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Vision Video launch video for ‘Let Go of Time’ – Out now

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:12:16 +0000

Athens, GA post-punk outfit Vision Video has launched the video for “Let Go of Time”, showcasing their “Modern Horror” album. The album was produced by Ben Allen (Erasure, Animal Collective, Washed Out, Deerhunter) and mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Frank Arkwright (The Smiths, New Order, Joy Division, Primal Scream, Blur, Mogwai).

Gannon shares, “I wrote ‘Let Go of Time’ not long after I was diagnosed with PTSD. I was watching my favorite vampire film (Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’) and I found myself feeling a lot of parallels to how the character Adam felt about the world – having to endure for so long, but always feeling less and less purpose because of this diminishing luster of things. I think that film, and ultimately this song is about finding purpose, joy and love when it is most difficult to find those things in life.”

Vision Video was formed in 2020 by Dusty Gannon (aka Goth Dad) and Emily Fredock. You can order the full album below.

Modern Horror by Vision Video

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Vision Video releases third album ‘Modern Horror’ – Out now

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:20:15 +0000

The Athens, GA-based post-punk band Vision Video has released its third album, “Modern Horror” which holds 11 tracks. The album is available now via Bandcamp and other platforms.

Produced by Ben Allen (known for his work with Erasure, Animal Collective, and Deerhunter) and mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Frank Arkwright (The Smiths, New Order, Joy Division), thematically the album explores the unsettling realities of today’s world.

The album was introduced through three singles—”Stay”, “In My Side (Modern Horror Version)”, and “Dead Gods”, the latter critiquing the violent dogma and authoritarianism that often dominate global narratives.

Fronted by Dusty Gannon and keyboardist Emily Fredock, Vision Video brings raw goth rock. Gannon, an Afghanistan war veteran and former firefighter-paramedic, channels his experiences into the themes of “Modern Horror” and is much darker than their previous works, such as “Inked in Red” (2021) and “Haunted Hours” (2022).

Gannon has openly discussed the album’s themes, saying, “I see regression happening all over the world. We’re watching the failure of systems like capitalism and religious fundamentalism, and it’s causing unnecessary hardships. This record is my way of addressing these issues and urging for change.” He continues, “Modern Horror is a reflection of the atrocities that we’re witnessing today, but it’s also a call for people to confront these horrors head-on, just as you would face a monster in a horror film.”

Modern Horror de Vision Video

Vision Video tourdates

Oct 25 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club (Southern Gothic Festival)
Nov 25 Berlin, Germany – Urban Spree
Nov 26 Hamburg, Germany – Hafenklang
Nov 28 Bochum, Germany – Die Trompete
Nov 29 Bielefeld, Germany – Movie (with the Cassandra Complex & SJÖBLOM)
Nov 30 Rotterdam, Netherlands – Soundville (with Lifeless Past)
Dec 1 Brighton, UK – The Hope & Ruin *
Dec 2 Nottingham, UK – Bodega Social
Dec 3 Liverpool, UK – Quarry *
Dec 4 Kings Heath, UK – Hare & Hounds *
Dec 6 Bristol, UK – Marble Factory ^^
Dec 7 London, UK – O2 Shepherds Bush Empire **
Dec 9 Dublin, Ireland – Opium *
Dec 10 Belfast, UK – Limelight Complex *
Dec 12 Glasgow, UK – The Garage ^^
Dec 13 Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK – Riverside 1 ^^
Dec 14 Manchester, UK – Albert Hall **

^ with The Nightmares
* with Mark Burgess (The Chameleons)
^^ with The Chameleons
** with The Chameleons and The Membranes

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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Vision Video releases new single ‘Dead Gods’ and announces European tour

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 19:56:20 +0000

Athens, Georgia-based post-punk band Vision Video has just dropped their latest single, “Dead Gods”, a critique of those who use dogma and ideology to perpetuate violence and authoritarianism. The single comes ahead of their third album, “Modern Horror”, which is set to release on October 22. The band is known for their mix of modern goth rock with post-punk elements.

Dusty Gannon, the band’s frontman, describes the track as “a defiant anthem” against rising fanaticism. Gannon, a former Afghanistan veteran and anti-war activist, draws from his personal experiences to challenge the justification of war through religious dogma.

Dead Gods by Vision Video

Vision Video’s “Modern Horror” album takes a darker and more visceral approach than their earlier releases, reflecting on the brutality and disenfranchisement present in today’s society. The album is produced by Ben Allen (Erasure, Animal Collective), and mastered at Abbey Road Studios.

The band was formed in 2020 by Dusty Gannon and Emily Fredock.

As Vision Video prepares for the release of “Modern Horror”, they have also announced a European tour starting in late November, with performances in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Ireland. The tour includes several high-profile dates alongside The Chameleons and The Membranes.

Vision Video EU tour

Nov 25: Berlin, Germany – Urban Spree
Nov 26: Hamburg, Germany – Hafenklang
Nov 28: Bochum, Germany – Die Trompete
Nov 29: Bielefeld, Germany – Movie (with The Cassandra Complex & SJÖBLOM)
Nov 30: Rotterdam, Netherlands – Soundville (with Lifeless Past)
Dec 1: Brighton, UK – The Hope & Ruin (with Mark Burgess)
Dec 2: Nottingham, UK – Bodega Social
Dec 3: Liverpool, UK – Quarry (with Mark Burgess)
Dec 4: Kings Heath, UK – Hare & Hounds (with Mark Burgess)
Dec 6: Bristol, UK – Marble Factory (with The Chameleons)
Dec 7: London, UK – O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (with The Chameleons & The Membranes)
Dec 9: Dublin, Ireland – Opium (with Mark Burgess)
Dec 10: Belfast, UK – Limelight Complex (with Mark Burgess)
Dec 12: Glasgow, UK – The Garage (with The Chameleons)
Dec 13: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK – Riverside 1 (with The Chameleons)
Dec 14: Manchester, UK – Albert Hall (with The Chameleons & The Membranes)

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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The Cure presents reissue live album ‘Paris’ in a remastered version and including bonus tracks

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:03:49 +0000

The Cure‘s live album “Paris” is being reissued by Rhino Records for its 30th anniversary. The new issue of “Paris” comes in a remastered version executed by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios.

The 30th anniversary version holds two bonus tracks (“Shake Dog Shake” and “Hot Hot Hot!!!”) and will be out on CD and 2xLP vinyl on March 22.

“Paris” was recorded during the concert The Cure gave at Le Zénith de Paris, in October 1992 during their ‘Wish’ tour. It was released in October 1993. “Paris” was released at the same time as “Show”, which was recorded in the United States. The album features more cult classics like “The Figurehead” and “One Hundred Years” than “Show”, which is generally more single-friendly.

50% of the royalties earned by the album were given to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement charities in support of their international relief work.

For more on The Cure, see Jem Tayle (Shelleyan Orphan) and Boris Williams (The Cure) form… on Side-Line.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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Watch the 15-minute documentary accompanying Pink Floyd’s 50th anniversary reissue of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 11:52:36 +0000

Pink Floyd’s 50th Anniversary of “The Dark Side of the Moon” has been commemorated with a deluxe box set on 24th March 2023. This iconic album, one of the best-selling records of all time, has sold over 50 million copies worldwide.

The new box set includes a CD and gatefold vinyl of the 2023 remastered studio album, Blu-Ray and DVD audio featuring the original 5.1 mix and remastered stereo versions, an additional Blu-ray disc of Atmos mix, and CD and LP of “The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974”. That live album was also released seperately.

A 50th Anniversary book, “Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon: 50th Anniversary” has been released by Thames & Hudson as well. The LP-sized volume, curated by photographer Jill Furmanovsky and art directed by Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey Powell, showcases rare and previously unseen photographs from the album’s tours.

The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 1 March 1973 by Harvest Records. Developed during live performances before recording began, it was conceived as a concept album that would focus on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and also deal with the mental health problems of former band member Syd Barrett, who departed the group in 1968.

In a 2013 interview with BBC’s HARDtalk, Waters discussed the departure of Syd Barrett from the band: “Syd was a very sweet guy, but he was the first casualty. The rest of us had to get on with it. We had to survive, and the only way to survive was to work.”

New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London.

15-minute documentary

The below 15-minute documentary accompanying Pink Floyd’s 50th anniversary reissue of “Dark Side Of The Moon” offers a welcome break from the ongoing drama surrounding former member Roger Waters’ upcoming re-recording of the 1973 album. Archive footage features Waters, the late Rick Wright, and other significant figures, providing a nostalgic insight into the band’s history.

Roger Waters records own version for a 2023 release

In early 2023, Waters announced that he had recorded a new version of “The Dark Side of the Moon”, set for release later in the year. This rendition features spoken-word sections and excludes guitar solos to “bring out the heart and soul of the album musically and spiritually”. In a Daily Telegraph interview, Waters maintained that although other Pink Floyd members contributed to the original album, it was ultimately his project, stating, “It’s my project and I wrote it… Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ nonsense!” He went on to claim that the other members were not capable of writing songs, had “nothing to say”, and were “not artists”.

Weird, at least Gilmour was artistically involved according to a 2013 interview by Roger Waters with The Guardian: “When we were doing Dark Side, we’d work together in the evenings, and then during the day, everyone would go away and do their own thing. I would sit in a room with a 12-string guitar and write, and Dave [Gilmour] would be in another room working on a solo.”

In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Waters again discussed the collaborative effort behind Pink Floyd’s music and then said this: “We were all involved in the writing of the music at that time, and that’s what made it so special. It was a collaborative effort, and that’s what made it great.”

But let’s wait and see what Waters will come up with.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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The Chemical Brothers release new single ‘No Reason’ today and announce tour

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 14:50:10 +0000

The Chemical Brothers have released a new single called “No Reason”. The track, featured in their recent live shows and DJ sets, is composed of a cascading melody, and a very acid riff driven instrumental line with a military brassband sounding like drum. Old school all the way.

The single is accompanied by a “Neon Marching Band” video directed by Smith and Lyall, with choreography and performance by Gecko Theatre, which was showcased during the band’s 2022 festival performances.

“No Reason” has been mastered in Dolby ATMOS by Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios, who has also worked on remastering The Beatles’ back catalog.

The single will be available as a limited edition red vinyl 12-inch, which includes a previously unreleased B-side track, “All Of A Sudden.” Pre-orders begin on March 17th, and the single will be available on April 28th, 2023.

“No Reason” is the first new music from The Chemical Brothers since their 2021 release, “The Darkness That You Fear.” They are presently working on their next album, following their 2019 release, “No Geography.”

The Chemical Brothers are scheduled to perform as headliners at various festivals around the world this year. Their live show can be experienced at:

Sat 25th Estéreo Picnic, Bogotá, Colombia
Fri 14th Coachella, Indio, USA
Sun 16th Santa Barbara Bowl, Santa Barbara, USA
Tue 18th WAMU Theater, Seattle, USA
Fri 21st Coachella, Indio, USA
Sat 20th Mallorca Live Festival, Mallorca, Spain
Fri 2nd NorthSide, Aarhus, Denmark
Fri 9th Best Kept Secret, Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands
Sat 17th Isle of Wight Festival, UK
Wed 21st Musgrave Park Cork, Ireland
Thu 29th Provinssirock Festival, Seinäjoki, Finland
Thu 6th Bilbao BBK Live, Bilbao, Spain
Sat 8th AMA Music Festival, Romano D‘Ezzelino, Italy
Fri 21th Electric Castle, Cluj, Romania
Sun 23th Lucca Summer Festival, Lucca, Italy
Fri 4th Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire, UK
Sat 12th FEST Festival, Chorzów, Poland
Fri 18th Cabaret Vert, Charleville-Mézières, France
Sat 26th Rock En Seine, Saint-Cloud, France
Sat 9th The Bay Series, Cardiff, UK

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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One for the experimental fans, Yoko Ono’s ‘Fly’ album reissued with bonus tracks and on white vinyl!

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 09:45:47 +0000

“Fly” is the second album by Yoko Ono, produced by her and John Lennon, and released in 1971. The album included notable songs such as the singles “Midsummer New York” and “Mrs. Lennon”, “Hirake” aka “Open Your Box” and “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)”, dedicated to Ono’s daughter Kyoko Cox.

The track “Airmale” was the soundtrack to Lennon’s film “Erection”, showing a building being erected in time lapsed photography, while “Fly” is the soundtrack to Ono’s film “Fly”. Below you can see the video for “Mind Holes” equally from the 1971 avant-garde album, “Fly”.

Note that this double vinyl LP (white vinyl on top) reissue has the following 4 bonus tracks: “Between the Takes”, “Will You Touch Me”, “The Path” and “Head Play (Medley: You/Airmale/Fly)” totalling 17 tracks for this reissue. You can order this rather exquisite album right here in the double vinyl version.

The album was recorded around the same time as Lennon’s “Imagine”. A small detail, Ono had to re-record her vocals on “Open Your Box”, on 4 March 1971 at Abbey Road Studios, after a managing director of EMI called the lyrics “distasteful”. The song featured a line that went “Open your trousers, open your skirt, open your legs and open your thighs”. “Trousers”, “skirt”, “legs”, and “thighs” were then changed to “houses”, “church”, “lakes”, and “eyes”. Remarkably enough Lennon and Ono didn’t complain about the change of the words, and only “wanted to get the record out”.

Another interesting details is that each edition of the US, UK and Japanese albums utilized that country’s distinctive telephone ring in the track “Telephone Piece”. You can hear the 3 versions below.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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Classic albums by The Police and Simple Minds mastered at 1/2 speed at Abbey Road Studios for very limited vinyl editions

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 22:01:47 +0000

Fresh news from The Police and Simple Minds front. A limited edition batch of The Police’s “Ghost in the Machine” and Simple Minds’ “New Gold Dream” vinyl has been mastered at half speed at Abbey Road Studios. Cut from a high-res digital transfer from the best-known analogue source in existence of the albums, the process uses custom-built equipment allowing for twice the mastering time, producing the highest quality audio ever.

Each pressing comes in deluxe packaging with an ‘obi strip’ and a certificate of authenticity from Abbey Road. “Ghost in the Machine” was originally released in October 1981 and was the fourth studio album by The Police. Released in 1982 “New Gold Dream” was the 5th album by the Caledonian combo Simple Minds.

In case you don’t know an obi strip, an obi strip is a piece of paper wrapped around the spine of Japanese CDs, DVDs, movies, or books sometimes referred to as a “spine card”.

Regarding half-speed mastering, it’s is an elaborate process whereby the source is played back at half its normal speed and the turntable on the disc cutting lathe is running at 16 2/3 R.P.M. Because both the source and the cut were running at half their ‘normal’ speeds everything plays back at the right speed when the record is played at home.

The advantages of half-speed mastering resides in the fact that a vinyl is an analogue sound carrier. Says Miles Showell (mastering engineer at Abbey Road): “Therefore the size and shape of the groove carrying the music is directly related to whatever the music is doing at any particular point. By reducing the speed by a factor of two the recording stylus has twice as long to carve the intricate groove into the master lacquer. Also, any difficult to cut high-frequency information becomes fairly easy to cut mid-range. The result is a record that is capable of extremely clean and un-forced high-frequency response as well as a detailed and solid stereo image.”

There are lower also a few disadvantages, 2 to be precise says Showell: “(…) Having to listen to music at half-speed for hour after hour can be a little difficult at least until I get to hear back the resulting cut when it all becomes worthwhile. The other dis-advantage is an inability to do any de-essing. De-essing is a form of processing the signal whereby the “sss” and “t” sounds from the vocalist are controlled in order to avoid sibilance and distortion on playback. None of the tools I would ordinarily employ on a real-time cut work at half speed as the frequencies are wrong so the offending “sss” does not trigger the limiter and everything is moving so slowly there is no acceleration as such for the de-esser to look out for. This has always been the Achilles heel of half-speed cutting until now (but) I can, by clever editing, target just the offending “sss” and leave intact the rest of the audio.”

You can find more albums mastered this way in the Abbey Road online store.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

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