaac had been on a strict diet of classic and obscure disco and boogie music since he too was 15, figuring out the original source of hip-hop’s greatest samples thanks to an older brother with a DJ sideline and an enviable collection. They both were after the same thing in music—the groove, they say, where the bass and the beat align in a perfect way that makes you want a song to go on forever.
Ten years on from their well-received debut album, Voyage, the band now has four full length releases under their belt, including 2022's "Do You Need A Release?" Funny, profound & easy to groove to, De Lux has a host of influences ranging from 80’s new wave of the Tom Tom Club to the experimentation and imagery of The Clash’s “Sandinista!” to the cerebral DFA disco era.
Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell, aka Idjut Boys, are an English duo whose dub-heavy home songs incorporate their playful love of life. The duo met in the late '80s in Cambridge discovering that they shared a passion for similar music. Soon after, both moved to London and established the U-Star parties. The Idjuts' fusion of dub, house, and techno soon caught on and landed them gigs DJing all over the world.
McDonnell and Tyler established U-Star Records in 1993, releasing their debut 12" Idjut Boy. They continued releasing numerous 12"s throughout the 90's up to the current period consisting of original productions, along with remixes & re-edits of obscure and not-so-obscure material by other artists and a handful of DJ mixes. A proper Idjut Boys studio album, Cellar Door, was released on Smalltown Supersound in 2012. This was followed by Versions, an album of reworks of material from throughout the duo's career, in 2015.
On this 12" vinyl, the Idjuts remix a single, "What's Life" from De Lux's most recent "Do You Need A Release?"
Ahead of the release of their forthcoming LP, Echo Palace (due 5/12), Dutch rock band Iguana Death Cult return with a brand new single entitled "Oh No." Previously, the band shared two stellar singles, "Pushermen" and "Sensory Overload," and this new track continues the hype in anticipation of the record's drop in May.
Wrote the band of the track: "Inspired by Dutch writer Jan Cremer, I decided to write a song about how incredibly amazing I am. This sort of self-mythification seemed funny to me since I spend most of my days wallowing in doubt and worry. In the end it became a metaphor for how we polish up our lives to near perfection on our social media accounts, while mental health problems are becoming more norm rather than an exception."
To accompany the new single, the band has also shared a music video, on which they wrote:
"One night, I played the new record for our good friend Max. When 'Oh No' came on and I heard myself sing the first line, I knew it; We have to get this guy in a knight costume. Max is a 6 foot 5 berserker but also one of the sweetest guys I know. We had so much fun making this video even though it was freezing and we had to hide from the rain every ten minutes. The banter you can have with this guy is unprecedented. One of the sharpest tongues in the game. Everything was filmed in Rotterdam again. Can't represent this beautiful city enough! Because this song has a bit of an old school Iguana feel to it, Hache wanted to use a lot of video distortion like he did back in the day when he made the videos for our first record."
In celebration of their forthcoming album, Iguana Death Cult made an appearance at this year's SXSW (Austin, TX), where they played a total of nine showcases. Following the festival, Paste Magazine noted that the band was one of the "20 Best Acts" they saw there: "I knew I had to see Iguana Death Cult as soon as I heard the band’s name. And they didn’t disappoint. From the word 'go,' the whole crowd was dancing and pushing to their garage and psych-rock extravaganza."