When: 7.30pm on Thursday 3 November 2016
Where: The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE

PLEASE NOTE: This show is completely sold out! Sign up for our mailing list, above, for updates about future Merchandise and EZTV shows.

We’re delighted to working with 4AD’s Merchandise for the first time!

Merchandise have announced details of their new album, A Corpse Wired For Sound, due for release on 23 September via 4AD, alongside the video for a second new track, End Of The Week.

Formed nearly a decade ago, galvanised by Tampa hardcore and inspired by its miscreant noise, A Corpse Wired For Sound signals a new chapter for Merchandise.

Following 2014’s After The End – a full-band effort recorded in a closet – the band stripped back to its core of Carson Cox (vocals, electronics), Dave Vassalotti (guitar, electronics) and Pat Brady (bass). The trio travelled to Rosà, Italy for their first ever sessions in a recording studio, La Distilleria, with a local, Maurizio Baggio. The nine-song nocturnal A Corpse Wired For Sound was recorded half in the studio and half at home, in Tampa as well as Cox’s newly adopted bases of New York and Berlin – the culmination of a long-distance collaboration between Cox and Vassalotti.

The album’s metallic title is inspired by a science fiction short story by JG Ballard, but equally sums up the band’s current state of mind. ‘We were “reborn” as a rock band for After The End,’ says Vassalotti, ‘and then we straight-up died again. It couldn’t last. The result is this distended corpse responding to you from both sides of the Atlantic, forever singing in spite of everything.’ Cox expands further, ‘it’s about the truth of growing up. You can’t take your friends or lovers with you. It’s about finding peace with that loneliness.’

The second song to be aired from A Corpse Wired For Sound, End Of The Week is ‘about personal reflection and horror,’ says Cox, who is responsible for the song’s visuals (he also created the video for lead single Flower Of Sex). The video is a subliminal homage to Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and his motion pictures Blow Up and Zabriskie Point. ‘The smashed mirror isn’t just a symbol of death,’ Cox continues. ‘It’s the broken image of humanity reflecting back at everyone when they read the news. Reality is an unbearable pill to swallow this year. Somehow the evil people that make up society can still wake up everyday and look at themselves in the mirror.’

Tour support comes from EZTV. The Brooklyn trio release their new album, High In Place, on Captured Tracks this September.

PLEASE NOTE: This show is completely sold out! Sign up for our mailing list, above, for updates about future Merchandise and EZTV shows.

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