Midnight Juggernauts coming to L.A. in support of new album

MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS
US TOUR DATES
Thursday, July 22 @ Santos - New York, NY
Friday, July 23 @ Voyeur - Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, July 24 @ Brooklyn Bowl - Brooklyn, NY
Monday, July 26 @ The Echo - Los Angeles, CA
Tuesday, July 27 @ Cinespace - Los Angeles, CA

The Crystal Axis (siberia/inertia/acephale)
Digital Version - May 28, 2010
Physical Version - August 31, 2010


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The Crystal Axis
Featuring 12 tracks sparkling with a new kind of kaleidoscopic warped pop, including the bands first single ’This New Technology,’ and now 'Vital Signs,' The Crystal Axis is a 50-minute symphony of synth-rock invention. Veering from percussive, hypnotic grooves to luxuriant jams, walls of sound, and 70s AM melodic forks, The Crystal Axis, the bands' sophomore release will be available as a limited edition, seven track bonus disc digitally from May 28th (Siberia/Inertia) and physically on August 31st in the US.

Never ones to curb their creative endeavors, the boys are also offering fans for a limited time only, the chance to get their hands on a special edition Siberia/Acephale records 12” gatefold vinyl – only 1000 will be available worldwide this summer HERE from May 28th.

The band are also proud to announce a new deluxe 'Crystal Axis' package featuring the 2 CD (limited edition), and exclusive t-shirt designed by Jake Rolfe, and Midnight Juggernauts badge, all available on the bands website. www.midnightjuggernauts.com

Tracklististing
Induco
Vital Signs
Lifeblood Flow
This New Technology
Lara Versus The Savage Pack
The Great Beyond
Cannibal Freeway
Virago
Winds of Fortune
Dynasty
Lemuria
Fade to Red

THE CRYSTAL AXIS is the Midnight Juggernauts second album, their first since Dystopia launched the Australian trio into a vortex of global intrigue.

For those who've arrived late, Andrew Szekeres, Vincent Vendetta and Daniel Stricker had pursued an organic course through multiple indie EPs, singles and retro-futurist videos before they found themselves hailed as de facto pioneers of a perceived new frontier of indie-dance circa 2007/08.

But the infinite unknowns of musical imagination will always make light of such musty generic pigeonholes. We’ve always seen ourselves as a band that continues to push itself and evolve, says Vincent. We could see that the scenes we’d been linked with had crossed over to larger audiences and that’s great. We could easily had made more music in that vein, but for this time round we decided to take a more unpredictable path, to explore a few new tangents.

Ground zero for The Crystal Axis was live experimentation. Having spent much of 2008 satisfying a raging hunger on the worldwide stage from Australia’s Big Day Out, Coachella, Fuji Rocks, Glastonbury and the Montreal Jazz Festival the Juggernauts were bristling with the kind of intuitive performance chemistry that demands spontaneous creativity.

In early 2009, they wired themselves into a house on a remote stretch of coastal New South Wales. Surrounded by old-school synths, keys, guitars, drums, racks of pedals, and other electronic and percussive flotsam and jetsam (not to mention the constant lapping of the sea and complete isolation), the writing process immediately took on a life of its own.

As a live band we have a looser approach, Vincent says. A lot of the songs were created through jams without much pre-thought, which allows for a lot of happy accidents. Some of the music tended towards prog-rock and spaced out soundscapes so we’d balance it out with our own warped take on pop music.

After several weeks of negotiating grand synth-operas, droned out psych-rock sojourns and groove based jams (yet never relying on a 4/4 beat), the band emerged with a large collection of songs ripe for recording at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios. Befitting the DIY ethic of their self-owned and operated Siberia label, they again opted to self-produce, with engineer Chris Moore (TV on the Radio, Yeasayer, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars) facilitating. But still, the main influence on the unnamed album’s direction was the ever-morphing material itself.

We continued to play with old school synths, pedals and other toys, Vincent says. Certain tracks were kept loose enough to jam on while recording, with no preconceived endings. It was hard for me, in particular, to let go of that control, to just let things happen but that’s what we wanted to try and that’s what’s given the album its own unique character.

As previewed in the dramatic lead single, This New Technology and now though the sheer pop exuberance of second single, Vital Signs - The Crystal Axis constantly veers from percussive, hypnotic grooves to luxuriant jams via rich morricone-esque textural diversions, walls of sound, and 70s AM melodic forks to map a 50-minute symphony of synth-rock invention.

If there was another genre there was influencing us, we were watching a lot of Italian cannibal films, he adds with a laugh. So maybe you can hear more of a tribal, percussive element going on at times.

And The Crystal Axis?
That refers to the three axes used to define the edges of the unit cell of a crystal, Vincent says. It seemed a suitable description for the creation of the record.