MRG Live presents
,
Doors:
At Fox Cabaret - Vancouver
Event Info
Doors 7:00 PM Show 8:00 PM
Gift Bio:
Momentary Presence is a natural match for the new label co-founded by Oliver Ackermann of New York City noise-rock and psychedelic legends A Place to Bury Strangers and Death by Audio. Out on Dedstrange Records on Oct. 14, 2022.
The album also introduces TJ Freda as a sorcerous and versatile home-recording engineer. He can get guitars and synths to melt all over the track as he does on "Gumball Garden," he can summon the ravishing sweep of "Share the Present," and he can conjure a track as radiant as "Feather," all in the confines of his Brooklyn apartment. Momentary Presence contains recordings that seem to tease something seismic coming around the corner, like the brief but glorious instrumental "Dune;" it also contains dense, layered productions that feel complete, definitive, and impermeable, like "Pinkhouse Secret Rave." The arc-like trip from the shimmering opener "When You Feel It Come Around" to the hypnotic closer "Here And Now (Time Floats By)" feels like a genuine journey — the sort of assured forty-minute trajectory that is only realized by musicians who appreciate the full-length as a work of art.
He's got a group of likeminded collaborators who share his quest for perfect sound, harmony during times of trouble, and radical openness. Gurewitz, Campbell, Hrabovsky, and Naess understand the mission of the group, and their approach is an expression of the desire to live in the moment. Together with Freda, they've crafted a live experience that extends the spell that the album casts, and pushes the songs in wildly improvisatory directions. They've been selling out shows in Brooklyn for awhile now. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on. This message, this music — this GIFT — is for everyone.
Peel Dream Magazine Bio:
Peel Dream Magazine is the nom-de-plume of Los Angeles songwriter Joseph Stevens. Drawing on kosmische, shoegaze, baroque pop, and retro electronica, the band emerged from New York City’s vibrant DIY scene with its 2018 debut Modern Meta Physic, which Aquarium Drunkard hailed as “one of the more true inheritors of the mantle of Stereolab to emerge in some time”. Eighteen months later, the band released their more aggressive sophomore LP Agitprop Alterna, which proved to be a breakout success. Pitchfork described it as “a term paper on Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx, written to a soundtrack of Tropicália, motorik, and library music,” and NPR’s Lars Gotrich as “fuzz bliss”. Unable to tour due to quarantine, Stevens quietly relocated his project to the west coast, where he picked up work composing for ads and film. In 2022, Sophie Allison of Soccer Mommy invited the band to open for them on a US tour which included performances at the Savannah Stopover Festival as well as Iowa’s Mission Creek festival. During breaks from the road, Stevens completed a daring new record titled Pad, which was released later that year. Breaking with his previous LPs, Pad is a conceptual work about Stevens fictitiously getting kicked out of his own band (spoiler: they let him back in). Draped in midcentury bleeps and bloops, it contains a brooding, dark psychedelia reminiscent of cultishly beloved late 60s-era Beach Boys, and as Stereogum proclaimed, “portends a softer, more elegant sound.” The album broke further ground for the band, who were invited to open for Beach Fossils in San Francisco the week of its release, to do a London residency at the beginning of 2023, and then a European tour shortly thereafter. After returning from Europe, the band made their SXSW debut with showcases for Third Man Records, Levitation, Aquarium Drunkard, and more. Loud and soft, subversive and easy-listening, Peel Dream Magazine blurs the very lines it invites you to define it by. But at its core is a dedication to songcraft above all else - a breath of fresh air, no doubt.
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