UK orders over £50 ship free!
...according to our Dave on Thu 21 Apr, 2011.
Times New Viking's new album ticks all the lo-fi or "shitgaze" boxes. Well being total slackers they probably don't tick boxes they probably shuffle about smearing ink on bits of paper. Ticking boxes is like, so commercial man... Anyway, The Viking boys have done away with the Portasound four track recording schick and now have a well high budget sound that really compliments their song writing style. I mean it's not like a Winger album or owt. It's not (really gravely voice over ) "straight from the plains of Valhalla there is a new noise that can't be ignored...three years in the making..." type high budget-ness. Like I said it's more like you can hear all the elements working together. All the elements sound great (stop saying elements!). It's a slacker master piece. Almost all the songs are amazing. It's as if they own the rights to lo-fi pop songwriting. It reminds me of Guided By Voices or a lo-fi Sammy. The keyboards sound ace, the guitars are scratchy and there is a sense of fun running through the slackerdom. The album comes with a bonus CD that is rammed to the eyes with different versions of the songs that can be heard on the LP. These versions are more like the Vikings I know. These tracks are sweet. They are stupidly lo-fi and shambolic. Which should be enough to warrant a purchase.
Times New Viking today announce details of their forthcoming record which will be released in April via their new 'homes' - Wichita Recordings (Europe), Merge (US), Pop Frenzy (Australia) and Big Nothing (Japan).
'Dancer Equired' is a return to the hive, even if the record’s creation was out of their usual boundaries. It should be known that for the first time the trio escaped to a studio. Between Columbus Discount Recordings and the famed Mus-i-col (closest thing to Muscle Shoals we got) during the Summer of Violence. With the help of Adam Smith and Dustin White, Times New Viking produced and recorded and album that sounds like a mellow night out. Though it abandons the pissy histrionics of the past, it remains loud and brash, with mammoth guitars still piled on, only magnifying the bright beautiful traits of the band has nurtured since the beginning.
It would be easy to describe the album as a new chapter, but in knowing the forward-thinking, never-settled energies of Times New Viking, this is an entirely new book. Rip it up and start again.
Times New Viking also premiere the video for album track 'No Room To Live' today. Directed and edited by Brandon Reichard and Pelham Johnston, with production from the band, the vibrant footage saw around 40 artists from Columbus, Ohio and elsewhere contribute by printing each frame from real video then hand drawing, colouring or decorating (nearly 3,000 of them) and putting back together.
1. It's a Culture
2. Ever Falling In Love
3. No Room To Live
4. Try Harder
5. California Roll
6. Ways To Go
7. New Vertical Dwellings
8. Downtown Eastern Bloc
9. More Rumours
10. Don't Go To Liverpool
11. Fuck Her Tears
12. Want To Exist
13. Somebody's Slave
14. No Good
Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!
Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
Leeds,
LS11 9RT, UK.
Tel/fax: (+44) 0113 245 4399
Email: phil@normanrecords.com
Follow us on Facebook
We want to be the best online record store in the UK, so please send us your ideas and feedback.
(We don't spam and we won't give your email address to anyone else. One email a week is all you'll ever get. Read our privacy policy.)
For payment and account functions on this site, all traffic is encrypted with SSL. Our SSL certificate is provided by Thawte: view our certificate.
This site is regularly audited for security problems by Netcraft. For more information please take a look at our Netcraft Security Seal.
We don't handle credit card details on this site. When it comes to taking your card payment we hand you straight over to eWAY - a secure, PCI DSS compliant payment gateway.
