Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt on Crime, Poetry, Symbolism of New LP If a little light has been allowed into the music . I hate that that automatically means that you matured somehow, singer says of Seek Shelter
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CREDIT: Jonas Bang
In the late aughts of the Denmark music scene, nothing was really making worldwide waves. That is, until 2011, when post-punk outfit Iceage emerged from Copenhagen with their debut album,
New Brigade: a loud, abrasive and slightly unsettling sound held together by Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s echoing vocals.
Controversiesfollowed, staining the band’s image in their early days and leading to accusations of sympathizing with far-right ideologies. In a recent
New Music Reviews (5/10) KEXP
Each week, Music Director Don Yates shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP s rotation. These reviews help our DJs decide on what they want to play. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from
Squid,
Bright Green Field (Warp)
This British band’s debut full-length is an inventive blend of jittery post-punk with jazz, ambient, funk, prog and other styles. Produced by Dan Darey, the album features a variety of adventurous, sprawling songs combining angular guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, field recordings and more with volatile vocals and dystopian lyrics.
Rag’n’Bone Man, Weezer and Squid deliver the musical goods this week
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SQUID BRIGHT GREEN FIELD
Squid have embarked on a mission to bring ambition back to music, and their debut album is discordant and exciting.
Like Black Midi and Black Country, New Road (two members of the latter feature in a horn and string ensemble) they disdain simple song structures, and need repeated listening to uncover their depths. Squid take inspiration from the post-punk era, when anything and everything was allowed, as well as free jazz, funk, post rock, dub and other genres that encourage experimentation.
They are all scratchy guitars, dub bass, wonky time signatures, vocals that range from a whisper to a scream, as well as field recordings of ringing church bells, microphones swinging from the ceiling and a distorted choir of 30 voices.
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Iceage barrelled into the pit on their 2011 debut,
New Brigade, like a band disgusted with the idea of creation itself, as embodied by a death-staring frontmanâElias Rønnenfeltâwho delivered his manifestos as if spitting out the last remnants of puke in his mouth. In the decade since, theyâve undergone a metamorphosis even more surprising than their fellow gutter-dwellers the Men (who turned into Wilco) or the Horrors (who became Simple Minds): Theyâve embraced the light, one creeping step at a time, and on
Seek Shelter, they complete their transformation from grim-faced nihilists to wearied soothsayers, gospel choirs and all.
Albums Out Today: Iceage, dodie, Weezer, Squid, Czarface and MF DOOM, Miranda Lambert, Nancy Wilson
Iceage,
Iceage are back with their fifth album,
Seek Shelter, out now via Mexican Summer. The Danish rock outfit recorded the LP over the course of 12 days with help from producer Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled vintage studio in Lisbon. It marks the first time the band have ever worked with an outside producer for one of their albums and their first full-length with guitarist Casper Morilla Fernandez. The follow-up to 2018’s
Beyondless,
Seek Shelter was mixed by Shawn Everett and was preceded by the singles ‘High & Hurt’, ‘Shelter Song’, ‘Vendetta’, ‘The Holding Hand’, and ‘Gold City’.