Gripped in musical angst and grasped in droning melody, the new track from Tulipomania titled “On The Outside” gives a post-punk-colyptic spin on the post-modern with an artistic license that only true artists can evoke.
Those of you who remember Tulipomania’s last release, “Don’t Be So Sure”, may remember our subtle review at the time. I have always found remixes to be a bit hard to swallow, and seldom do I find them as catchy or good as the original, but in this case I have to say that Tulipomania do indeed keep all of those same subtle nuances in place as well as the original hook, which is a good thing. While I can’t say if I like the remixe more than the original, I can easily say that it holds it’s own along side of it. Bravo!
About Tulipomania & the singles
Philadelphia-based Tulipomania has announced they will release a new single, which includes three tracks. The first single from this collection is the Seahawks Remix of ‘Don’t Be So Sure’.
Seahawks are a duo made up of Jon Tye, founder of the legendary Lo Recordings (whose roster includes Grimes, Aphex Twin, Four Tet, Thurston Moore and Astronauts) and Pete Fowler, creator of Monsterism vinyl toys and perhaps most famed as an illustrator of oh so many Super Furry Animals album sleeves. The duo is self-described purveyors of “psychedelic yacht rock, deck shoegaze, hazy beach pop vibrations, and marina drone”.
The original version of ‘Don’t Be So Sure’ featured on the band’s fourth album ‘This Gilded Age’ (2016), described by Byron Coley of WIRE Magazine (May 2017 edition) as “…pretty whacked – something akin to a battle of the bands between Crazy Horse and The Kronos Quartet”.
Tulipomania, whose name was inspired by the 1637 Dutch tulip market collapse, has been categorized as ‘cult synth punks’, ‘glam-leaning’, ‘postpunk’, ‘art rock’, and ‘muscular chamber pop’. Band members Tom Murray (lead vocals, bass, drums, guitar-organ) and Cheryl Gelover (synthesizer, background vocals) were joined by Mitch Smith (guitar, glockenspiel), who also contributed to the band’s eponymous first album, Richard Hartline (piano, percussion, engineering and mastering), and Howard Thompson (executive producer).
This release features intriguing new artwork by legendary artist Vaughan Oliver, whose work they have long admired. Oliver gives distinct visual identities for 4AD releases by many bands, including Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints, Pixies, and Throwing Muses, in addition to numerous non-4AD artists such as David Sylvian.
This release will also be accompanied by two new music videos, animated by Tulipomania themselves. The band’s meticulous, mesmerizing videos augment the group’s artistry, involving painstaking frame-by-frame stop-motion animation techniques.
Gelover and Murray first met in Art school and found themselves collaborating on projects for their Experimental Film and Animation classes. Tulipomania essentially grew along with these experiences. They were influenced by Talk Talk, the solo work by Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, and many early 4AD bands, including Cocteau Twins, Lush, Throwing Muses, and The Pixies.
Described as “artistic and inventive”, the music videos created by Tulipomania have been featured in film festivals worldwide, the most recent of which include the London Short Film Festival (England), Leeds International Film Festival (England), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (York, England), Encounters (Bristol, England), Zubroffka (Poland), and StopTrik (Croatia, Poland).
‘Don’t Be So Sure’ was the band’s first hand-painted animation, featuring multiple passes of brushwork shot on thousands of individual sheets of black paper, thereby allowing singing self-portraits to morph and dissolve in an atmospheric exploration of ambiguity. For the video made for the Seahawks Remix, the band re-photographed the original artwork, frame by frame, matching the new tempo and softer mood, which they felt also called for a more painterly, layered approach to the imagery.
The new three-track single will be available via Sursumcorda Recordings on September 15, 2017. It is already available for pre-order from Tulipomania’s Bandcamp page.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
http://tulipomania.com
http://www.facebook.com/TheTulipomania
http://twitter.com/tulipomania
