From the underground warehouse scene, Green Star have emerged to share their haunting artistry in the rock scene. With strong experimental and shoegaze influence, their latest music video reflects the sombre artistry of the band. Their single comes with shots of vocalist Lilah Bobak running through foggy English fields in a gloomy aesthetic reminiscent of several pieces of popular British media including British TV show Skins.

The London gloom aesthetic is of great importance to the band’s image and sound, with their life in England inspiring the production of ‘Bleeding Swirls’. 

The band was formed in 2024 by Spanish musicians Pedro Soler and Albert De Torre who initially played together in the ambient-noise band Soft Nukes. The two then met Bobak on the website joinmyband.com and they began incorporating an experimentalism to their sound. Since then they have taken the scene by storm, amassing over 3,000 listeners on Spotify and a dedicated fanbase on social media with their debut single ‘Blades Of Steel’ earlier this year.

In an interview with The Rolling Stones, the band share their lyrical influence, stating that “Everything seems like it’s collapsing, but at the same time, there’s, some certain light always there.” Their sound reflects this with a rough noise edge and tender ambience which has been prevalent since ‘Blades Of Steel’.

The band shared their creative thoughts and inspirations for ‘Bleeding Swirls’ in an interview with Dork magazine. When explaining their relationship with noise rock, they share “It embodies disruption, intuition, and a certain rawness that helps us communicate—it’s a visceral language.” Lyrically their music challenges an existentialism, a theme they describe as “introspection and searching”. With the band originating in the warehouse scene, they share how their sound ties in with their lives, explaining “the city’s often gloomy nature heavily influences how we write and envision the world in which our music exists.”

Their music videos also exist in this space, with Bobak’s background in dance and Soler’s in filmmaking, this creative magnetism runs through their projects. Their artistry can further be seen in the music video for their single ‘Four-O-Five’.

Today (7 May) they will be hosting a release show with So Young Records at The Social, London as part of their UK tour which commenced on 4 May in Leeds. Tickets are available here.

The tour will feature five UK dates and five European dates, with the UK leg starting at St Luke’s in Glasgow on September 14th and concluding at Chalk in Brighton on the 18th, while the European leg kicks off at La Maroquinerie in Paris on September 21st and rounds off at Hole 44 in Berlin on the 25th.

The entirety of their well-received fifth album Wild Light will be performed in full during the tour, and will be followed by, as mentioned in a press release, a ‘second set of other bits and pieces‘, which may leave fans of the experimental outfit hopeful of new material.

The press release has also stated that the group, best known for combining noise rock, experimental rock and electronic rock throughout their years of existence, has also announced a new project, the so-called Wild Light Decade, that will, in the months leading up to their string of live shows, see the outfit release ‘never heard before‘ recordings that were made during a period between 2010 and 2013 and what is now known as the Wild Light Sessions.

The releasing of these previously unheard recordings will be available on the band’s patreon page on a subscription basis for five pounds a month. The patreon page can be found here.

65daysofstatic were formed in Sheffield in 2001 by instrumentalists Paul Wolinski, Joe Shrewsbury, Rob Jones and Simon Wright, and released their first album, The Fall of Math, in 2004 to widespread favourable reviews. The band’s sound with their debut LP focused on math and noise rock, and this fitting of the post-rock genre continued with two of their subsequent releases, One Time for All Time (2005) and The Destruction of Small Ideas (2007).

Watch the music video for ‘Retreat! Retreat!‘, from 65daysofstatic’s first album, The Fall of Math, below:

With the release of their fourth album, however, in 2010, the band shifted, musically, to a more electronic sound. We Were Exploding Anyway featured more dance elements, including more dance beats and electronic bass and drum tracks. Their fifth and sixth albums (Wild Light, 2013, and replicr, 2019) feature a combination of their earlier post-rock and noise rock sound with the electronica sound inspired in their fourth release.

Listen to ‘Unmake the Wild Light’ below:

The tour dates in full can be found below:

14/09/2023 – St Luke’s – Glasgow
15/09 – New Century Hall – Manchester
16/09 – Electric Brixton – London
17/09 – Trinity – Bristol
18/09 – Chalk – Brighton
21/09 – La Maroquinerie – Paris
22/09 – Trix – Antwerp
23/09 – Paradiso – Amsterdam
24/09 – Knust – Hamburg
25/09 – Hole 44 – Berlin

You can purchase tickets for the live shows here.

Our debut album NAILS is out on April 21st on Invada Records. Come see us play it live!
“Benefits are something different, something primal and essential that needs to be heard.” @NME
“An urgent combination of noise rock and spoken word fury.” @RollingStoneUK pic.twitter.com/vphuWXmj2x

— Benefits (@Benefitstheband) March 1, 2023

The scolding LP has already received a great deal of praise, with The Quietus describing it as a “work of volatile physicality and penetrating sincerity“.

Sincerity, indeed, comes to the forefront as the record progresses. In a prophetic mix of Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clark and Sleaford Mods, Benefits frontman Kingsley Hall’s rageful and blistering attack on the British political and cultural status quo is a brutally honest one. But it is not only the governmental and monarchal oppressors of this country that are the targets of Hall’s indictment; the everyman, and their blissful unawareness of the corroding of the society that they live in, are too apprehended.

“Marlboro Hundreds“, the album opener, acts as a call of arms, of sort, to the ignorantly bliss, and a plea to engage with their problems (“Formulate your own ideas“, “Question everything“, “Don’t let them break you“). This optimistic rhetoric, however, is shrouded and enclosed in a bleak and decrepit setting; alongside the screeching sound of electronic industrial noise, Britain is made up of “industrial wastelands” in “Empire” and is a “prison island” in “Shit Britain“.

Watch the music video for “Shit Britain” below:

The futile and illogical love for nostalgia and past glories is another central theme to Nails. Flags are a recurring motif, and this “musty relic” (“Flag“) is a symbol of the patriotism that is being wielded as a weapon by the powers that be to keep its people in line, making them focus on past glories rather than their current woes. The album, then, is a picture painted by Hall, a picture that shows the disregard that we, as a society, have for our society’s well-being.

Watch the music video for “Flag” below:

Hall confirms this notion as he speaks to Louder Than War, stating that the album is “an attempt at a soundtrack for the times we live in. This difficult age and all that. Not sitting there with our fingers in our ears and an “everything is fine” meme plastered to our brains. I get baffled by people turning a blind eye to it all, to just carry on as if everything is normal, singing twee songs about fuck all.”

Purchase the album now here.

Benefits will also be touring the UK and Europe in support of the album’s release. You can get tickets here.

See below for tour dates:

21/04/2023 – The Rum Shack – Glasgow
22/04 – The Lending Room – Leeds
23/04 – Soup – Manchester
24/04 – Clwb lfor Bach – Cardiff
25/04 – Tunbridge Wells Forum – Tunbridge Wells
26/04 – Chalk – Brighton
27/04 – 100 Club – London
28/04 – Trades Club – Hebden Bridge
29/04 – The Hare and Hounds – Birmingham
30/04 – Cluny – Newcastle
04/05 – The Deer’s Head –  Belfast
05/05 – Kasbah Social Club – Limerick
06/05 – Workmans Club – Dublin
12/05 – The Great Escape 2023 – Brighton and Hove
17/05 – Supersonic – Paris
18/05 – Supersonic – Paris
19/05 – Benefits in Rotterdam – Rotterdam
20/05 – Benefits at London Calling, Amsterdam – Amsterdam
25/05 – Bearded Theory Festival – Walton
27/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Bristol
28/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Nottingham

Made for the track “I Disappear (When You’re Near)”, it’s the second APTBS music video to be directed by someone from the horror genre, after the Chad Crawford Kinkle video for “I’m Hurt“ a couple of weeks back (Kinkle being known for films such as Dementer and Jug Face).

This time around, director Keith Thomas was behind the camera. Thomas is well known for such career-highlights as The Vigil and the upcoming Stephen King adaptation Firestarter. Bringing his talents to the noise-rock genre, he said that “I’ve always wanted to dig into music videos ….. ‘I Disappear (When You’re Near)’ is a great, enigmatic song and I wanted to give it an enigmatic visual component.“

To be fair though, the video speaks for itself, at least in terms of blood-lust and gore. Featuring a fight to the death between two women, Kika Magalhaes (from The Eyes of My Mother) and Malky Goldman (who starred in Thomas’ The Vigil), it’s just a normal Sunday afternoon for APTBS. Their press release says that “Thomas’ practical effects wizardry is on display throughout, with each gory set-piece accumulating in terror until the final splatter-filled curtain call“.

The track has become the fourth single released from the new album, after tracks “Let’s See Each Other“, “Hold on Tight“ and “I’m Hurt“. The press release says “I Disappear (When You’re Near)” wrestles “with self-destructive impulses masquerading as a path towards redemption“, with “Ackermann’s pained vocal [seeking] cover in layers of distortion and reverb — begging for more and more until it becomes indistinguishable from noise and desire“.

As for touring, the band have announced their new schedule for a tour of the US, which had to be delayed from the original January-February time due to the pandemic. It will now be taking place in May-June, alongside a visit to Europe around March-April (they’ll be visiting London on April 2^nd). More details can be seen here.

As for See Through You, if you want to stream it, you can go here. If you want to purchase it, then look here. As for a vinyl release, you’ll have to wait until March 11^th. As for more guts and gore videos for the new album, we’ll just have to wait and see what’s coming next from the dark minds of APTBS.

Since the debut, listeners have been eager to catch a glimpse of what is next in store for this unique band. This mysterious website, initially posted to twitter by Rough Trade, provides some insight into potential new artwork and music with a puzzle, featuring tiles of psychedelic imagery. Fans have begun to uncover various soundbites of noise from each tile, from chaotic violins to reverb filled drum loops fitting with the intense nature of their music. As of today there are over 30 tiles. These clips are believed to be related to a new single that was previously teased on their official TikTok account, which remains their only upload to the video sharing app to this day.

Black Midi continue to form their own auditory and visual identity, carving out a lane for themselves and providing a forward thinking experimental touch to rock. They are continuing to roll out new content as a band despite vocalist/guitarist Matt taking a hiatus from the band. The announcement of Matt’s break from the band came as a result of mental health, with himself stating in a Facebook post “I’ve been taking some time off from the band as I have been mentally unwell. Because of this I haven’t featured on forthcoming material. I’ll be back soon.”

Whilst we await more news on their sought after sophomore album, revisit Black Midi’s infamous ‘bmbmbm’ performance at the 2019 Mercury Prize.

UNFORTUNATELY OUR AUGUST EUROPEAN SHOWS WILL ONCE AGAIN HAVE TO BE RESCHEDULED DUE TO THE ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC. ALL TICKETS WILL BE VALID FOR THE NEWLY REVISED DATES AND WE HOPE TO ANNOUNCE THEM BY SEPTEMBER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. STAY SAFE. pic.twitter.com/SruirWFkKu

— HEALTH (@_HEALTH_) August 17, 2020

Fans commented saying that they understood, asking the band to ‘stay safe‘ in the meantime. Some even requested HEALTH add other UK locations such as Cardiff to their tour, as London remains the only UK destination on the schedule.

The band toured the UK and Ireland only last year, on their ‘Coveted Islands Tour 2019′. Their latest album, ‘Vol 4: Slaves of Fear‘ was released in February 2019 with Loma Vista Recordings. It was met with varying reviews; NME criticised it for being too sonically similar to its predecessor ‘Death Magic‘ whilst DIY’s Matthew Lombardi said the album helped establish HEALTH as a ‘landmark’ band. There was a general consensus that ‘Vol 4: Slaves of Fear’ is a gloomy, nihilistic commentary on society; some wield this as a criticism, while others praise the album for this very reason.

There is no doubt that the eponymous track, Slaves of Fear, hauntingly explores themes of alienation and despair. With lyrics like ‘slaves of fear// ’til we’re dead in the ground’ and ‘we want to be different// but we don’t want to try too hard’ under metal style guitar that reaches a thudding crescendo toward the middle of the song.

There is no doubt that HEALTH will put on a good live show when it is finally safe to do so. The band is known for its impressive lighting and energetic performances. They actually started out playing live shows at LA institution The Smell, a venue known for its legendary alcohol and drug-free gigs. Watch a recording of HEALTH live at The Smell in 2008 below while you wait patiently for the new European tour dates to be announced in September:

Affected Tour Dates:

20/08/2020 – Zetpete – Krakow, PL
21/08 – Hydrozagadka – Warsaw, PL
22/08 – Lido – Berlin, DE
23/08 – Luxor – Cologne, DE
25/08 – Petit Bain – Paris, FR
27/08 – Studio 9294 – London, UK
28/09 – Loppen – Copenhagen, DK

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat.