new video Premiere via Vive Le Rock

 Huge thanks to Vive Le Rock for hosting the video Premiere for SS-100-X today! 

"Mancunian psych-explorers THE SPEED OF SOUND unveil another new video. The cryptically titled 'SS 100 X' is taken from their triple album A Corncucopia, released last year through Big Stir."Spreading like a virus, conspiracy theories have gone mainstream and it all seems to have started long ago with the Kennedy assassination," say the band. "The simple and chaotic explanation of anything is now routinely jettisoned in favour of swirling dark forces and a wilful maliciousness to recognise anything as fact, instead everything is an issue of unshakeable faith in the existence of a sinister deeper plot. The video intentionally uses A.I generated images of variable quality to mix fact with speculation and inference, to match the post-fact world environment of the 21st century."

the article is here

Eight Fourteen Monday

Thanks again to Vive Le Rock magazine for another video premiere! This time it's the turn of Eight Fourteen Monday to get a visual treatment. Click the image to go to the premiere.

"Manc psych explorers THE SPEED OF SOUND have unveiled another new video from their mammoth Cornucopia project.

Three albums in one, 'Eight Fourteen Monday' is taken from the Minerva album, the other two discs in the set being Victory and Bounty.

"Light and airy the music contrasts with the imagery of a dark and gloomy early Monday Manchester morning commute," says the band's John Armstrong. "The inevitable announcements of delays and cancelations say 'We would like to apologise', rather than ‘We apologise'; a subtle difference with a totally different meaning. Everyone is wrapped in their own thoughts and staring at their phones, retreating internally to avoid thinking about the discomfort of the journey. Eighty years ago the bomb fell above Hiroshima at eight fourteen on a Monday."

There are four different artworks for the single:

Permafrost

From the second disc of A Cornucopia, Permafrost was written in the heat of a hotel balcony in Portugal in 2019; before anyone had heard of covid or lockdown. 

Instead the overpowering sense of frozen inertia and stasis evoked within Permafrost's chord structure and melody comes from the seventeenth century frost fairs held on the icebound river Thames. Bonfires were actually lit midstream, the ice was solid enough to support them.

A hauntingly unusual chord sequence, with an implied but non-existent key change and some wonderful muted trumpet from Bob Dinn. It fits the weird post-festive time of January where time stretches and the month seems as though its weeks are repeating. 

Physical; Vinyl and CD and also the downloads are here: https://www.thespeedofsounduk.com/shop-2/

Apocalypse Metropolis

Apocalypse Metropolis is taken from The Speed Of Sound's 'Victory' album, which itself is the 2nd disc of the 'A Cornucopia' trinity. Twinned musically with Apocalypse Acropolis, linked yet totally different in approach, feel and sound. Apocalypse Metropolis envisions a bright, bustling, busy cityscape, of traffic noise and neon lighting creating shadows and glamour, reflecting a civilisation continuing onwards unaware of its imminent collapse. 

A three line phrase skates across eight bars and then shifts in 3/4 time as Bob Dinn’s glorious trumpet is given free rein while ascending piano and vocal harmonies combine with a first Speed Of Sound usage of a string section. This is the very definition of the unexpected.

Physically A Cornucopia can be found on vinyl and CD here: https://www.thespeedofsounduk.com/shop-2/ and the download is here:  

Click the image to go direct to You Tube

https://thespeedofsound.bandcamp.com/album/a-cornucopia-pt-2-victory

The whole trinity

 All three segments of A Cornucopia are now up there on the streamers you can find all the links here; https://thespeedofsound.hearnow.com/a-cornucopia-pt-3-bounty  and mega thanks to Vive Le Rock for hosting the video premiere for Jaunt the latest Conrnucopia track to have a video visualisation and here it is:

Click on the image to go to the preview.

Manchester psych mob THE SPEED OF SOUND have unveiled another new video from their triple album A Cornucopia.

The sprightly 'Jaunt' is taken from the album's third disc Bounty, which is now available to stream here.

"Vigorous and stompingly crunchy, 'Jaunt' is a recklessly and incautiously fast garage-punker, sporting a mutated blues pattern with an added horn section while channelling the party energy of the B-52s," say the band. "'Jaunt' fits neatly into the rock-and-roll genre of 'Instructional Dance Song’, alongside 'The Timewarp' with the added 'Twist' of encouraging the next step in human evolution. 

"As David Bowie said in 'Oh You Pretty Things': 'gotta make way for the homosuperior'. Express your individuality, be the future and maybe gain the added benefit of telepathic and teleporting powers; either way this is about expressing individuality and having a great time doing it."

Victory

Another fabulous review for A Cornucopia: Victory, the second disc of our 2024 Mega Album. 

Ringmaster reviews - "In a year marking their 35-year anniversary, THE SPEED OF SOUND has certainly lit up the celebration with their new A Cornucopia: album trilogy and continue to with the release of the second full-length in the sonic triptych. A Cornucopia: Victory was initially available as part of the Deluxe Three-Disc CD and Vinyl Editions that were released with the digital unveiling of part one, Minerva in May via Big Stir Records. A few days ago the second part of the triplet received its own singular digital release and fair to say that if Minerva lit your fires, Victory will spark a blaze.

For us Victory is an even bolder and richer adventure than its striking predecessor, The UK outfit weaving an even more eclectic and unpredictable escapade for ears and the imagination alike. Manchester hailing, THE SPEED OF SOUND has come a long way in sound and presence since forming back in 1989. Recent years though have truly seen broad attention and keen acclaim gather around them, the release of their critically acclaimed 2021 album Museum Of Tomorrow a major spark in that escalation and of course now the A Cornucopia: collection.

Consisting of father and son John Armstrong (guitars and vocals) and Henry Armstrong (keyboards), Ann-Marie Crowley (vocals and guitar), Kevin Roache (bass guitar), and John Broadhurst (drums) The Speed of Sound is generally described as an indie rock / power pop outfit. They have always had an ever evolving sound that has almost disputed the slim view of that tagging though and within Victory they challenge it with glee and mischief. Even so, they have also bred a creative presence and musical voice that is distinct and obvious to them.

Victory opens with the shadowed wrapped Apocalypse Acropolis, a song contemplating a crumbled landscape around the remnants of a lost civilisation. The song shares a melancholically lit musing within a stroll as infectious as it is on the edge of despondency, a provocative proposal for body and thought alike which with every listen seems more poignant and compelling to every moment clouding and despoiling today.

It is a strong and alluring start to the release that the following From The Cradle To The Stars adds even greater persuasion to with its ethereal charm and lyrical consideration of again a world in chaos but the potential to make amends from the personal to the societal.  As within its predecessor and across the album, Crowley is radiance in voice, celestial harmonies and presence. Around her guitars equally weave a seductive coaxing as rhythms set steady manipulation within the evanescent yet lingering and dreamy earth bound sunspot.

Go For It is next up and revels in the band’s new wave and punk rock instincts, a song drawing on seventies power pop as much as psych rock and post punk inclinations. Epitomising the multi-varied richness of the album and THE SPEED OF SOUND enterprise yet also its organic breeding, the track soon had a hand on favourite tracks honours if challenged throughout Victory with Underground a quick rival. The song instantly weaves a guitar spun indie rock proposal, John Armstrong’s Tom Verlaine-esque vocals defiant in voice and emotion and in fine union with Ann-Marie Crowley. Celebrating the unity of those ignored and often laying hidden from the powers that be, in music but life too, and persistently nagging with its great sonic jangle, the track proved thick captivation.

Lyrically linking to the last song and urging the risk and bravery of following one’s creative heart, Rock Paper Scissors soon held court on reassessing best track moment with its exotic exploration. Cast with psych rock lit tempting and a cosmopolitan infused imagination of sound, the track seduced as it fascinated. Crossing and merging landscapes of world travelling enterprise and other realm intimating possibilities, the song offers pure adventure and one delicious moment to immerse within.

 X-Y Axis stirs a more melodic punk meets sixties garage rock involvement next, its sound decades embracing yet a fresh voracious wind for the now as too is The Same River with its indie pop candour and in turn the rock ‘n’ roll contagion that is A Walk By The Sea. Both of the latter songs provide a fusion of nostalgia and new adventure, the first with its acoustically charged heart a certain blues pop hot spot within the release.

With the excellent E to F uncaging late seventies inspired noise/indie pop shenanigans with feral rock instincts, the album only held tighter grip on ears before the following instrumental Apocalypse Metropolis sparked ears and the imagination to endorse that dense union. The second of the two proved manna to thought and joy, the track like a possibilities rich view on what might have been if the destruction that the album’s opener surveys had been averted.

Across the thought evoking proposal and eagerly infectious canter of Empathic Reaction and through the chilled almost haunting historical reflection of Permafrost, band and album again pulled emotions into their own provocative explorations. Each track again aligns the separate past with the uniqueness of the now, the harmonic climactic winds of the former a sweeping involvement and the jazzy musing of the latter with the trumpet of Bob Dinn providing evocative flaming to its suggestive shadows, darkly enthralling.

The album is closed out by firstly Monsoon, a pop jangling moment of drama and suggestive revelry basking in the release of supressed emotions and joy and lastly with the again almost transcendental realm and beauty of Tranquility Falls. The pair took us on individual adventures proving so easy to explore, success that every moment and breath of Victory shared with our appetites and instincts here."

You can find the piece here: https://ringmasterreviewintroduces.wordpress.com/2024/10/18/the-speed-of-sound-a-cornucopia-victory/ 

and all the links for the album are here: https://victorythespeedofsound.hearnow.com/a-cornucopia-pt-2-victory 

Three things

Mega thanks to Tameside Radio for having us as their Band Of The Week which involves being played every daytime show, every day for a full week - which is fabulous - and also being featured in the printed digital editions of the Tameside Reporter and the Glossop Chronicle. 

(Click the image to go to their Band Of The Week webpage)

And also,

Thanks to Vive Le Rock for their Video Premiere of 'Apocalypse Acropolis' which coincided with the 35th anniversary of our first ever recording session way back in 1989. Nice timing!

(Click the image to go to the feature and playable video link)

And!

The second disc of 'A Cornucopia' is Now Live on all the streaming services and available for download, the physical edition on CD and/or vinyl is still available click here for all the links.

There is still plenty more to come in 2024!