bdrmm reveal new single "Pulling Stitches" from upcoming album "I Don't Know" out on 30 June
bdrmm (photo credit: Katherine Mackenzie)
Selected support for debut album "Bedroom"
“A modern day shoegaze classic” – NME *****
“There is something about the blend of sweet melody, hypnotic rhythm and noise on bdrmm’s debut that gets under your skin” – The Times
“Manna for fans of inventive happy-sad ’80s guitar pop” – Mojo
“Takes in krautrock, shoegaze and lo-fi indie-pop but always with a soft, warm edge” – Uncut
“Much more than a genre piece, it’s a vital delve into the power of our communal isolation” – Clash
“You can make out the ghostly shapes of bands from 30 years ago in the thick, hazy guitars, chiming melodies and washed-out vocals... but bdrmm bring it to life with an intensity of focus that goes beyond nostalgia” – Financial Times
“Possesses the same sort of atmospheric value as watching dusk mellow into dawn in seamless fast forward... a stunning and candid work induced by the very traumas and anxieties of living” – So Young
“Assured and brilliant” – The Line Of Best Fit
“One of the best British guitar debuts of 2020” – Norman Records
Watch video for "Pulling Stitches" here | stream here
Following the release of 2020's widely-acclaimed debut LP "Bedroom", and a clutch of hotly-received singles that have landed in the interim, February saw the Hull based shoegaze quartet bdrmm return with the news that they had signed to Mogwai's Rock Action and that the revered independent label would release an anticipated second album "I Don't Know" on June 30th.
Like their debut, the album has been recorded with long-time band collaborator Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bo Ningen) at The Nave Studios in Leeds.
Pre-Order here
Following the album's first release, "It's Just A Bit Of Blood", that saw significant press support internationally before making the playlist at BBC 6 Music in the Spring, and its trippy, densely rhythmic follow-up track "Be Careful", the band return today with "Pulling Stitches", a song that explores controlled dynamics with an almost cinematic feel to its widescreen expanse. The band's Ryan Smith saying the following about the third single:
"I remember the exact day that we wrote this track. We were in the practise room, and I just started playing the first two chords, incorporating the bend as if I was literally winking at Kevin Shields, and Conor just looked at me like, “This is the one”. I think we finished the track on that day. It’s amazing when those moments happen, and it reminds you of why you do this. It’s so obviously the shoegaze adoration within us."
The band have announced plans for a string of instore performances around the album, with tickets available by pre-ordering the album through the individual stores.
The band have also announced a new run of European live dates for October, which will come ahead of a series of UK headline dates in November (including their biggest London headliner yet at Scala).
May
Saturday & Sunday 19th-20th May - Sarria, Spain - Esmorga Fest
June
Saturday 10th - Wakefield - Long Division Festival
Wednesday 28th - Hull - Adelphi
Thursday 29th - Hull - Adelphi
Friday 30th - Leeds - Jumbo Records
July
Saturday 1st - London - Rough Trade East (SOLD OUT)
Sunday 2nd - Brighton - Resident Records
Monday 3rd - Bristol - Rough Trade
Tuesday 4th - Nottingham - Rough Trade
Wednesday 5th - Monorail - Glasgow
August
Wednesday 23rd - Genoa, Italy - Mojotic Festival
September
Saturday 2nd - Manchester - Manchester Psych Fest
Sunday 3rd Edinburgh - Edinburgh Psych Fest
October
Tuesday 17th - Belgium, Bruges - Cactus Club
Wednesday 18th - Tourcoing, France - Le Grand Mix
Thursday 19th - Belgium, Antwerp - Trix Bar
Friday 20th - Netherlands, Rotterdam - Left of the Dial
Saturday 21st - Netherlands, Rotterdam - Left of the Dial
Monday 23rd - Germany, Hamburg - Molotow
Tuesday 24th - Denmark, Copenhagen - Loppen
Wednesday 25th - Sweden, Stockholm - Hus 7
Thursday 26th - Sweden, Malmo - Plan B
Sunday 28th - Germany, Dresden - Kleinvieh Klub
Tuesday 30th - Germany, Berlin - Privatclub
Wednesday 31st - Germany, Cologne - Helios37
November
Thursday 1st - Milan, Italy - Arci Bellezza
Friday 2nd - Bologna, Italy - Covo Club
Saturday 3rd - France, Paris - Point Ephemere
Sunday 4th - Netherlands, Amsterdam - Paradiso
Monday 5th - Netherlands, Nijmegen - Merleyn
Friday 12th - Glasgow - The Classic Grand
Monday 13th - Birmingham - The Hare and Hounds
Tuesday 14th - Salford - The White Hotel (SOLD OUT)
Wednesday 15th - Nottingham - Bodega
Thursday 16th - Leeds - Stylus
Saturday 18th - Cardiff - Clwb Ifor Bach
Sunday 19th - Bristol - Thekla
Monday 20th - London - Scala
Wednesday 22nd - Cambridge - Mash
Thursday 23rd - Bedford - Esquires
Friday 24th - Brighton - Patterns
Sunday 26th - Dublin - The Button Factory
Tickets are on sale now via bdrmm.co.uk
More information on bdrmm:
While the world became socially distanced in 2020, Hull’s post-shoegaze, dream pop, heavy guitar effects quartet bdrmm made the kind of impact with their debut album any young band would dream about. Released on the small Sonic Cathedral label in July that year, Bedroom was hailed as “a heady, forward-thinking shoe gaze distillation” by Clash magazine. Mojo said that the band tread the “queasy tightrope of prime Cure, Ride etc. with real dexterity.” The Guardian proclaimed “one of the underground hits of lockdown,”, while NME awarded the album five solid stars and called Bedroom nothing less than “a modern day shoe gaze classic.”
The stunning debut was championed by the likes of Huw Stephens, Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq and John Kennedy, entered the Official UK chart three times, ended up in Rough Trade’s Top 10 albums of 2020 and turbo-boosted the band’s Spotify following, which now reaches just short of 300,000 listeners each month.
Three years on, the band’s new album I Don’t Know takes the adventure somewhere else. It’s contemporary shoegaze in a way but much, much more. Again recorded at The Nave studio in Leeds with producer Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bo Ningen), the band’s trademark effects-laden guitars and motorik Neu! grooves have now been augmented by piano, strings, electronica, sampling and even occasional dance beats. Fragile ambient pieces line up against pulverising guitar chords, sometimes within the same song. There are ambient washes and delicate piano pieces, while influences or reference points veer from Radiohead to My Bloody Valentine to the Cure to Brian Eno - perhaps - the minimalist classical of the likes of Erik Satie. Whatever has produced it, it’s a bigger-sounding, more tuneful, really rather fantastic second statement by four young men who are rightly sure about what they’re doing and loving every minute of it.
“We’re still coming from the same place, but the influences have got much broader,” confirms singer-guitarist Ryan Smith. His younger brother Jordan (bass, now also keyboards) has been checking out Steve Reich and Boards Of Canada and says, “A lot of it is just us gaining confidence, and also not wanting to retread old ground. We’d made the guitar record. So we were thinking, ‘What else can we do?’”
Musically they experimented with everything from “pure atmospherics” to eight-minute songs but lyrically, it was more a case of expanding and developing what was already there. On Bedroom, Ryan Smith was writing mainly from a personal perspective - about relationship break-ups, substance abuse and mental health, issues anyone can relate to especially after three years of pandemic, war and economic crisis. This time, the songs still come from a personal place but are more wide-ranging and more universal.
“Everything’s still probably based on things that have happened to me,” Ryan explains, “but I’m writing more ambiguously, so that it can be understood by others in whatever situation they’re going through. I always think the first record feels like one person’s relationship, whereas this is so much broader, and can be interpreted in different ways.”
It's also the product of different environments, with songs written everywhere from at home in Hull to driving through the Alps, as they have become a touring band. While the album was mostly recorded at The Nave, it benefitted from a week at a farm in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, a “retreat” which the producer’s friends turned into a recording studio.
“It felt like going to a kids’ club in summer,” grins Jordan. “We all had different rooms. I was writing upstairs. Conor was in another room behind the drum set. We were all staying there so we’d spend the night together drinking or whatever and then the whole day making music.”
I Don’t Know will be the group’s first release for Mogwai’s label, Rock Action, a partnership which came about when the two bands toured together. “We were really drunk one night and Stuart (Braithwaite) said ‘I’d love to sign you’,” Jordan chuckles. “It was like a lot of flirting, but it felt like one of those things that was just said in a drunken conversation. Then he got in contact sober… and we were like, ‘This is actually gonna happen.’”
There was another larger label interested as well, and who were equally upfront about their plans for the band. “They went ‘We’re going to get brand new producers to make everything sound amazing and we’ll get a whole new team to do the artwork’, Jordan reveals. “I just felt myself getting more and more angry. Like, I’ve always done the artwork and Alex always does our production. He’s recorded every single thing we’ve ever done and there’s a real relationship between band and producer. I don’t see why we’d want to change all that.” As the bassist gently points out, it’s worked for them so far.
Although in 2020 bdrmm felt like an overnight sensation, it’s seven years since their inception and in some ways the band started much further back, in childhood, when the Smiths’ father introduced them to different types of music. “He played us so much music when we were young,” smiles Ryan. “It started with Radiohead, as if often does, but then it just branched off: atmospherics, Brian Eno’s ambient series, shoegaze and electronic music.” Then Yuck’s fuzzy self-titled 2011 debut was another big reference point. “We’d invite mates over and play it really loud.”
With other influences stretching from Deerhunter to DIIV to Warp to 4AD to ambient jazz soundtracks, both brothers taught themselves to play. “The only reason I picked up a guitar was because Ryan was in a band called the Tennents at that point, who I thought were amazing,” Jordan remembers. “But for some reason I wanted a bass, not a guitar.” Six years older than Jordan and now 28, Ryan never thought he’d be in a band with his younger brother, but this came about after he recorded an EP on his phone using GarageBand and uploaded it to BBC Introducing, typing the name bdrmm down at the last moment. To his great surprise, it didn’t get played on the Yorkshire and Humberside BBC Introducing show but on national Radio One. “It was unbelievable, and that started the band.”
Soon afterwards, Jordan got a text from his brother asking “‘Do you fancy trying playing bass for this new thing?’ I’d never been in a band before.” Initially a five-piece, the line-up has cemented around Ryan, Jordan, Joe Vickers (guitar) and Conor Murray (drums) and Jordan says he couldn’t think of three people he’d rather share their experiences with. The band have gigged and gigged and gigged, their live trajectory taking them from a debut at Hull’s Adelphi via support slots with Her’s, Viagra Boys and Fat White Family to pinch yourself moments such as appearing with ride at the Roundhouse or touring the UK and Europe with Mogwai, including an unforgettable appearance with the Glaswegians at London’s 10,400-capacity Alexandra Palace. “From Hull Adelphi to Alexandra Palace,” smiles Ryan. “I still can’t believe that happened.”
Similarly, when Bedroom was released, Ryan didn’t really expect anything to happen. “But then the reviews started to appear and it felt like there was another one every week.” Jordan was at home during lockdown when he saw a Tweet about the five star NME review. “And I was sat there in my underpants, smoking a joint with the drummer. Nothing had changed, which was brilliant, in a sense. We just feel lucky that other people seem to like our music as much as we do.”
They’ve brought this burgeoning confidence to I Don’t Know. It’s more of a group effort than the debut, the new album’s eight songs reflecting experiences, musical maturity and a growing ability to turn the personal into the universal. Dreamily busy opener Alps’ combines ambient washes, busy dance beats and blissful, beautifully hazy lyrics. The song’s sense of movement and travelogue reflects its birthplace - it was written in a van as the band drove through the Alps listening to “Thom Yorke’s electronic stuff”.
The bass-driven, slightly trip-hop grooved, gently anthemic Be Careful is an instruction to the listener to do exactly that. Ryan explains: “I struggled with alcohol during lockdown and it’s a song about realising how we can all act when we’re not in our right minds. You know, it can unleash stuff and it’s not always nice. So ‘be careful of yourself’!”
Heavy guitars and the band’s love of Radiohead and Ride power the mysterious It’s Just A Bit Of Blood, which darkly asks someone “Where do you get off?” before the krautrock-pop We Fall Apart partly captures what Ryan describes as “how people are feeling”. This may refer to someone experiencing relationship breakup or a wider populace facing wider threats of a changing world impacted by climate and economic crisis, but Ryan has been careful to be more ambitious than “I’m sad, blah blah. Blah.” For Jordan, this particular song - with its sublime narrated coda - is also “about the times over the years where it’s been hard to continue being a band, and where it would have been easier to bow out. But we didn’t. For me, the songs all have a multitude of meanings.”
The listener can put their own interpretation on the beautifully pensive ambient instrumental Advertisement One, and there’s an emerging pop nous to the hazily tuneful Pulling Stitches. Hidden Cinema is one of the most hauntingly vulnerable bdrmm songs to date, a raw and honest admission of personal imperfections and even failures. Musically, surely the most ambitious thing the band have done to date is majestic closer A Final Movement, which at an epic eight minutes and eight seconds might be one for the numerologists to ponder. Musically it opens like a flower from a serene synthesiser opening to a widescreen, cinematic-type grandeur, teased along the way with Chameleons-type guitar shapes.
Lyrically, it expands something they first explored on Bedroom’s sublime song A Reason To Celebrate - a theme Jordan describes as “accepting the beauty of something not working out”. Indeed, the song began life around that first album as a slow core guitar song titled Duster, but has since developed enormously. “We’re massive fans of Oneohtrix Point Never,” explains the bassist. “He had a song called Chrome Country with this amazing opening chord. We just wanted to create that kind of beautiful synthesis and threw everything into it. It’s the first time I’ve written strings for anything, so why not do it on an eight minute song?” Indeed, why not?
“We’ve always followed our instincts and done what felt right,” smiles Ryan. “Surely, if you’re in a band, that’s the most important thing you should do.”
bdrmm
I Don't Know
Out June 30th on Rock Action
Pre-Order
1. Alps
2. Be Careful
3. It's Just A Bit Of Blood
4. We Fall Apart
5. Advertisement One
6. Hidden Cinema
7. Pulling Stitches
8. A Final Movement
bdrmm are:
Ryan Smith (guitar, vocals)
Jordan Smith (bass, synth and vocals)
Conor Murray (drums)
Joe Vickers (guitar)
