View basket “The Roller” has been added to your basket. Divine Machines Demob Happy SKU: 21.00 23.00 £21.00 - £23.00 £21.00 - £23.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Liberator Music / Mushroom Released Date: 26th May 2023 Buying Format: 1LP 1LP Coloured Vinyl Buying Options Choose an option1LP1LP Coloured VinylClear Divine Machines quantity Add to basket ReserveBack Order Add to your Wishlist Description Product Info From ‘OK Computer’ to ‘Screamadelica’, history has shown that a band’s third album is when shit starts to get real. When, after an introductory debut and a second that tests new waters, the particular alchemy of a group stamps its personality in ways that no other configuration of individuals can do; when the outside voices have been tempered and all that’s left is a perfect cocktail of confidence, skill and momentum. It’s a theory that’s been proven time and time again, and one that Newcastle trio Demob Happy are underlining with ‘Divine Machines’: a third album that harnesses their delicate tightrope of heaviness and melody, sweetness and riffs, and rides it up to the stratosphere. “You need almost insane levels of resilience and belief to be an artist, but we’ve gone out and put in the work over the years,” begins drummer Tom Armstrong as frontman and bassist Matthew Marcantonio affirms: “This isn’t music for pubs or bars anymore, they’re grand songs for grand venues. It’s backwards engineering.” Indeed, since forming more than a decade ago back in hometown Newcastle, Demob Happy have earned every increasingly exciting career milestone through a combination of hard graft and gritty determination that would KO most bands. They’ve gigged incessantly, building on the slowly-escalating interest from 2015 debut ‘Dream Soda’ and 2018’s ‘Holy Doom’, and transforming it into a second album campaign that saw them tour the USA four times alongside a UK support tour with Jack White and an EU stint with Royal Blood. In between all that, they’ve continued to meticulously hone the inner workings of their practice, with Matthew fine-tuning his production chops to the point where they can take everything in-house. Having played Reading and Leeds Festival’s main stage and joined White on stage for an impromptu collaboration, it had all steered Demob Happy to the start of 2020, when work for LP3 would begin in Wales following the busiest, most objectively successful period of their careers to date. “The plan was to go and write, get some really quality demos, spruce them up in the studio in May and release the album in August 2020,” explains guitarist Adam Godfrey. The world, of course, had other ideas in mind. However, rather than merely postponing the record, the vast expanse of time afforded to the band would become the making of ‘Divine Machines’ – an album whose intricacies and experiments come as the result of hours upon hours of a lockdown labour of love. “To keep myself busy and sane I started reworking what we demo’d in wales. The world was in chaos and I didn’t know where it would take me or what I was even making at first, but from having so much time and going a bit fucking nuts, they became incredible and way more advanced than demos we’d ever made before,” Matthew explains. “There are always these flashes and moments of magic that are sacrificed between the demos and the album, but the extra time I had meant nothing was lost, and they became the foundation of the album. This is why The Beatles were The Beatles, because they were four lads having a laugh, but they were inside Abbey Road – the most sophisticated studio in the world. That cocktail of having fun and taking the piss and having it captured expertly: that’s where there’s absolute magic.” From the opening bars of ‘Token Appreciation Society’, that rev into gear on synthetic wobbles before finding their groove in a ‘70s sci-fi bass stomp flecked with falsetto backing vocal harmonies, ‘Divine Machines’ feels like the album Demob Happy have always been destined to make. The cornerstone influences – a sprinkle of Queens of the Stone Age swagger; a splash of glam; a Lennon-like knack for melody – remain present, but utilised in ways that rely wholly on Matthew, Adam and Tom’s specific magic as a unit: one that values a “janky guitar solo” as much as it does a beautifully-crafted, unexpected love song. Though, aesthetically, ‘Divine Machines’ embraces a Bladerunner-esque sci-fi leaning, lyrically it finds the band swerving from the political corruption and modern world dystopias that they’ve previously detailed and yearning for something more hopeful, that starts from within. “I really see what’s happening to the human race as a moment in a hero’s journey. We’re at the point in the James Bond film where the villains reveal themselves and tell us the plan. We’ve got Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, these absolute supervillains with their rockets doing whatever the fuck they want, and software guru Bill Gates buying vast swathes of farmland for who knows what. They’re all revealing their plans to humanity and we’re all still going, ‘I hope they’re the good guys!’” begins the vocalist. “What we need is inspiration to change because we only win this war if the change starts with us. There’s huge ripples of that in society, and it’s distorted through social media, but you can see people becoming more self-aware. That’s what I wanted to write about – inspiring that change.” These grand clarion calls for empathy form the true heart of Demob’s newest. From the gargantuan, rumbling slow build of ‘Earth Mover’ – “a rallying cry for the human race to get up off its knees” – to the fizzing, irrepressible rock behemoth of ‘Voodoo Science’ that reclaims the term from dogmatic Western understanding, it’s an album that truly believes in the power of people. The almost AC/DC-ish ‘Tear It Down’ is about “ripping down the lies that society has told us and reprogramming ourselves to not see things in this binary way”, while closing track ‘Hades Baby’ – recorded with an orchestra at the actual Abbey Road (in Studio Two, no less) – glimmers with both widescreen ambition and a delicious slap of irony. “Ironically, it’s a big fuck you to billionaires, and we played it for an Amazon session. Bezos paid for that,” Adam chuckles. Elsewhere, ‘Divine Machines’ features some of the most emotionally soft songs the trio have penned to date. Multi-part harmonies cocoon the gnarly riff of ‘Muscular Reflex’ – “a beautiful, earnest love song to yourself and to the world” – while ‘She’s As Happy As A Man Can Be’, states Matthew, is a song that’s taken him years to arrive at. “It took a long time for me to shake off what I felt was this Northern idea that it has to be hard, it has to have an edge all the time” he says. “I’m still dealing with this childhood conflict of being tender and emotional and being made to feel small and soft for being that way. I buried that side away in my songwriting and it took a long time to be vulnerable enough to write a ballad like ‘She’s As Happy…’” Really, however, ‘Divine Machines’ as a whole is a record that Demob Happy had to build towards. It’s the product not just of a strange extended period of work – both on the album and on themselves – but of an entire career spent putting in the hours, believing tirelessly in what they’re doing and, slowly but surely, watching the world start to believe in it too. As Matthew affirms: “We’ve never chased the dragon of success, even though we’ve been encouraged to, but we’re not interested in doing it like that. We’ve always done what we wanted, but now it seems like it might align with what other people want as well.” Artist Demob Happy Genre Rock And Pop Label Liberator Music / Mushroom Buying Options 1LP , 1LP Coloured Vinyl Format 1LP , Coloured Vinyl Condition New Country UK Track Listings Token Appreciation Society Voodoo Science Earth Mover Tear It Down Musuclar Reflex Super-Fluid She's As Happy As A Man Can Be Run Baby Run I Have A Problem (I Ignore) Divine Machines Hades, Baby Share this On Facebook On Twitter Via Email More from Rock And Pop View Product Quick View Foo Fighters Greatest Hits Rock And Pop | RCA | 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve Released 27th October 2009 £25.00 Add to basket Reserve View Reservations Foo Fighters Greatest Hits £25.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: RCA SKU: 88697369211 Formats: 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve Released Date: 27th October 2009 Reserve View Reservations Read More Add to basket View Product Quick View Catherine Ringer Chroniques Et Fantaisies Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | Because Music | 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve, Includes CD Released 17th November 2017 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Catherine Ringer Chroniques Et Fantaisies £20.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Because Music SKU: 5060525431623 Formats: 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve, Includes CD Released Date: 17th November 2017 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Crosby Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash Rock And Pop | Rhino Atlantic | 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released 6th October 2023 £33.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Crosby Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash £33.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Rhino Atlantic SKU: 0603497837045 Formats: 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released Date: 6th October 2023 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Kristin Hersh Wyatt at the Coyote Palace Rock And Pop | HHBTM Records | 2LP Released 20th June 2017 £19.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Kristin Hersh Wyatt at the Coyote Palace £19.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: HHBTM Records SKU: HHBTM186 Formats: 2LP Released Date: 20th June 2017 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Cribs, The The Cribs Rock And Pop | Sonic Blew | 1LP Released 27th January 2023 £22.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Cribs, The The Cribs £22.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Sonic Blew SKU: COOP810LPB Formats: 1LP Released Date: 27th January 2023 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Big Brother & The Holding Company Live At The Carousel Ballroom 1968 Rock And Pop | Music On Vinyl | 180g, 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve Released 14th May 2012 £24.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Big Brother & The Holding Company Live At The Carousel Ballroom 1968 £24.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Music On Vinyl SKU: MOVLP527 Formats: 180g, 2LP, Gatefold Sleeve Released Date: 14th May 2012 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Neko Case Wild Creatures Rock And Pop | Anti | 2LP, Coloured Vinyl, Gatefold Sleeve Released 30th June 2023 £30.00 Add to basket Reserve View Reservations Neko Case Wild Creatures £30.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Anti SKU: 278243 Formats: 2LP, Coloured Vinyl, Gatefold Sleeve Released Date: 30th June 2023 Reserve View Reservations Read More Add to basket View Product Quick View Caitlin Cary While You Weren’t Looking (20th Anniversary Edition) Rock And Pop | Yep Roc | 2LP Released 30th September 2022 £29.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Caitlin Cary While You Weren’t Looking (20th Anniversary Edition) £29.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Yep Roc SKU: LPYEP2029LE Formats: 2LP Released Date: 30th September 2022 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Pale spring Cygnus Rock And Pop | American Dreams | 1LP Released 19th March 2021 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Pale spring Cygnus £20.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: American Dreams SKU: LPADR15 Formats: 1LP Released Date: 19th March 2021 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Nearly New View Product Quick View Who, The Live At Leeds (Classic Records Pressing) Rock And Pop | Classic Records | 1LP Released 6th July 2023 £135.00 Add to basket Reserve View Reservations Who, The Live At Leeds (Classic Records Pressing) £135.00 Genre: Rock And Pop Label: Classic Records SKU: nn266905 Formats: 1LP Released Date: 6th July 2023 Reserve View Reservations Read More Add to basket See more in Rock And Pop Start again
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