The Membranes, the long-running post-punk band fronted by friend of tQ and Louder Than War boss John Robb, have announced that they’ve got a new album, Dark Matter, in the works. It picks up the theme of the one-off show they hosted at Manchester’s Gorilla venue last summer, ‘The Universe Explained’, which featured, alongside a gig from the band themselves, a specially-commissioned string quartet, a recreation of the Higgs Boson experiment and Robb in conversation with CERN scientists about particle physics. The band, who now count former Fall bassist Steve Hanley among their number, are also planning to take the show to Berlin, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and the CERN project in Geneva itself this year.
In the meantime, they’ve given us a first taste of the new record with lead-off single ‘The Universe Explodes Into A Billion Protons Of Pure White Light’, released as a split with a track from London’s Throwing Up, ‘Toothache’, on Tim Burgess’ O Genesis label; head here to download and have a watch of the suitably cosmic video above.
