MK ULTRA

For Immediate Release:

The twentieth anniversary of their recording of “We Three Kings” for Projekt Records’ release “Excelsis Vol 2: A Winter’s Song,” inspired chanteuse Sue Hutton (of the beloved Canadian ensemble Rhea’s Obsession and presently of Indarra) and troubadour Athan Maroulis (presently of NOIR and formerly of Spahn Ranch, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and Executive Slacks) to team up with producer and instrumentalist Kevin Laliberté, to collaborate on some new Christmas material. The collective results can be found on “Christmas Nocturne,” a series of duets that offer a unique haunting brand of caroling with touches of ethereal, dark wave and world music. Featured songs include a lush take on the traditional “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” originally penned in the 18th century, a pair of renditions of the beloved 1940s “Carol of the Drum,” and their original 1999 exotica-flavored recording of “We Three Kings.” Projekt has just released “Christmas Nocturne” via streaming and digital outlets along with a free download option on Bandcamp.

Bandcamp:
https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-nocturne

Spotify:
URI: spotify:album:0Netoew38bGrQBtU9iqSp5
URL: http://open.spotify.com/album/0Netoew38bGrQBtU9iqSp5

Sue Hutton and Athan Maroulis

 
Christmas Nocturne

(1) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
(2) Carol of the Drum
(3) Carol of the Drum (A Cappella)
(4) We Three Kings

Tracks 1, 2 & 3:
Produced by Kevin Laliberté in Toronto, Ontario in the Summer of 2019
All instrumentation by Kevin Laliberté
Vocals by Sue Hutton were recorded in Toronto, Ontario
Vocals by Athan Maroulis were recorded at Mindswerve Studios, NYC by Xris Smack

Track 4:
Originally released as Rhea’s Obsession with Athan Maroulis
Produced by Jim Field at Divine Dissonance Studios in Toronto, Ontario in the Summer of 1999
All instrumentation by Jim Field and Sue Hutton
Vocals by Sue Hutton were recorded at Divine Dissonance Studios in Toronto, Ontario
Vocals by Athan Maroulis were recorded at JLAB Studios in Los Angeles, CA by Judson Leach

All tracks were mastered by Xris Smack at Mindswerve Studios, NYC

 
Cover photograph by Simon Matzinger courtesy of Unsplash

On its 22nd anniversary Aurelio Voltaire’s 1998 debut “The Devil’s Bris” will be re-released on vinyl later in 2020. The 500-copy limited edition 140-gram orange and black swirled vinyl includes a full color lyric sleeve with two never-before-seen vintage photos of Voltaire. The album was remastered from the original mixdown DAT tape by Howard Givens at Spotted Peccary Studios NW.

“The Devil’s Bris” was the debut album by the dark cabaret/dark wave artist and was released in 1998 by Projekt Records. The album’s title is derived from the juxtaposition of the figure of the devil and the Jewish circumcision ritual, the bris milah. The album track “When You’re Evil” is featured in the horror film “100 Tears”, as well as in “Deady”, a minigame on ebilgames.com.

Here’s a live version of “When You’re Evil” shot at the New York Anime Fest in 2007.

Australian music legend Bon Scott will get the epic tribute he deserves in March, when 10km of Perth’s Canning Highway will be closed for eight hours to host the world’s longest music festival stage: a roving concert, rolling from one end to another, devoted to AC/DC covers.

On 1 March 2020, 10 semi-trailers – eight topped with live bands playing AC/DC songs – will be taking over the highway’s southern portion, between Canning Bridge and Fremantle: the same regular pilgrimage Scott would make in his youth, heading from his Fremantle home to rock’n’roll hangout the Raffles hotel.

The stretch of highway was immortalised in 1979’s Highway to Hell, nicknamed for the fatal crashes that plagued its most dangerous intersection. But the event itself – which was announced on Sunday – is as much a tribute to the film clip of an earlier AC/DC hit, It’s A Long Way To The Top, which featured the band playing on the back of a flatbed truck as it drove through Swanston Street, Melbourne.

For the concert – which marks the 40th anniversary of the singer’s death, and closes the 2020 Perth arts festival – two lanes of the stretch will be devoted to the “hit parade” of local and international acts, moving at 4km/h with regular stops.

The other two lanes will be for the public, who will set up picnic rugs and vantage spots to watch the bands. Four other parks and stops along the route will be devoted to special events, including a mass singalong of Highway to Hell, and rock patch-making sessions with the local embroiderers’ guild.

2020 marks the first of four Perth festivals to be helmed by new artistic director Iain Grandage, an internationally renowned music director and composer who was born and raised in Perth. The idea for Highway to Hell came to him when he was new to the job, but, he told the Guardian, he wasn’t sure they could pull it off. “The kicker was when we found out that the [festival closing] date was 40 years to the day” of Scott’s ashes arriving at Fremantle Cemetery. “It was like, ‘We just have to do this’, despite the ridiculous size of it.”

The bands listed in the first announcement include Finnish bluegrass group Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, Japanese female rock trio Shonen Knife, Melbourne punk act Amyl and the Sniffers and the WA Police Band. While Ackadacka covers have as much of a place in Australian pub rock folklore as AC/DC themselves, Grandage prefers the term “reinterpretations”.

“Covers feels like a dirty word,” he said. “These will be more like creative responses.”

The 10km stretch of Canning Highway is in a southern part of Perth that doesn’t usually bask in the glow of the arts festival. But it’s one of the city’s major arteries, which has 129 roads feeding into it, runs through three local councils, and has 1,300 residences and businesses facing onto it. Six key crossroads will need to remain open; paths for ambulances and emergency vehicles will be mapped out in advance; and organisers will begin door-knocking every highway-facing building on Monday.

For event producer Pete Stone, the bureaucratic negotiations have taken seven months so far, involving more than 200 meetings with mayors, CEOs, transport authorities and emergency services. “It’s much less exciting than what people usually equate with working in the arts,” he said, laughing. “But you can’t do anything on this scale without complete buy-in.”

What surprised him was how easy the sell was. “There will be some inconvenience to some people, of course … but there was almost no conversations along the lines of ‘we can’t do this’,” Stone said. “I think it reflects a sort of maturity in Perth – I’m not sure if you could do this 10 years ago here.”

While AC/DC was formed in Sydney by two Scottish-born brothers, Malcolm and Angus Young, Perth was where their lead singer spent most of his life, before dying at 33. A statue has already been erected in his honour in Fremantle.

But for Stone, the idea behind Highway to Hell is bigger than the band. “There’s something really powerful in [the image of] reclaiming a highway for a day, and bringing it back to the people,” he said. “Turning it into a 10km high street for one day, which links every community along the way? People warm to that idea.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

November 25, 2019 – Sextreme Disco band LORDS OF ACID has announced that they will be returning stateside with their MAKE ACID GREAT AGAIN TOUR. The legendary act will be joined by AESTHETIC PERFECTION, PRAGA KHAN, and MXMS March 13th in Los Angeles, CA, with the tour circling through the US, wrapping up April 15th in San Francisco, CA

MAKE ACID GREAT AGAIN Tour Dates:
03/13 @ EchoPlex – Los Angeles, CA
03/14 @ Hard Rock Live – Las Vegas, NV
03/15 @ Brick By Brick – San Diego, CA
03/17 @ Club Red – Mesa, AZ
03/18 @ Sunshine Theatre – Albuquerque, NM
03/19 @ TBA – El Paso, TX
03/20 @ Trees – Dallas, TX
03/21 @ Scout Bar – Houston, TX
03/22 @ Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
03/23 @ House of Blues – New Orleans, LA
03/25 @ Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
03/26 @ The Orpheum – Tampa, FL
03/27 @ Music Farm – Charleston, SC
03/28 @ The Fillmore – Charlotte, NC
03/29 @ The Broadberry – Richmond, VA
03/31 @ Theatre Of Living Arts -Philadelphia, PA
04/01 @ Brighton Music Hall – Boston, MA
04/02 @ The Rapids Theatre – Niagara Falls, NY
04/03 @ Gramercy Theatre – New York, NY
04/04 @ Baltimore Soundstage – Baltimore, MD
04/05 @ Crafthouse – Pittsburgh, PA
04/06 @ Bottom Lounge – Chicago, IL
04/07 @ The Waiting Room – Omaha, NE
04/08 @ The Oriental Theater – Denver, CO
04/09 @ The Complex – Vertigo – Salt Lake City, UT
04/10 @ The Bluebird – Reno, NV
04/11 @ Dante’s – Portland, OR
04/13 @ The Crocodile – Seattle, WA
04/14 @ Ashland Armory – Ashland, OR
04/15 @ Slim’s – San Francisco, CA

From his first single, “I Sit On Acid”, released in 1988, to the present, Belgium’s Praga Khan remains one of the most innovative acid house musicians in circulation. Thanks to extensive experimentation with drugs, Crowley-ian sex magic, and esoteric paths of self-deprivation and mutilation known only to himself, this orgiastic orchestrator created the LORDS OF ACID to further encapsulate the seductive messages and raw sex of his ever-evolving musical vision. From the raw carnality of their 1991 release Lust to the electro-thrash of 2012’s Deep Chills, Lords of Acid has re-defined the pure pleasures of drugs, hedonism, and deviant sex for thirty years. Now, despite numerous lineup changes, world tours, over 2.5 million album sales, and every possible point of crisis and conflict a band can face, Lords of Acid is returning to the unsuspecting again, this time with a new crew of deviants, dilettantes, and sonically transmitted diseases.