British Sea Power have announced details of their new fifth non-soundtrack album, due later this spring. Machineries Of Joy will be released by Rough Trade Records on April 1st, and will be accompanied by a UK tour, dates for which are below.
There’s not a huge amount more information as yet, but we’re told that the band wrote Machineries… in the Berwyn mountains in north Wales and recorded it in Brighton with Dan Smith. Clues as to the music? Singer Yan Scott Hamilton says "We’d like to think the album is warm and restorative. Various things are touched on in the words – Franciscan monks, ketamine, French female bodybuilders turned erotic movie stars. The world often seems a mad, hysterical place at the moment. You can’t really be oblivious to that, but we’d like the record to be an antidote – a nice game of cards in pleasant company."
The album will surely feature tracks that were initially thrashed out on the excellent series of EPs that BSP made available at each of their Krankenhaus club nights in 2012. If they capture that unusual spirit and energy, and harness it to the new audience the smash soundtrack to From The Sea To The Land Beyond garnered them when it was shown on BBC4, then 2013 is ripe for BSP’s taking.
British Sea Power tour dates
APRIL
4th – Exeter Phoenix
5th – Birmingham Library
6th – Newcastle University
7th – Glasgow Oran Mor
9th – Leeds Met University
10th – Nottingham Rescue Rooms
12th – Manchester Gorilla
14th – Cardiff Coal Exchange
15th – Portsmouth Wedgewood
16th – Norwich Waterfront
17th – London Shepherd’s Bush Empire