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July 15, 2008

New Mercury Rev - "Senses on Fire" & Snowflake Midnight Album Art

thumbnail icon: New Mercury Rev - "Senses on Fire" & Snowflake Midnight Album Art

By the end of September you'll get to add two Mercury Rev albums to your collection. If you're still collecting Mercury Rev albums after The Secret Migration. Just kidding. The upstate New York crew's decided to follow that 2005 effort with Snowflake Midnight, which you can purchase at a regular price, and Strange Attractor, which you can download for free. The first taste of the new Rev comes from the freebie -- Snowflake's "Senses On Fire" brims with energy and a glossy, trippy feel. Ready or not, here they come. With a rabbit.


(Via P4K)

The press release mentions Snowflake Midnight's process:

"We thought this record should sound like it was made by a different Mercury Rev." says [drummer/multi-instrumentalist Jeff] Mercel, "We began to look at the process. And then we dismantled it."
Their first step was to move their upstate New York studio -- twice -- to shake up the band's usual workflow. Mercel continues, "We came in with a blank slate every single day. Six or eight months later we had all these motifs, tone-poems, ideas, whatever you want to call them. We never went back to 'write' a song. The ideas began to organize themselves from the hundreds of hours of music we recorded, and the best parts rose to the top."
"We embraced technology to a greater extent on this album than ever before. We completely opened ourselves to the possibilities out there." Discovering the open source audio software Reaktor, the band experimented with audio effects designed by people from all over the world.

Snowflake Midnight is out 9/29 via Yep Roc. Strange Attractor, which is out for free that same day, has cat-themed cover art. Take a look at their site, where you can also sign-up to download it.

[Band photo by Vk-Red Duvivier]

Posted at 3:28 PM by brandon in
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9 Comments

Wait - I'm not at cute overload, am I?

Posted by: Chadams at 07/15/08 4:20 PM | Reply
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trippy crazy or trippy cutesy, i dig these guys.

Posted by: elevatemelater at 07/15/08 8:34 PM | Reply
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The guy in the middle of that band picture...looks like he is about to rape you.

Posted by: dennis mcdaniels at 07/15/08 9:20 PM | Reply
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not bad...much better than their more recent stuff. I'm old-I remember when they were really out there, circa-Yerself & Boces. time marches on though, I guess. Psychedelic Dad-rock, like the Flaming Lips (David Fridmann connection).

Posted by: Wallis at 07/16/08 9:44 AM | Reply
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Psychadelic Dad-rock?!? In case you didn't know, theres alot of pschadelic influences in indie rock right now. I don't think that I would classify it as just belonging to the 60's generation.

Posted by: wareagle in reply to Wallis's comment at 07/16/08 10:29 AM | Reply
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The tingling tells me it's working deep into my scalp.

Posted by: CTA at 07/16/08 9:47 AM | Reply
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that's a BUNNY not a CAT, squid brains!!!

Posted by: mattP at 07/16/08 3:13 PM | Reply
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One album has a bunny, the other a cat. Click all the way through on the last link...

Posted by: brandon profile link in reply to mattP's comment at 07/16/08 3:18 PM | Reply
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Sorry, my bad!

I'm hoping this isn't as psych-lite as Secret Migration.. ergh that just left a bland dad-flavoured taste in my mouth.

Posted by: mattP at 07/16/08 3:23 PM | Reply
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