The German female singer/songwriter Soap & Skin (Incubate 2009) is finally going to release a new album! It’s called ‘Narrow‘ and it has the weirdest site we’ve seen this year (apart from Space Ghetto ofcourse (NSFW)). And if that news didn’t make our day already, she released a new song to promote the album!
Although you should be very happy to finally here some new material by Soap & Skin, this song (‘Wonder’) isn’t going to brighten up your depressed grey office Thursday morning. But what can we say? We love to revel in our own misery (we booked Malcolm Middleton for Christ sake). But apart from the depressing mood, the song is gorgeous. Listen to the song here:

 
Soap&Skin – Wonder by PIAS Entertainment
You can pre-order ‘Narrow’  here.

One more short post. Because we really want you to here this. Belgium’s grittiest band The Hickey Underworld (we really dig that site) is back with a new track from their upcoming album ‘Whistling’. It’s fucking great. This is for the rockers among you.

Jacob Kirkegaard performed his 4 Rooms with ns16 during the ZXZW festival in 2007. His performance was recorded during the festival, and we have the recordings online for you to listen! It’s divided in two parts, with little over 25 minutes of play time. We hope you enjoy it!

‘It deals with a sonic experience of time, absence, and change – in an area haunted by an invisible and inaudible danger, amidst the slowly decaying remains of human civilization.’

4 Rooms explores the phenomenon of radiation using the medium of sound. It’s a musical piece that wants to capture the sound of four abandoned spaces inside the Zone of Exclusion in Chernobyl. Kirkegaard deliberately picked four deserted rooms that were once an active meeting point for people. An audiotorium, a gymnasium, a church in the village of Krasno and a swimming pool in Pripyat. He tried to capture the decay and invisible radioactivity in sound and video. He recorded the sound of empty rooms, replayed that recording in the same room and recorded it again. After several rerecordings, each room produced a different drone.

Jacob Kirkegaard – Part I 

Jacob Kirkegaard – Part I (Live in Tilburg 2007) by incubate

Jacob Kirkegaard – Part II

Jacob Kirkegaard – Part II (Live in Tilburg 2007) by incubate

Belgium has a lot of great hardcore bands. Go figure: Daggers, Oathbreaker, Your Highness… But on the forefront of the Belgian hardcore scene is Rise & Fall, who gained followers all over the world. They just released a new track yesterday from their forthcoming album ‘Faith‘, due out in early 2012. It’s called ‘Deceiver‘ and it’s one motherfucker of a hardcore track.

You can buy the 7″ from the band that performed on Incubate in 2005 and 2006, from Deathwish. It includes a cover of Belgian hardcore legends Congress.

RISE AND FALL “Deceiver” by deathwishinc

Clocking in just under 2 minutes, it’s pure fucking mayhem all the way through. Their hardcorepunk is still intact, but it sounds like they are rock ‘n rolling things up á la Cancer Bats. Anyway, it’s awesome. Listen to it. And buy their EP. Now.

He already  released records about the working of the brain and the ballroom scene in The Shining, now his release is accompanied by a quote of Charles Baudelaire.

“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the
sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and
forgetting this nightmare : pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. 
Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”

His new record is called ‘Eager To Tear Apart The Stars‘. It’s filled with soothing, but dark ambient soundscapes. You can find it on bandcamp, and buy the record from there.

Washington DC-based Dutch DJ Martyn has a new video out. It’s the promo to his highly anticipated sophomore album ‘Ghost People‘, ready to be released by Brainfeeder in a week. The track is called ‘Viper’, and the clip is a psychedelic, futuristic animation by Konx-Om-Pax (ZXZW 2007). Check it out.

Martyn – Viper (Brainfeeder) from Konx-om-Pax on Vimeo.

During ZXZW 2007 we gave away this awesome sampler, featuring tracks by the likes of Dyse, Drumcorps, Cutting Pink With Knives, The Black Atlantic and many more! We found it laying around the office and thought, why not put it up our Soundcloud? So let it be written, so let it be done! You can now stream this compilation from our Soundcloud page (and check out the other goods as well!) or directly below here. Enjoy!

After we informed you about the remix that Ghosts on Tape did for Rainbow Arabia yesterday, we’ve stumbled across another one! This time around it’s Pantha Du Prince (ZXZW 2007) who remixed “Raw Spectacle” by Miracle Fortress (who is set to perform at this year’s Incubate festival). Check out the track below and download it via this link.

(via XLR8R)

Taken from this awesome vimeo channel from Hate5six where you can also find full sets by the likes of Unbroken, Trash Talk (ZXZW 2008), Burning Love, Title Fight, Touche Amore and many more.

You can check out Converge performing live next month on June 16th together with Rise and Fall (ZXZW 2006) and Oathbraker. More information here.

… We did invite them at ZXZW 2008 though, and it was awesome! Not sure if an instore of Trash Talk is such a good idea if you want to keep your store in shape, but it looks pretty banging though!

Unfortunately the Israelian garage rockers Monotonix (ZXZW 2007) have broken up but had fans recording footage for the video of ‘Before I Pass Away’ on their farewell tour. An iPhone and camera in the crowd got destroyed during the show and according to them, it was the most violent and chaotic show they ever played.

One of the most heavyweight hardcore acts at the moment, Pulling Teeth (ZXZW 2008) have just released a brand new album called Funerary. You can already preview the whole new banger up on Brooklyn Vegan! Sorry, no embedding allowed! Head over here to listen to the album.

Always nice to see Incubate/ZXZW artists working together; Burial Hex played at ZXZW 2008 and we had Zola Jesus playing at Incubate last year. They teamed up for the track ‘The Far’ which has been remixed by Horrid Red. You can download the track for free on Stereogum here. This is only a radio edit with the full 20 minute version being released on 12″ later this year.

The Belgian black metal act Gorath (ZXZW 2008) played at Dynamo last weekend alongside the likes of Taake and Vulture Industries. There’s some quality footage of a cover they did from ‘Sworn To The Dark’ from Watain (also ZXZW 2008). Enjoy!

Unfortunately the band news reached us that one of USA’s finest death metal bands Skinless is calling it quits. We had the band playing at ZXZW in 2008 which was also their last European tour before going on a sort-of hiatus. Main reason were problems with the line-up of the band. Founding guitarist Noah Carpenter comments:

“In June 2010 we reunited the old lineup (from the first 2 CDs) for a show in New York, and I had anticipated that we’d end up writing a new album in that formation. When the time came for serious discussions about moving forward with the album a couple of the guys told me they didn’t have the ‘fire’ and/or time to dedicate to the project. For several months afterwards I continued to work on new material and jammed with potential new band members. But, much like the other guys, I concluded that I didn’t have the ‘fire’ either, and my inspiration was more directed towards my other band Armor Column.”

R.I.P. Skinless! Their (now ex-) lead singer is also in Origin, which is surely one to check out. They just posted a new studio report from the forthcoming album Entity. Check it out underneath here!

Check out this great video of The Black Atlantic (ZXZW 2007) performing the song ‘Ella’ on the great wall of China, during their 9-day tour over there.

Taken from Tivoli website

So the last week we’ve been giving you our tips for The New Psychedelica exhibit which will kick off today. Here are the links to all of the artists we highlighted on our blog last week:

Jimmy Joe Roche

Paul B. Davis

AIDS-3D

E*Rock

“The internet as an interface is the most influential phenomenon that broke through last ten years, with an incredibly strong effect on society. Its impact on our thinking and our way of communicating, our creativity and even our physiology is obvious. There is an emerging group of artists who try to explain the sense and nonsense of our relationship with technology and the internet to us. The exhibition The New Psychedelica, curated by Francesca Gavin, is the first to show that their work is being regarded as a 21st-century redefinition of psychedelic art.”

The New Psychedelica: 8 April – 5 June 2011 @ MU, Eindhoven

This might just turn out to be extremely interesting! The Canadian Melissa Auf Der Maur has a long career from being bass player for Courtney Love’s Hole as well as joining The Smashing Pumpkins for a little while before they broke up. But she might be most well known for her band Auf Der Maur. And of course we know Shining from playing at ZXZW 2008 and their amazing last year released ‘Blackjazz’ album. Here’s a clip of them performing together live:

Shining‘s Jorgen Munkeby and Melissa Auf Der Maur are set to record an album together and Metal Sucks have asked Melissa for a special guest blog about the progress of the album. You can read the whole article here. They made a few amazing photographs as well, while Jorgen and Melissa were in New York.

Place of Skulls‘ ‘(ZXZW 2007) As A Dog Returns’ album was released last year in America, but never had a proper release in Europe. The band, based around Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin, will release the album on April 4th by Volcom and will be distributed by ADA Warner. Place of Skulls will tour next month with The Gates of Slumber, including a stop at the Roadburn festival! Check out the full list of tour dates here.

Taken from the Roadburn blog

Big remix by Birdy Nam Nam from Kap Bambino (ZXZW 2007)

We’ve had Watain playing ZXZW already in 2008 (see movie) and with the release of last year’s album ‘Lawless Darkness’ they seem to attact a bigger and bigger audience with every tour to spread their orthodox, satanic blasphemous black metal! Supporting them will be the Swedish “suicidal” black metal act Shining, based around the notorious Kvarforth (who’s banned from the 013 for some bad behaviour) and Aosoth from France.

This Sunday on March 13th, the black metal ritual will take place at De Kade in Zaandam. Tickets are 17 euro’s in the pre sales so get your tickets now at their website! One more movie of Watain performing at last year’s Hellfest in france after the jump!

We’ve already previewed this gig of Marshall Allen from Sun Ra playing at Paradox, Tilburg, but we can also give away free tickets! You can also pre-order your tickets on the Paradox website.

We’ve already had Marshall Allen playing with the Sun Ra Arkestra at ZXZW 2008 and now Marshall Allen will play at Paradox with Eric Thielemans and James Harrar, as well as local guitarist Jasper Stadhouders (played at ZXZW 2008 with The Black Napkins).

How to win
We’ll keep it simple this time, all you have to do is send an email to win ATT incubate DOTTT org with your full name. Please mention “Marshall Allen” in the subject line. Good luck!

Watnoutv.nl did a special about the first edition of Heavy Metal Bowling @ ZXZW 2007! (in Dutch)

The second edition of FabrIQ festival will be held in Den Bosch this weekend. FabrIQ festival, also known as the festival of Intrusive Quality, focuses more on the intense and unknown music you can rarely find in the bigger pop venues. Just like last year the festival will take place at Plein79, De Verkadefabriek and the W2. Check all the info (time schedule, pre-sale info) on their blog. The upcoming days, Incubate will give you their tips.

Back in 2007 we had The Black Atlantic playing a stunning show at ZXZW 2007 and this time they will make an appearance at the FabriQ festival as well! After Geert van der Velde left the American hardcore band Shai Hulud, he wanted to go on with something completely different. This resulted in the project The Black Atlantic, a piano and acoustic guitar driven indie/folk band with beautiful double vocals in the same vein of acts like Bon Iver, Patrick Watson and Fleet Foxes. Their debut album ‘Reverence For Fallen Trees’ was released in 2009 and downloaded (for free!) close to 100.000 times already. After their first live appearance at Eurosonic in 2007, they have toured and opened all over the world for bands like Midlake, Woven Hand and The Antlers, which marks only the beginning of their success. Curious to find out what the fuzz is all about? They will play this Sunday in Verkadefabriek at FabriQ festival!

The Black Atlantic, Verkadefabriek -  17:30-18:15

Sun Ra legend Marshall Allen will play in the Paradox on March 16 2011. Check out more about this here and expect a contest to win tickets for this show very soon!

On Sunday November 7 the awesome 65daysofstatic will play at the Effenaar in Eindhoven and YOU can win tickets to go see them! All you have to do is answer this simple question: in what year did 65daysofstatic play our (then named ZXZW) festival? Send your answer to WIN[AT]INCUBATE[DOT]ORG.

Check out this crushing live session for Terroreyes.tv by Trash Talk. Trash Talk played ZXZW in 2008.

ZXZW 2007 artist Wouter van Veldhoven wants YOUR cassette players! Here’s a little message from him:

Hello all,

For nearly 5 years I have been travelling in and out of the Netherlands with my old, heavy, reel to reel taperecorders to entertain/bore people with the sound of tape-hiss, tape-compression, tape-feedback and toy-instruments (for an overview, see www.woutervanveldhoven.nl).

However with
A) the upcoming  31th birthday of the cassette walkman (and the growing concern that it is going to be forgotten),
B) an ever growing pain in my back and
C) a high level of angry looks and remarks in the train,
the time has come to make the transition to this light weighted marvel of ancient technology.

I’m looking for anybody that still has old cassette walkmans (and other light weight cassette players/recorders) and is willing to give/sell them to me. Please contact me at info@woutervanveldhoven.nl if you can help me. Of course I’ll pay for all the transportation costs.

All the best!

Wouter van Veldhoven