Australian punk four-piece Gold Class are sharing a new video and single, 'Rose Blind', which is the second track to be unveiled from their upcoming album, Drum, set for release on August 18 via Felte. Drum is the bold second album from Gold Class. The follow-up to 2015 debut It’s You, Drum is a brasher, vivid widescreen account of a band hitting its stride while betraying the complex signs and scars of a life since lived. 

Formed in 2014 by a union of workmates and friends from a Melbourne bar and creative-writing course, Gold Class’ string of lean, explosive live shows culminated in It’s You – a distillation of the then-fledgling group’s wiry punk, carried by Curley’s booming baritone and themes of personal politics, sexuality and identity. The album was shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize and nominated for an Age award, and saw Gold Class play sold out shows across Australia and London, at local festivals Golden Plains and Splendour in The Grass, as well as international sets at SXSW, London Calling and Primavera Sound.

Recorded at Melbourne’s Head Gap studios and produced by Gareth Liddiard of The Drones, Drum sees Gold Class explore new territory in both songwriting and sonics. Liddiard was instructive in helping the band capture these new moods. “We wanted to take a risk,” says Curley. “He was the one person everyone felt could do something interesting with the album." Drum distils the messy scope of life into a brave, sometimes brutal but beautiful new document. Whatever will come, the beat – at least – goes on.

Drum tracklist: 

01. Twist In The Dark  

02. Rose Blind

03. Get Yours

04. Trouble Fun

05. Bully

06. Thinking Of Strangers

07. We Were Never Too Much

08. Mercurian

09. Place We Go

10. Lux

Following a formidable opening salvo - the BBC 6music playlisted single ‘Controller’ - Hercules & Love Affair announce the release of their fourth studio album, Omnion, on September 1st on mr.intl/Skint/BMG. Renowned for their exuberant stage show and Andy Butler's knack for elegant and timely productions, Hercules & Love Affair have - unconsciously - hit the zeitgeist with eleven songs that sparkle with faith and tolerance as a response to our troubling times.

“Sometimes songs are born out of an intense moment that has nothing to do with club music,” explains Hercules main man Andy Butler. “…I’m not just a "head" (read techno-head, house-head, disco-head)….I’m touched just as much by, say, Sinead O’Connor accompanied only by a guitar, singing an intensely spirited message.”

Helping Butler realise this new dynamic are a world class cast of singers including The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, the Arab World’s most influential indie band Mashrou’ Leila, New York singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, and Icelandic sister act Sísý Ey, as well as regular collaborators Rouge Mary and Gustaph - and Butler himself on the intensely personal electro ballad ‘Fools Wear Crowns’. Having had “a massive, massive relationship with drugs and clubs” since his youth, culminating in “a brutal drug addiction that saw me overdosed in hospital every weekend”, ButIer has been clean for four years and Omnion is rich with his re-immersion in the wider world, in all its ugliness and beauty. 

Tracklisting:

1. Omnion (feat. Sharon Van Etten)

2. Controller (feat. Faris Badwan)

3. Rejoice (feat. Rouge Mary)

4. Are You Still Certain? (feat. Mashrou' Leila)

5. Running (feat. Sisy Ey)

6. Fools Wear Crowns

7. Lies (feat. Gustaph)

8. Wild Child (feat. Rouge Mary)

9. My Curse and Cure (feat. Gustaph)

10. Through Your Atmosphere (feat. Faris Badwan)

11. Epilogue (feat. Gustaph)

Forthcoming dates:

22nd July - Tramlines Festival, Sheffield (UK) [Andy Butler DJ set]

11th August - Houghton Festival, Kings Lynn (UK)

13th August - Boomtown Festival, Winchester [UK] (Andy Butler DJ set)

25th August - Rock en Seine, Paris (France)

27th August - Stephenson Works, Newcastle (UK)

1st September - Into the Great Wide Open, Vlieland (Netherlands)

9th September - Festival No. 6, Portmeirion (Wales)

16th September - Kutxa Kultur Festival, San Sebastian (Spain)

19th October - ADE at Paradiso, Amsterdam (Netherlands)

10th November - Metropop Festival, Lausanne (Switzerland)