The Blow return with self-released new album Brand New Abyss TODAY, talk to TMT about tour with EMA and women producers web project

The Blow return with self-released new album Brand New Abyss TODAY, talk to TMT about tour with EMA and women producers web project
The Blow at Red 7

The mid-20th century writer, editor, and literary critic Edmund Wilson famously said, “No two persons ever read the same book.” Although certainly viable as a theory of literature, the same individual creative interpretation theory could be applied to any artistic endeavor. Some musical artists — like electro-pop excitement-seekers The Blow — have the knack of wringing more genuine emotionally-charged goodies out of music + words than most. Bold souls who want more will be ecstatic to hear that the band’s new self-released album is out TODAY!

Brand New Abyss is Khaela Maricich’s and Melissa Dyne’s latest dancefloor call-to-arms, and it is a more hands-on affair than previous releases — literally, because this time around, the duo have built a physical system of modular synths for their sounds rather than constructing sample-based songs. We asked the duo about the change in sound development and its adaptability to performance.

We’ve spent so much time building this rig that we can use to produce electronic music in a live setting with just the two of us, it’s taken years figure out how to create sounds from scratch and put them all together and basically to make a little home for ourselves out of frequency. When we get ourselves into a groove it feels like we are taking our sound-house around with us, setting it up on each stage we play on, leaning back and stretching out and making ourselves comfortable with the audiences in a deeper way than we’ve either ever really done before. The system is kind of a beast to carry around; it’s a fair number of cases to load in and out every night, so this deeper comfort makes it all really worth it!

As the leading Marxist/Freudian theorist Edmund Wilson once quipped, “There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.” To make sure Maricich and Dyne don’t fall into this discouraging wage bracket, get over to PledgeMusic and pick up a copy of Brand New Abyss — either as a standalone CD/DL/LP or as part of an impressive amount of charming packages. Singles have been trickling out over the past couple of months, including the NPR-premiered ear-rally “Get Up,” the Bust-premiere of “The Woman You Want Her to Be,” and the refined intensity of “Think About Me,” viewable down below.

“America’s greatest reader” Edmund Wilson once claimed, “What a gulf between the self which experiences and the self which describes experience.” Bridge this experience gulf within yourself by witnessing the striking spectacle of The Blow live. All shows from October 26 onward are with the red-hot EMA, who released her compelling Exile in the Outer Ring album last month. To hammer the point home: these upcoming shows will be deadly fun, and YES you should be going to at least one of them. Rightfully so, The Blow is pumped for the tour and playing with EMA:

We are so excited about the tour. We are calling it the ‘Power Convergence’ tour — we’ve found a kindred punk spirit in EMA, she seems equally fed up with the current B.S. and ready to address it with her special mid-western cool-stare perspective, and we are really happy to be merging forces with her. We in fact picked special local acts in every city to help us converge even more powers, and the line-up of performers is really inspiring. There are so many people out there doing such cool stuff.

Lastly, all thoughts of the dreamy Edmund Wilson aside, The Blow is never just about hype-cycle trivialities like “new albums” and “new tours.” All music fans should do themselves a huge favor and take some time to browse around Woman Producer, a site run by the act that features great vintage pics of, well, woman producers (it is the name of the site!), complete with an exhaustive list of profile links. It also contains infos on past panel discussion events. About the site, the groop affirms,

We designed it with the hope that people could get lost in the depth of information there is out there about women/trans/non-binary sound makers. Yes, we would love to do more events to bring people together around the topic of shredding apart the bored old gender expectations. It seems like we should be so far beyond having to make distinctions around gender, like women being producers really shouldn’t be any kind of revolutionary, but apparently, it’s still not seen as totally commonplace, so there’s still a lot to talk about and discover.

Alright, enough talk. It’s time to “get up” and get at all-things-Blow! Because, as serial adulterer and piss-poor drunk Edmund Wilson once said, “Oh! Who gives a fuck about Edmund Wilson!”


Brand New Abyss tracklisting:

01. Peaceful Easy Feeling
02. Dark Cold Magic
03. So There
04. The Greatest Love of All
05. The Woman You Want Her to Be
06. Get Up
07. Think About Me
08. Summer

Brand New tour dates:

09.27.17 - Richmond, VA - Strange Matter
10.03.17 - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar
10.12.17 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court
10.13.17 - Boise, ID - Neurolux
10.26.17 - Seattle, WA - Neumos *
10.27.17 - Vancouver, BC - Fox Cabaret *
10.28.17 - Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios *
10.30.17 - San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop *
10.31.17 - Los Angeles, CA - The Echo *
11.01.17 - Phoenix, AZ - Rebel Lounge *
11.03.17 - Austin, TX - Barracuda *
11.04.17 - Dallas, TX - Club Dada *
11.06.17 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade *
11.07.17 - Raleigh, NC - Pinhook *
11.08.17 - Washington, DC - DC9 *
11.10.17 - Brooklyn, NY - BK Bazaar *
11.11.17 - Philadelphia, PA - PhilaMOCA *
11.12.17 - Boston, MA - ONCE Lounge *
11.13.17 - Portsmouth, NH - 3S Art Space *
11.14.17 - Montreal, QC - Le Belmont *
11.15.17 - Toronto, ON - The Garrison *
11.17.17 - Detroit, MI - El Club *
11.18.17 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle *
11.19.17 - Minneapolis, MN - Turf Club *
11.21.17 - St. Louis, MO - Blueberry Hill Duck Room

* EMA

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