Autre Monde announce new album
Album release: 28th February
Label: Strange Brew
More info: Autre Monde’s Facebook page
Today, Autre Monde have released new single 'Brain Upon Your Pillow'. The track premiered at FLOOD earlier in the week, who said "paranoia reigns on Autre Monde's 'Brain Upon Your Pillow'" and admired "the menacing groove and sinister synths".
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"THE IMAGINARY MUSEUM":
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On the creation of the track, songwriter and bassist Padraig Cooney explains:
"I wrote 'Brain Upon Your Pillow' as a kind of Latin-y folk ballad, all finger picked guitar. It was written in the midst of Autre Monde really finding its feet, understanding what we were as a band, and it was just natural that it would become this groove thing with a hint of desperation and drama. That Grace Jones Pull Up to the Bumper beat, we'd be happy to play it for hours, so the song stretches out on it a bit before taking its other turns.
It's a paranoid song, it's about not sleeping and the threats that torment the character at night. I always picture them as some kind of huckster made good for whom the con is over. It's Uncut Gems!"
'Brain Upon Your Pillow' is the third single taken from "The Imaginary Museum", the upcoming debut album by Dublin’s Autre Monde, to be released Feb 28th via Strange Brew Records (Junior Brother, Squarehead, Daithi). Following 2019’s acclaimed one-two of 'Fever in May' (“impossible to resist” - Red Bull Best Irish Songs of 2019) and 'On the Record' (“a bright delight of a song” - Nialler9 Best Irish Songs of 2019), 'Brain Upon Your Pillow' imposes a menacing and paranoid groove, as dark as anything in the band’s early catalogue but leavened by agreeable harmonies throughout and dramatic synth figures to close.
Autre Monde emerged from the ashes of the Popical Island collective as its headquarters fell victim to the city’s relentless purge of cultural spaces in 2017. Indeed, the first Autre Monde rehearsal was on the last day of the Pop Inn’s existence as a venue/rehearsal/recording space on Little Britain Street. They quickly gained attention for their early singles and stirring live performances, with The Thin Air insisting they were “one of the very best bands in the country”. The Irish Times noted that Autre Monde were “mining Television, ESG, Suicide and the The Slits”, and that’s about right. A murky, exploratory self-titled EP followed (with 8-minute Can via Pentangle-channelling highlight 'Your Name' still a favourite in live sets) before the band set out to make "The Imaginary Museum" in summer 2018. They signed to Strange Brew in 2019 in time to release the first fruits of those sessions. The first single from The Imaginary Museum, Fever in May, was used in an Audi ad in late 2019. They have been invited to play at the 2020 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
Autre Monde are Paddy Hanna (vocals), Padraig Cooney (bass, synth, vocals), Mark Chester (guitar) and Eoghan O’Brien (drums, synth, backing vocals). Three of them are from Dublin and Mark is from Cumbria. They met through their involvement together in a network of bands that at one stage or another were central to the Popical Island collective (Skelocrats, Grand Pocket Orchestra, Ginnels, No Monster Club).
More on "The Imaginary Museum":
"The Imaginary Museum" is the debut album by Dublin’s Autre Monde. Released through Strange Brew Records (Junior Brother, Squarehead, Daithi), the long-player follows a run of singles and an EP stretching back to 2017. Put together over several sessions with Girl Band's Daniel Fox as producer, the album's 9 songs mark a definitive statement from a band who have evolved their earlier interpretations of post-punk/art-pop to arrive at a richer, more expressive moment, often taking folk-ish melodies and structures as a launchpad.
Touchpoints include Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music, Harmonia, Fairport Convention circa ‘Liege & Leaf’, Grace Jones, the Human League, Alex Cameron - and most especially the organising principle to make a record “by a band who were playing esoteric post-punk in 1979 but who are now transplanted to 1986 where a hit is demanded”. It is a darkly tuneful record, dotted with moments of outright pop - see recent single 'On the Record' with its exuberant sax break, for example, or the pulsating, mutating 'Fever in May'.
Elsewhere, the record stretches out confidently: luxuriating in baths of vintage synthesizers on 'The Operator', descending into something wild and uncertain in the final minutes of 'Brain Upon Your Pillow', mixing the pastoral with the robotic on 'Balls of Your Suit' and 'Three Mandolins'. 'Truly Glowing' is a euphoric finale.
The album title is taken from a line in Fredric Jameson’s ‘Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Captialism’ where he writes: “in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum”.
Autre Monde
"The Imaginary Museum"
Out February 28th
On Strange Brew Records
1. Lesser Than You
2. On The Record
3. Brain Upon Your Pillow
4. Balls Of Your Suit
5. Three Mandolins
6. Fever In May
7. Saturday
8. The Operator
9. Truly Glowing
Download artwork + press shots HERE
Find Autre Monde online: Strange Brew | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify
See Autre Monde live:
March 19th - SXSW, The Velveeta Room (presented by Music From Ireland)