Mini-album 'Mercury Fountain' due April 21st via Small Pond Records!
UK tour dates announced! Boundary-breaking, jazz-influenced psych-rock from Brighton trio as they prepare to release their debut mini-album!
"The Physics House Band's 'Calypso' is a mechanical prog warrior" - NPR "Brighton trio beloved of comedian Stewart Lee whose dazzling instrumental work will appeal to ancient prog fans and youth math rockers" - The Guardian ThePhysics House Band are back with their boundary-breaking take on jazz-influenced psych-rock. The band are sharing their new video 'Calypso' online now. Speaking about the video, Adam Hutchinson of the band went on to say "We wanted to make something that was a strong mix of beautiful visuals, and the live performance element that has always been a an important part of our band. Jake and I experimented with shooting coloured inks into spinning water, filming my obscene 70s shirts on a turntable, covering fruit with gold and silver paint. We then shot all the live performance parts at Fire Eye Land in Kent, and I cut it all together to make a freaky psychedelic mess."
‘Mercury Fountain’ follows 2013’s EP ‘Horizons/ Rapture’, which sold out twice over on CD & vinyl and allowed the band to pick up quite a fan base, including Stewart Lee who wrote a little bit about the band below.
By Stewart Lee:
“I’m nearly 50. I don’t know what’s going on anymore, I’ll admit. The internet’s availability of all sources ever simultaneously has destroyed my understanding of cultural development as a logical progression. All music is time travel, forward and backward both at once, now.
But three years go my friend Simon Oakes, of prog-psych conceptualists Suns Of The Tundra, directed me to a YouTube clip of The Physics House Band. Impossibly youthful looking, and sounding like vintage seventies stadium-prog behemoth, but stripped of any errors of taste and judgment, fed amphetamines, made ashamed of their record collections, slapped in front of the whole school, immersed instead in post-rock procedure and practice, and made to apply their obvious talent and ability to a more worthwhile end than their forebears.
Three years on here’s their second record, a super-dense sci-fi mindfuck of a thing, music scholarship charity case keyboards in combat with squally spacerock guitars, dub boom bass and multi-time-sig clatter; a territory staked out over mushrooms at break-time, on the top floor of the multi-story car park, overlooking the ‘70s Bauhaus shopping centre concrete functional fountain square, but now gone all Escher in the aftermath, like a black and white architectural schematic drawing dipped in tie-dye.
‘Mercury Fountain’ doesn’t stop, a twenty nine minute surge of tracks that it would be a crime to split apart, the kind of part work The Physics House Band’s progenitors aimed at but never quite produce. It loads you into a water canon and shoots you out through its intermingled opening tracks, the group finally allowing you a pause for breath at the half way point, during 'A Thousand Small Spaces'; and then you’re kicked out of the airlock back into the Negative Zone again in 'Obidant', the laws of physics in reverse, Newton’s apples flying upwards past your grasping fists, your hair on end, arching to follow them, until you’re finally abandoned into the techtonic drift of 'Mobius Strip II'.
It’s a two black Americano experience that makes me wish I still had pin-sharp hearing to lose.”
The Physics House Band are Sam Organ (guitar/keys), Adam Hutchison (bass/keys) and Dave Morgan (drums). The three met at university in Brighton, almost by accident, after the breakup of their previous bands, but the result couldn’t sound further from an accident. The Physics House Band posses a musical prowess way beyond their years, creating avant-garde compositions that capture everything from jazz to prog to psych to tech-metal to tech-rock, all combined together and executed to perfection.
Named after a sculpture by Alexander Calder, which Adam stumbled across in a gallery in Madrid, the record is about a hallucinogenic journey through the mind, parallel universes and the astral plane, using the allegory of diving into a Mercury Fountain. The first half focusses on exploring different realms, scenes and situations – gaining knowledge and understanding as you go. The second half of the record embarks on an intense journey through fury, violence, madness and bliss, using all the knowledge and understanding gained in the first half. The album ends the same way that it begins: emerging from the Mercury Fountain, only to dive straight back in.
Recorded with Joel Magill & Raven Bush at Wicker Studios in Kent, ‘Mercury Fountain’ uses a wealth of vintage microphones, amplifiers, drum sets and synthesisers, featuring a Wurlitzer, a couple of 70s Moogs, a roland string RS202, and even a bizarre Russian Moog copy. For The Physics House Band, experimentation is key and a large part of the recording and writing process. The group had a little help from their friends to create ‘Mercury Fountain’, with Raven Bush on violin, ‘Biscuit’ on jazz flute and ‘Willy G’ on saxophone.
After playing shows with the likes of Alt-J, Jaga Jazzist, Django Django, 65daysofstatic, Three Trapped Tigers, Mono + more, The Physics House Band are set to tour the UK this May, with more dates to be announced soon.
See The Physics House Band live:
April 22nd - OOTC Festival (LUX) May 5th - Colossal Festival (DK) 7th - Darwen, Sunbird Records (UK) 8th - Glasgow, The Hug and Pint (UK) 9th - Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (UK) 10th - Bristol, The Fleece (UK) 11th - Brighton, The Haunt (UK) 12th - London, Kamio (UK) 15th - Berlin - Schokoladen (DE) 17th - Brno - BajKazyl (CZ) 18th - Prague - Underdogs Ballroom (CZ) 20th - Bratislava - A4 (SK) 24th - Torino - Officine Ferroviarie (IT) 25th - Piacenza - DannySays (IT) 26th - Montova - Arci Tom (IT) August 19th - Arctangent Festival (UK)
With their mini-album 'Mercury Fountain'due April 21st, Brighton-based trio For more information please contact frankie@stereosanctity.co.uk / t. +44 7921 176502.
