Marina Zispin, Life & Death: The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms is released today, September 1st.
‘Life And Death – The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms’ pulls back the veil unto a nocturnal scene populated by shadows, embers burning coldly in the underworld. Marina Zispin is your guide, siren and protector both. Marina Zispin is the negative space between musicians Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid. Life And Death is the duo’s debut release, five chandeliers of melancholic, vibrant synth pop twinkling in the inky blackness.
Both originally hailing from the North East of England and forming a musical partnership before lockdown, Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid initially worked remotely. Having relocated to South London and Newcastle respectively, Marina Zispin was born in earnest after the duo could begin writing and practising in the same space. Bianca Scout is a celebrated musician and dancer with a number of solo and collaborative works in her discography while Martyn Reid is a mainstay of the UK noise and power electronics scene, most recently with solo project Depletion.
Marina Zispin largely eschews both Scout’s deconstructed approach to song and Reid’s focus on visceral, noise- based productions; the result is a new entity, the underground pop star that exists only in darkened dreams.
Night School was set up around 12 years ago because my friends and I couldn’t find a platform to care about and release our music. I created the label to release their music and my own and so here is the third Apostille album proper, Prisoners Of Love And Hate, self-released on Night School Records. It’s the best record I’ve ever made, in my opinion. I hope you like it but if you don’t, that’s all ok.
Apostille is my own project, started around the time of the label. I’ve been fortunate to release on several of my favourite underground, DIY labels but ultimately I felt it was best to take full responsibility for this one. It’s a celebration of togetherness, the desires and emotions we’re imprisoned and liberated by. There’s some swearing on it. There are love songs on it. It’s unofficially a survey of almost every “pop” genre I love. Some songs overtly or covertly reference my favourite 90s and 00s dance hits, Meat Loaf, The Cure… Apostille is my attempt to transcribe and share experience, memory and emotions as directly as I can.
Prisoners Of Love And Hate was recorded in Full Ashram Celestial Garden, in Glasgow with Lewis Cook of Free Love.
Saturday Night, Still Breathing is taken from the new Apostille album. Prisoners Of Love And Hate is released in September but you can stream Saturday Night now. It’s a celebration of being together, living in one space with other hearts, thrumming together. I wrote it when we couldn’t do that. I freaking love Whigfield’s Saturday Night, I love Saturday nights in general. The song is as earnest as I can make it, take it at face value. I wanted something to celebrate so I wrote a song to celebrate.
Saturday Night, Still Breathing video filmed and directed by Harrison Reid Edited by Holly Allan Big thanks to Liam at Dundee Rage Rooms.
If You Can’t Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don’t Deserve Me At My Best
(Night School, LSSN084)
Shipping now, Helena Celle – aka Glasgow musician Kay Logan – responds to her debut on Night School with a detoured, mangled take on breakbeat Junglism, playful techno and long form techno. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux, the new audio hits deeper and harder while maintaining the fizzy headspace that Helena Celle’s music sits in. Order here.
Bright, beautiful sunny day here in Glasgow’s fading winter. It’s so beautiful that we’re blasting Frankie Rose’s new album to celebrate its arrival into this weird world. We received our copies of Love As Projection this week and it’s so dreamy. This album is without a doubt one of my favourite releases I’ve ever worked on, just peerless pop music that’ll appeal to fans of label regulars Molly Nilsson, Strawberry Switchblade, Patience. It’s a sparkling fantasy of a record, a wonderful statement of intent and euphoric pop music that has been fuelling me these last few months.
We’re currently working to bring Frankie Rose to Europe and the UK soon. In the meantime, Frankie just announced a North American tour with SRSQ. A reminder that in North America you can buy Love As Projection from Slumberland, who we’ve partnered with to release over there.
Night School is so excited to share Anything, the first single from Love As Projection, the new album by Frankie Rose. Resplendent with a glorious pop chorus, layers of textured harmony and a giddy immediacy, Anything is one of the catchiest and endorphin-generating songs you’ll hear this year.
Love As Projection signals Frankie Rose’s emergence into the realm of contemporary electronic pop, a rebirth for one of the most respected songwriters in the underground. Recorded with producer Brandt Gassman and mixed with long-term collaborator Jorge Elbrecht this is the album Frankie Rose has been building up to her entire career.
More than a resurgence, Love As Projection boasts a widescreen scope: a long- form project heavily considered for half of a decade, culminating in the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has ever written. When Rose aims for the pop jugular as in first lead track Anything, the result is unstoppable. A majestic pop song built for radio, it erupts into an irresistible chorus that marries classic epic 80s American pop (think peak Belinda Carlisle) with the cult effervescence of Strawberry Switchblade “It’s like a prom scene in a John Hughes movie. It’s a hopeful song about abandoning fear even if the world is quite literally on fire.. In the end, at least we have each other,” says Rose.
Love As Projection is released on March 10th and is available on:
Amethyst-In-Glass Vinyl LP / CD / Digital on Slumberland in North America
Slovak-Hungarian musician Adela Mede explores the interplay between voice and technology with field recordings. She sings in three languages (Slovak, Hungarian and English). Intimate ambient utterances with themes of spiritual growth accompanied by experimental electronics with a wide scope of influences; from minimalism to folklore. Initially released in early 2022 to universal acclaim on digital and cassette, Night School is extremely excited to share Szabadság on vinyl. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux for vinyl, the clearer format teases out new nuances in the music, revealing a physicality and permanence to Mede’s first masterwork.
“Szabadság is a navigation. This debut by Adela Mede, recorded in her family home on the Slovakian border with Hungary, searches through the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present.
Examining both the vulnerability and determination of her voice – as it leaves the lips, raw, and in the ways it can be transformed with digital processing – the embodied memories of language, of utterance, are explored.
Airy, open sound worlds and tentative strings of improvised naked vocal transform themselves into insistent repetition. Fizzing, sparkling electronics are set against the beautiful grainy depth of field recordings. The locations, these places, are found and lost – home is found and lost – in a dance of fragmented vocal harmonies. Three languages (English, Hungarian, Slovak) weave a song of spring, nature, forgiveness, togetherness and rebirth.”
– words by Lisa Busby
“Ostensibly speaking, Szabadság, the debut album from Adela Mede, is an avant-garde/experimental composition record with a deep interest in voice. Peel back the layers, and it’s also an art-pop record that reaches for the stars.” – Dazed
“The vocals on Szabadság navigate between three languages: Hungarian, Slovak, and English. But the melancholy inflexion in her voice transcends meanings, words, and linguistic systems across any borders.” – The Quietus
“It’s an exploration of what it means to find home across different countries, cities and languages, revelling in the dis/comfort of a life stretched across borders” – The Wire
Night School is on tour with Molly Nilsson this Fall in the USA. Come say hi, get ready.
Oct 4 BROOKLYN, NYC – Market Hotel, with Frankie Rose. Tickets Oct 5 WASHINGTON, DC – DC9 Tickets Oct 7 CLEVELAND, OH – Little Rose Tavern, with Roxanne Starnik and Disintegration. Tickets Oct 10 LOUISVILLE, KY – Art Sanctuary, with Palm Ghosts. Tickets Oct 11 CHICAGO, IL – Thalia Hall, with Club Music and Warm Human. Tickets Oct 12 ROCK ISLAND, IL – Rozz Tox, with Apostille and Bold Little Airwave. Tickets Oct 14 WICHITA, KS – Monikahouse, with Apostille. Oct 16 DENVER, CO – Glob, with Luke Thinnes and Water On The Thirsty Ground. Tickets Oct 18 SALT LAKE CITY, UT – International Bar, with Apostille and Angel Magic. Tickets Oct 20 PORTLAND, OR – Dante’s, with Vacant Stares and Laundrette. Tickets Oct 23 SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Rickshaw Stop, with Abracadabra. Tickets Oct 25 LOS ANGELES, CA – The Regent Theatre. Tickets Oct 27 SAN DIEGO, CA – Soda Bar, with Trit95. Tickets Oct 31 SAN ANTONIO, TX – Paper Tiger, with Apostille. Tickets Nov 1 McALLEN, TX – Common Space, with Blowup Dollz, Common Girl, Glare. Tickets Nov 2 AUSTIN, TX – The Pink Warehouse, with Urban Heat, Flesh Of Morning. Tickets Nov 5 MEMPHIS, TN – Crosstown Arts. Tickets Nov 6 NASHVILLE, TN – DRKMTTR. Tickets Nov 7 ATLANTA, GA – 529. Tickets Nov 9 RALEIGH, NC – Wicked Witch Nov 10 Durham, NC – Duke Coffeehouse, with Tonsstartsbandt
I don’t know what it’s like where you are but here in Glasgow the sun if bright and high. Big chunks of the stuff streaming through the window at Night School HQ, illuminating small particles of dust and life swimming about in the blissed-out drone that bathes the air, courtesy of @erasersduo and their album Constant Connection. I’d first been talking to Erasers a couple of years ago as they toured the UK and Europe and when they sent me this, their third album, it was an instant fit. The pulsing synth chords, warm as 6am in the desert’s new day, the restrained, searching guitar and the frequency ecstasy achieved by Rebecca Orchard’s vocal interacting with the music, it’s a balm, a spirit-lifter. Constant Connection is out today on Forest Green Vinyl, Black Vinyl and Digital. There are relevant links in the bio but head to Fire Talk in the states, or the band in Australia. EU tour dates soon.
We’re so excited to welcome Perth, Western Australian duo ERASERS to the Night School fold.
Constant Connection is out on Night School in Europe and Fire Talk in North America.
On their third album Constant Connection, West Australian-based Erasers create hypnotic compositions of synth, guitar and voice, evoking the vast expanse of their native landscape and the shrouded emotions behind the senses. Comprising of vocalist, synth player Rebecca Orchard and Rupert Thomas on guitar and synths, Erasers have developed their earthly kosmische music into an open language based on drone, variation in repetition and minimal song stuctures. Based in Perth, regarded one of the most isolated cities in the world, Orchard and Thomas’s music has brewed in the city’s vibrant DIY/Outsider community and evolved into a meditation on landscape, power, the shadow-world of human emotions and stream of consciousness. Constant Connection, with its waves of sound and chant-like vocals evokes a trance that suggests an infinity just beyond the senses.
At the heart of each Erasers composition is the interplay between the instrumentation, played with stoic restraint and recorded directly with minimal effects and the transcendental states induced in the listener. It’s a magic that is performed in plain sight and all the more powerful for it. The recognisable vibrato of Fender Rhodes keyboards and simple drum machine loops, the subtle strands of analog synth melodies that snake in and out of the ear, above all the towering encantations of Rebecca Orchard’s undeniably Australian-accented hymns; all of this is presented with minimal ostentation and yet it instantly engenders a dream state, hints at an infinity beyond the material.
Shades of John Cale’s 70s work with Nico, early 70s German synthesists Kluster and even fellow Australians Fabulous Diamonds can be seen as stylistic touchstones for Constant Connection. Where Nico hinted at the macabre and gothic, Rebecca Orchard’s similarly gliding vocal is more zoned in to a kind of oceanic openness, with words becoming chants and spells that suggested themselves to the singer during recording sessions. It’s this hidden hand of improvisatory, automatic writing that lends a sense of expanse to the music. On opener I Understand, while the lyrics might hint at discontent the emotional spectrum it opens up is far more rich and complex, as layered as the waves of droning chords that are the bedrock of each Erasers track. The title track talks of flow, continuum and balance, the protagonist in the song seemingly weightless, gently pulled through a walking reality that borders on dream. In Erasers’ world, it seems, the borders between reality and dream, consciousness and sub-consciousness are blurred and eroded.
On Constant Connection, Erasers’ music might be deeply evocative of landscape but it’s never clear which one. The vast, open terrain that surrounds Perth is dusty, burned by the sun into desert and Constant Connection feels like the product of the heat and relative isolation, the altered states these elements can create. But it’s these altered states of mind that appear to be the real landscape described by Erasers. It’s a landscape that’s hazy, in-and-out of focus, with emotional undertows pushing and pulling you into a weightlessness. On album closer Easy To See the band dispense with percussion all together, field recordings of the water at the edge of their native city ushering in two duetting synths. Orchard’s vocal undulates with the flow, viewing both the geographical and psychological landscape from the perspective of a consciousness not bound by bodies and from a timescale measured in millennia. The album ends as it begins, with field recordings of the real world that the music seeps out from, temporarily, before regressing back into the other realm it feels like it belongs to.
Between these two recorded hints of reality, Erasers manifest a deeply sensual dreamscape that constantly feels like it’s dissolving at its seams. A desert psychedelia emanating from a real world that might not be that real in the first place.
