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