Californias multi-instrumentalist masterminds Ignat Frege and Felix Skinner, better known as Wreck and Reference, have announced their third-full length album: Indifferent Rivers Romance End. Due out July 22nd through longtime partner The Flenser, the album is a winding composition of ballads interrogating the endurance of purpose, love, and change, against the backdrop of disillusionment draining into nihilism. The first single The Clearing is streaming today as a preview to the album and it can be heard on Soundcloud or Youtube.
Indifferent Rivers Romance End was recorded by the band and mixed/mastered with Samur Khouja (Joanna Newsom, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) in Los Angeles, CA earlier this year. The album contains 10 new tracks, clocking in at 44 minutes in length. This new album sees Wreck and Reference employ the pristine clarity of IDM and the rhythmic flood of trap, as an experiment in pop, metal, and noise with the increased use of digital synthesizers over previous works, creating a greater sense of fluidity and movement.
Wreck and Reference formed in 2011 and recorded their first EP, Black Cassette, in a garage, drawing upon the blown out intensity of black metal and the angularity of noise rock, with themes of determinism and Cormac McCarthy-esque isolation. Instead of guitars, the instrumentation on Black Cassette was constructed of samples played through distorted amplifiers. In 2012, their debut full length Y̶o̶u̶t̶h̶ represented a dramatic expansion of their sonic palette. In deeper, darker tones, Y̶o̶u̶t̶h̶ was a reflection on the opposing forces of dismissal and longing for both the past and the future, questioning the value of the life lived and life that is still to come. These sounds and themes were pushed further in Wreck and References second full length Want in 2014. Described by Pitchfork as having radical vision and boundless experimentation,Want expanded into a darker and more brooding territory, plumbing the depths of isolation, sadness, and hopelessness, as if written from inside a room with only a dimming window into a perfectly callous world. In contrast to Wreck and References past work, Indifferent Rivers Romance End is an album that allows the possibility of change, even the necessity of it, when the self comes to face the inevitability of continued life amidst the construction and destruction of relationships. The cover depicts a statue of Heraclitus, the tearful Ancient Greek herald of change, tied to a brick and drowned in a river of liquor and dirt.
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