Body/Head - 'The Switch'
 

https://bodyhead.bandcamp.com/album/the-switch



Creative alchemy doesn’t just happen in the studio or in the practice space; so much of it is the product of solo time with one’s instrument, learning how body and wood and electronics fuse, and of subconscious processes as one lives one’s daily life—picking up the ambient noise of the world outside, listening to others’ work, talking through ideas with friends. For Kim Gordon and Bill Nace, time together these days is limited to live performances and recording, so they’ve got to bring all their magic to every encounter. Lucky for us, these are two experimental sorcerers of significant renown.

Their debut album together as Body/Head, Coming Apart, from 2013, was more of a rock record—heavy, emotional, cathartic, spellwork in shades of black and grey. The Switch is their second studio full-length, and it finds the duo working with a more subtle palette, refining their ideas and identity. Some of it was sketched out live (if you’ve not had the fortune of seeing them in that natural environment yet, see 2016’s improvisational document No Waves), but much of it happened purely in the moment. Working in the same studio and with the same producer as Coming Apart, here Body/Head stretch out, making spacious pieces that build shivering drones, dissonant interplay, Gordon’s manipulated vocals, and scraping, haunting textures into something that feels both delicate and dangerous. Less discrete songs than one composition broken up into thematic movements, a slow-moving narrative that requires as much attention and care from the listener as it did from everyone involved in its creation, it is a record that sticks around after it’s done playing.

This is Nace’s favorite of Gordon’s guitar work; she’s truly come into her own as a guitarist, having built up her confidence through solo shows. The way the duo work together, you’d never know they spend so much time apart; on The Switch, their vision and focus feel truly unified. If Coming Apart was dark magic, The Switch works with light, though it never forgets that these approaches are two sides of the same coin, and that binaries—black/white, near/far, emotion/analysis, body/head—are made to be broken open, and that the truth of things is in the energy between.

-Jes Skolnik, May 2018
credits
releases July 13, 2018

Vocals – Kim Gordon
Guitars – Kim Gordon, Bill Nace

All songs by Body/Head
Published by Forgetful Songs (BMI) and Onenote Music (BMI)
Recorded July 2017 at Sonelab Studios in Western, MA
Engineered by Justin Pizzoferrato
Mixed by Body/Head and Justin Pizzoferrato
Mastered by John Golden
Photos by Vice Cooler
Art Direction by Mike Zimmerman

The cover alone is totally bitchen. :D



Also, they'll be touring with Steve Gunn — NOICE.

Body/Head on tour:

Thursday, June 21 No Response Festival, Cincinnati OH
Friday, July 13 Masonic Lodge, Los Angeles CA
Saturday, July 14 The Lab San Francisco CA
Thursday, July 19 Elsewhere, Brooklyn NY *
Friday, July 20 BSP, Kingston NY *
Saturday, July 21 Statehouse, New Haven CT *
Sunday, July 22 The Root Cellar, Greenfield MA *
Tuesday, July 24 Great Scott, Boston MA *
Thursday, July 26 PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia PA *
September 6-8 Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh NC
Saturday, September 15 Beerland, Austin TX

* w/ Gunn-Truscinski Duo

OOOOHH I am heading to austin in September!!!

very excited for the new LP, def going to see them in Greenfield :D

Playing with Steve Gunn! I might go to New Haven.

I'm gonna check them out when they come to SF!

pianomouth are you the guy uploading those good shows from the root cellar on DIME? if so...thanks!

Very cool, thanks. :)

thanks

Super interesting, thanks man

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/revi...ad_the_switch/

Considering the review, 7/10 seems kind of a low score... :confused:

https://open.spotify.com/album/3KybOtEowXRpZ7HkIqOcim

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-switch/1387065058

fuckin marvelous, more esoteric/gaseous than coming apart, little to latch onto, just floating through muck.....reverse hard sounds like a slo mo detonation of dust.




BODY/HEAD FOREVER

Also: Mariska Hargitay forever. But you might wanna update your avatar, because she's way hawtter now. Just sayin'.

yeah this is great, been caning it a couple of days, sounds even more detached from the corporeal than coming apart...the connection these two have stumbled upon is something else, and kim's playing, or at least the group's affordance of expression compared to sy/free kitten/whatever is so sweet to hear, totally unmoored, they're both tapped into some bizarro dream logic that's made clear only through them working through it as one.



douche post reads: BODY/HEAD FOREVER

Is this directed at me? Sheeayzus... :confused:

Anyway, from Bandcamp Daily: Album of the Day: Body/Head, The Switch

Dude, I'm a few tracks in here and your review is perfect. I'll post me own thoughts in a few days. Hope others will do the same, disappointed by the lack of discussion about this album thus far and then recall why I don't spend much time here anymore

Yah well I'm not crazy about the "douche" part. All I said was that Mariska looks better now, in her mid-50s, than when L&O: SVU started. How is THAT douchey?

Also, I haven't heard The Switch yet, am waiting for it to arrive, etc.

I was saying I was douchey you DOUCHE




yeah it is off the lack of discussion this is getting unfortunately, body/head are seriously monumental I feel, tapping into that faded 90s out rock mentality but taking it in really different directions of consciousness.

oh man, I guess I am not that much of fan as I used to be. I have not heard the album yet! but on my next visit to a record store I will get it.

with the positive reviews here I should listen to it somewhere online in the meantime if possible

http://gothamist.com/2018/07/31/kim_..._interview.php


"The band will be playing select dates over the next couple months (you can check out tickets here); it's safe to say that no two shows are ever the same. Gordon has other projects in the works, including a possible novella and, more tantalizingly, her first official solo album, which she has been tinkering with on guitar on her own. "I'm sort of working toward that," she said."

a friend told me Kim was at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh recently recording something for Vinyl,that is all he knew but told me he was going to get a copy.

I'll read it in a minute — in the meantime, what a lovely photo! From me to you, Kim:



A little corny, I know, but...