Erasure, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke, have announced details of their eighteenth studio album, The Neon, and share the album’s luminous opener, Hey Now (Think I Got a Feeling).

The 10-track album is out on Mute, by Gallo Record Company for SA), on 21 August 2020, and available as pre-order exclusives on limited edition neon orange vinyl, limited edition neon green cassette and CD in a fold out orange foil blocked sleeve with fold out lyric and photography booklet, as well as on black vinyl, to download and stream.

The Neon is a place that lives in the imagination, that we – you and me – put in the real world. It could be a night club, a shop, a city, a cafe, a country, a bedroom, a restaurant, any place at all. It’s a place of possibility in warm, glowing light and this is music that takes you there.

Written and produced by Erasure, the album’s initial sessions saw Vince and Andy reunite to work on the follow up to 2017’s World Be Gone with a fresh optimism and energy, in part born from their own recent personal projects.

The album’s vocals were recorded in Atlanta, Georgia, with Vince joining Andy at the studio sessions, and the mixing was done by the band in London earlier this year. Photographs were shot at that time in the unique environs of Gods Own Junkyard, a gallery housing a huge collection of vintage neon.

The Neon offers us warmth and a brilliant brightness in our times. It connects us to our pasts and our futures as it glistens with hope. It creates beautiful places where our imaginations can roam, bringing us together, twinkling and beaming. The Neon puts you and me in a celebratory world, now and forever, illuminated and alive.

Tracks on The Neon include;

1. Hey Now (Think I Got a Feeling)
2. Nerves of Steel
3. Fallen Angel
4. No Point in Tripping
5. Shot A Satellite
6. Tower of Love
7. Diamond Lies
8. New Horizons
9. Careful What I Try to Do
10. Kid You’re Not Alone

Pre-order: Pre-orders via the band’s shop will include priority access to future tour dates.

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Two Door Cinema Club have unveiled the Science Fiction inspired video for Satellite, the second single taken from their forthcoming fourth studio album False Alarm, out 14th June via Prolifica Inc [PIAS] / Gallo Record Company.

The splendidly kitsch space-age video, directed by Eion Glaister, finds the three piece beamed to out of space, with frontman Alex Trimble playing the beleaguered captain of the galaxy’s grooviest battleship. It’s a gloriously tongue-in-cheek adventure, which references everything from Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica and is the perfect accompaniment to ‘Satellite‘s retro Kraut-pop influences and themes of futuristic dread.

The band’s first album to be released in full collaboration with Prolifica Inc, False Alarm finds the three piece gloriously unshackled and creatively at the peak of their game. Across its ten tracks False Alarm wryly scans and satirises the social and environmental woes of 2019 through the prism of wonderfully off-kilter pop, simultaneously borrowing from and warping elements of future pop, disco, rock, funk and soul.

Recorded in sessions between London and LA with producer Jacknife Lee it’s an LP that takes the familiar and twists it, to startling and stimulating effect. It all makes for a wide-eyed, culture-encompassing leap forward for the band, a record liable to break, ruin and remould pop in 2019.

Having put the icing on their comeback last summer with a landmark headline performance in front of 35,000 people at London’s Community Festival, Two Door Cinema Club are stepping back onto the festival circuit this year, with performances lined up at Radio 1’s Big Weekend and Glastonbury, before they head out on a headline UK tour in the autumn, with a landmark show at London’s O2 Arena on October 11th.

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Joburg-based Blues Rock band, Gunshot Blue, have announced the release of their debut full-length album Until The Last Prayer, due on January 31st.  The album is currently available on pre-order.

Their critically acclaimed debut EP 12 396km was released in November 2014 and just over 4 years later, fans will be excited to get their hands on the full-length debut album Until The Last Prayer – due for release on January 31st through Gallo Record Company.

Frontman Frans Borman comments that the much-anticipated debut album is made up of 10 powerful tracks, and New Horison is the first single released to radio. New Horison is about the proverbial break of day.  The dark night of the soul is over.  It’s the start of something fresh.  A new path.  Leaving the selfish and destructive ways behind.  It’s also about returning to family and home.  Remembering and returning to those who love you.

And what can fans expect from the album? Borman explains their EP 12 396km was like the landscape, mythology and characters of the bushveld in the Northwest and Limpopo provinces; Until The Last Prayer is like the mountains, valleys, mist, rivers and lakes of Mpumalanga and Swaziland.

Formed in Johannesburg in 2014 by frontman Frans Borman and guitarist Pepi Dimevski, Gunshot Blue was forged on the road, playing almost every bar, restaurant, hotel, museum, backpackers, lounge, fund raiser, birthday party, park, holiday resort, barber shop, biker rally, music festival and even a prison.

Gunshot Blue is not just a spirited live performance. Gunshot Blue is a rousing psychoactive baptism.

Gunshot Blue’s sound is the culmination of thousands of hours of dedication to craft, a fermentation of many different, yet strangely, all too familiar stories, distilled, steeped and soaked in folklore and tradition.  A mysterious and hypnotic blend of the gentle, psychedelic infused Blues that occasionally meets the explosive high energy electricity of Rock and Roll, head on.

With a debut album on the way, Gunshot Blue are ready to dominate 2019.  Looking forward to the diversity of shows that 2019 will provide, they’ll be playing on the MSC Blues Cruise going to the Portuguese Islands, alongside some top talent and they might be going to Mozambique.

Titling their debut album Until The Last Prayer, Borman explains how the title and theme came about.  One evening, while he and Pepi had a catch up over a glass of whiskey, they were talking about orthodox philosophy – both of them are quite intrigued by monks and elders, who dedicate and sanctify their lives to a monastic lifestyle, living in remote places like caves or islands… or the desert.  They spoke about this legend where, in the story, God spared/saved the world of destruction, thanks to one elder/monk, who kept on praying.

In other words, if there are no more prayers – whatever prayer may be for you – maybe then we won’t have a world like we know it anymore, Borman says.  He continues saying that in a sense, the album, with all its different stories, essentially is about prayer. Prayer – not in a religious sense but rather prayer, in an energetic, spiritual, quantum sense; whether you are burning incense, whether you are lighting a candle or whether you are living a moral, pure and sacred life.  Whether you are setting an intention. Whether you are meditating. Whether you give away and look after others.

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The Parlotones have announced their long-awaited new album set for release in July 2018 through Gallo Record Company.

The bands 20^th anniversary year will see a brand new studio album titled China’ released both locally and internationally. Recorded over a four month period at High Seas Studios in Johannesburg, the creative process commenced with lead singer Kahn spending a period of time in England with a selection of renowned songwriters to establish the path the album would take.

Working with the likes of two time Ivor Novello Award winner and Grammy nominated songwriter Sacha Skarbek, Richard Archer, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly musician Sam Duckworth and a selection of other songwriters the foundation of the album was born.

The album offers 25 tracks (Double CD release) that is sure to appeal to the bands fans around the world as well as to open them up to a whole new audience with their ever-evolving sound, yet still maintaining that signature Parlotones sound.

2018 will also see The Parlotones celebrating their 20th Anniversary as a band and will take on a string of headline concerts in their native South Africa before making their way to mainland Europe, United Kingdom and Dubai on a 25 date tour through Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, England, Scotland and concluding the tour in Dubai.

The Parlotones may have been together for a lifetime, but their journey has only just begun…

South African fans can see The Parlotones live on the following dates:

13 July – Vrystaat Kunstefees, Sand du Plessis Theatre, Bloemfontein

14 July – Verkykerskop

20 July – Teatro, Montecasino, Johannesburg

4 August – Harties Unite Rock Fest – Broederstrrom

8 August – Barnyard Vereeniging

11 August – Queensburgh Rugby Club (Werda School)

12 August – Caversham outdoor sessions with Gangs of Ballet

1 September – 947 Joburg Day

Tickets available from https://www.wearetheparlotones.com/shows

China is available now on pre-order from http://smarturl.it/TheParlotones_China.

The pre-order is also accompanied with the release of the first single from the album, entitled ‘Can You Feel It?’ which is available to download or stream from http://smarturl.it/TheParlotones_CYFI.

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