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The Book of Knots – Garden of Fainting Stars
Update 6/3: this album is now up for pre-order.
Update 6/27: original packaging concept for the album by Aaron Lazar of Tzgani Design.
Just tooling around Ipecac today… and what? New album from The Book of Knots? The official PR follows…
The Book Of Knots has had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the worlds most talented musicians, including Tom Waits, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, Jon Langford, and Carla Bozulich.
Founding members Matthias Bossi (Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Joel Hamilton (producer/engineer for BlakRoc, Pretty Lights), Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) and Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Frank Black, Bob Mould) forge a sound both epic and intimate, empowering and devastating. Cinematic, symphonic landscapes give way to crumbling acoustic chamber ballads. Broken guitars and beautifully warped orchestras describe the ungraceful demise of boats, blast furnaces and bloated industries. Accounts of the failed adventures of tragic would-be heroes are given voice in the band’s two previous critically-acclaimed releases.
Their newest album serves as the final chapter in the bands “By Sea, By Land, By Air” trilogy. GARDEN OF FAINTING STARS, slated for release by Ipecac Recordings on June 14th, 2011, gives dissonant sendoffs to the doomed travelers and early astronauts that plied the skies in a quest for the final frontier: Space.
The imagined utopias that await them at the other end of their fantastical journeys inevitably give way to the grim realization which mankind has faced again and again: at every hopeful turn, commonplace realities await us. A vast and empty universe, stretching far beyond infinity, capable of containing the countless imaginary creatures, civilizations, and otherwise terrestrial impossibilities that inhabit our dreams, dies in the fluorescent lighting of the laundry soap aisle at WalMart.
The Book Of Knots once again cast a wormless, rusty hook into the lifeless seas of the music industry, expecting to reap only sorrow.
Jónsi – Live at the Wiltern (live audio & video), plus more music news…
Sigur Rós front man Jónsi just announced his new concert film jónsi live at the wiltern is available to buy now via iTunes (usa and canada only). Here’s the trailer…
Get the AUDIO // Get the VIDEO
jónsi live at the wiltern was directed by dean deblois, (the director of the oscar nominated film how to train your dragon and the sigur rós film heima). the footage – recorded at los angeles’ wiltern theater – was first aired on npr on sunday october 17, 2010 and it marked the first ever live video webcast of a concert for the public radio organisation. filmed towards the end of jónsi’s extensive world tour in support of his solo album ‘go’, the film captures the live show at the late stage when the set and visuals were at their finest. this digital release is available exclusively on itunes.
Other news…
- Tres Mountains (side project from Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam & dUg Pinnick of King’s X) is now up for pre-order. It comes out March 14th. Go HERE for more info on pre-order.
- Carla Kihlstedt & Mattias Bossi‘s new album, Still You Lay Dreaming: Tales for the Stage II, also came out today. It is digital only… and knowing Carla’s chamber indie-rock magic, it’ll be great (it’s in my e-shopping cart now). http://kihlstedtbossi.bandcamp.com
My Nels Cline Singers‘ Portland show (1/30) review & photo editing being worked on now… I’ll post it by morning (sorry for the delay).