Toronto’s Broken Social Scene recently detailed their first album in seven years, Hug Of Thunder, out July 7th, 2017 on City Slang.  Produced by Joe Chiccarelli and mixed by Shawn Everett, Hug Of Thunder includes contributions from all fifteen original members of Broken Social Scene, as well as new guest vocalist Ariel Engle.  The title track 'Hug Of Thunder' follows the release of the song 'Halfway Home,' which the band performed to rapturous response on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert at the end of March.

'Hug Of Thunder' is everything BSS fans love from the Canadian collective and then some, an album overflowing with glorious open chords, multi-voice harmonies, spacious psychedelia-tinted breakdowns, and more.  It is a panoramic, expansive album that manages to be both epic and intimate; and like all things BSS, in troubled times, it offers a serotonin rush of positivity. 

Since their inception in the early aughts, BSS have always pushed sonic boundaries while remaining reverent of a perfect chorus; almost twenty years down the line, Hug Of Thunder sharpens that balance.  The record’s twelve songs refract the band’s varying emotions, methods, and techniques in ways that not only reference their other albums, but surpass them. 'Hug Of Thunder' is righteous but warm, angry but loving, melodic but uncompromising.

'Hug Of Thunder'  track listing:

1. Sol Luna

2. Halfway Home

3. Protest Song

4. Skyline

5. Stay Happy

6. Vanity Pail Kids

7. Hug Of Thunder

8. Towers and Masons

9. Victim Lover

10. Please Take Me With You

11. Gonna Get Better

12. Mouth Guards of the Apocalypse

Tour dates:

23-05         Manchester, United Kingdom @ Albert Hall 

24-05         London, United Kingdom @ Brixton Academy

Fake Laugh’s self-titled debut album arrives this July as the delicate accumulation of years of experimentation. Unfurling slowly, the full length has been a gradual process: part playfulness, part search for pop perfection. Tuning into the digital disconnect of contemporary life, the album is a vivid rummage through the familiar worlds of love, confusion and self-questioning, refocused through the bright lens of Berlin-born, London-based artist Kamran Khan.

Currently touring as a member of The Japanese House, and having previously played in Lovepark, Khan has been tirelessly grasping time in between for writing and recording whenever possible. A busy 2016 saw Khan release the energetic Ice EP, the bubbly trepidation of double A-side 'Mind Tricks/Birdsong Lullaby' and the more complex and serene Great Ideas EP. All three were important steps towards setting the foundations for his debut album.

Khan confesses that once upon a time Fake Laugh was “a bit of fun on the side”. However, now with the project his sole focus, there’s a revitalised commitment to recording that saw him finishing the album this year. Working with producer Theo Verney (Traams, O.Chapman), Khan brought the intimacy of his bedroom recordings and sentimental lyrics to glistening pop melodies that belie a much bigger and more accomplished sound.
 
Inspired by the likes of Broadcast and Beach House, Verney and Khan looked to create something opaque but gripping. Or as Khan puts it: "ambitious good pop songs". “I wanted to make a point of writing more traditional and direct songs” he explains. “I wanted to make sure that every part I wrote for each instrument was as melodious as possible. That sort of super satisfying feeling you can get from music sometimes is the aim for to me. The challenge is being able to hit that spot.”
 

Fake Laugh track list:
1. Melt
2. Short of Breath
3. Kinda Girl
5. As I Get To Know You Better
5. Hiding Place
6. Freely
7. You Will Find Out
8. Wouldn’t Bother
9. Physical (ft Soph Nathan)
10. You Do Know
11. Time to Die
 
Fake Laugh live dates:
19 May Brighton Sticky Mike's Frog Bar, Brighton @ 2:15am (Unofficial TGE party - free entry)
20 May Brighton The Joker, Brighton @ 7:30pm (Unofficial TGE party - free entry)
31 Jul Nottingham Rough Trade
1 Aug London Rough Trade East