New Albums From Dead Can Dance and Moonface. Plus – Twenty One Pilots Indie Version Is Here!

A new album from Dead Can Dance? Sign me up! If you visit Backbeat there’s always a good chance Dead Can Dance will be spinning on one of the turntables here. Our walls are adorned with Dead Can Dance posters, yeah I’m a fan. From what I’ve been reading it’s been getting some good reviews. If you’re not familiar with Dead Can Dance just head on in to the shop and like I said there’s a good chance we’ll be playing it.
The latest (and apparently last) from Moonface is here and Twenty One Pilots “Trench” on exclusive coloured vinyl has finally arrived, come get em while we got em!

There’s a list of restocks down below but let’s dig into the details on the new releases.

Dead Can Dance – Dionysus

Since their inception in Melbourne in 1981, Dead Can Dance have been informed by folk traditions from all over Europe, not just solely in terms of instrumentation, but also by secular, religious and spiritual practices.

The story to their album Dionysus took shape as Brendan Perry became fascinated by long established spring and harvest festivals that had their origins in Dionysian religious practices throughout Europe. The presence of the religion was suppressed during the ideological control of Christianity and Islam since the Roman Empire, and so the influence that Dionysus still had on these festivals would continue to manifest itself albeit in a more censored form.

Dead Can Dance’s latest album brings to the fore the rites and rituals that today continue to be informed by the Greek god, with the album’s seven movements representing different facets of the Dionysus myth and his cult.

The musical form of Dionysus is that of an oratorio, which has informed spiritual and secular pieces of music as far back as the early 16th century.

Moonface – This One’s For The Dancer & This One’s For The Dancer’s Bouquet

Seven years in the making, placed repeatedly on hold while other releases came and went, This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet is the final album Spencer Krug will release as Moonface.

Like the title itself, the album is made up of two distinct yet connected ideas. The music is culled from two separate projects, each with different collaborators, recorded in different studios, in different towns, in different years. The songs are sung from two completely different standpoints. But rather than split the songs into separate releases, or group them respectively onto the two discs of vinyl they inhabit, Krug has blended them together into one sequence; a long weave of enjoyable variation.

Half the songs are sung from the perspective of the Minotaur. A whimsical, empathetic look at a monster’s demise from the monster’s POV, in them we hear the Minotaur examining the horrible nature of a lifetime trapped unjustly within a labyrinth, while simultaneously forgiving those responsible for putting him there. Here Krug collaborates with fellow percussionist Michael Bigelow, and together on marimbas, vibraphone, steel drum, keys, and drums pads the two create dense walls of rhythm with quick turns of melody; dreamy halls from within which the Minotaur’s vocoder-voice can cry out.

The remaining songs are results of Krug exploring keyboard treated with delay. These too are set in a percussive world, also lush and trance-inducing in their use of fast repetition over slow progression, but with Ches Smith joining on drums and Matana Roberts on saxophone, they lean into a more improvised and acoustic space. Here Krug sings more as himself, sifting through and trying to exorcise modern-day feelings of anxiety, loneliness, regret, and alienation.

Twenty One Pilots – Trench – Indie Shop Exclusive Green Vinyl

Trench is the fifth studio album by American musical duo Twenty One Pilots, released on October 5, 2018, through Fueled by Ramen. It is the band’s first studio album in three years, and its serves as the follow-up to the band’s fourth studio album Blurryface. Recorded in secret during a year-long public silence, it is a concept album exploring mental health, suicide and doubt, themes prominently featured in the band’s previous works, framed in the metaphorical city of Dema and the surrounding valley known as “Trench”. The album is also the first release of the newly revived Elektra Music Group.

Restocks and Additions To Our New Record Selection

Since our browsers are stocked to max with all the latest releases we’ve added a little extra space we call the “Classics Crate”. You’ll find some reissues of the “must own” classic albums from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Here’s this week’s complete restock list including the albums hitting the “Classics Crate”.

Ain’t no party like a groove train party.