Grails – the experimental rock institution who have cultivated a quarter-century career out of crate-plunging cultural curiosities – returns a mere two years after the lauded Anches En Maat with their most personal and emotionally resonant album to date. While the band still revel in rearranging bizarre and obscure sources into something often revelatory and surreal, Miracle Music does so with an ascendant melodic power that feels hallowed.
Support: Expensive $hit, aka Paul Quattrone, 1/2 of Osees’ drum duo.
Grails
The Miracle Music lineup includes cofounders Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne) and Alex Hall (Lilacs & Champagne), alongside returning members, AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Jesse Bates, and Ilyas Ahmed. Produced by Amos, Miracle Music reunites the group with recording engineer Jason Powers and his Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon, where the earliest Grails records were made more than two decades ago. Replete with acoustic and electric guitars, synths, woodwinds, brass, samples, percussion – and featuring horn arrangements by Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M. Ward) – Miracle Music unveils an exquisite new horizon for Grails.
Creatively tireless as ever, Grails balance the boundary-pushing claustrophobia of early Industrial music with the airy melodies of Classical compositions to craft the heavy mood that is Miracle Music. In a catalog defined by mercurial departures, this is Grails’most sentimental and high-minded trip yet.
- Bandcamp
- Label - Temporary Residence
- Grails - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) - YouTube
Expensive $hit
Expensive $hit (aka Paul Quattrone, 1/2 of Osees’ drum duo) incorporates vintage electronic drum pads, samplers, and an array of distortion & delay pedals mixed with acoustic drums to create a rhythm/noise hybrid worthy of a generator-powered sonidero party in a Mexican parking lot. Echoes of afrobeat, krautrock, dub and harsh noise abound.
* Ermäßigter Eintritt an der Abendkasse für Schüler*innen, Student*innen, Sozialhilfeempfänger*innen.
* Reduced admission at the box office for students and welfare recipients.
