|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
HOS 879LP
|
Limited repress now available! 12 years after Hospital Productions released the first Raspberry Bulbs album, the band returns to the label with their most focused offering to date. Gone are the interludes found on their last two albums. This time RB has distilled all their strengths into 11 concise songs. Listeners may be tempted to mention "noise rock" or "post punk" in describing the sound, but RB thinks outside the limits of any genre, and stands in contrast to those whose approach amounts to failed exercises in style. The band spent two years boiling each song down to its essence, while sacrificing none of the power and dynamics found on previous records. Somehow the results are both more metallic and more melodic. The vocals, in particular, are fittingly more venomous this time, with their vitriol aimed at the current narrow-minded, oppressive "underground" landscape. Prepare yourself. Recorded among the ruins of the Belvedere Inn, Stamford New York, in 2023. Digital download code included.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
BLACKEST 034LP
|
2015 repress. Raspberry Bulbs is the invention of visual artist and musician Marco del Rio, who, under the guise of He Who Crushes Teeth, co-founded Bone Awl -- one of the most distinguished black metal projects ever to come out of the U.S. Raspberry Bulbs' debut album, Nature Tries Again, emerged in 2011. Hitherto a solo endeavor, RB expanded to a five-piece in the wake of Nature's release, and sought to make a definitive break from black metal's musical signifiers, if not its underlying themes of alienation and abjection -- a path of self-discovery that culminated in the bruised, dynamic visions of their sophomore LP, Deformed Worship (BLACKEST 018LP). Privacy arrives barely a year after its predecessor, but it's a markedly more developed and far-reaching album. Songs of excoriating intensity once again form the basis of the work -- the no-frills 4-track recording capturing all the violence and nuance of del Rio's vocals, of the dual guitar rapport, and the machine-gun rhythm section -- but this time they're interspersed with eerie electronic miniatures, instrumental pieces that suggest unseen worlds, malign energies, forces beyond our comprehension and control. This aura of the uncanny is no accident. Though it's practically impossible to describe Raspberry Bulbs' music without mentioning punk or metal, the band's most important influences are literary: in particular Lovecraft, Machen, Chambers' et al. Includes mp3 download.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
BLACKEST 018LP
|
The second album by New York's Raspberry Bulbs. Since their debut LP Nature Tries Again (Hospital Productions, 2011) RB has grown from the solo project of M. del Rio (HWCT from Bone Awl) into a five-piece of extraordinary force and focus. The first studio version of Deformed Worship was scrapped, and its songs re-recorded by the band on cassette 8-track in November 2012, before being mixed and mastered by Kris Lapke (Alberich). Stomping, vicious and unrelenting. Nine songs. Thirty minutes. Raspberry Bulbs defies the constraints of classification but is often mistakenly labeled as a black metal band. It is not a black metal band.
|