Tranquility Falls

 The latest video for the Cornucopia mega-album project has its Premiere today, thanks once again to Vive Le Rock magazine who have been very supportive - here is Tranquility Falls: (click the track art work to go to the video)

Manchester psych explorers THE SPEED OF SOUND have unveiled a final video from their mammoth A Cornucopia triple album.

Taken from part two of the triptych, Victory, "'Tranquility Falls' describes the moment when an enveloping inner peace descends, becoming at one both internally with the immediate surroundings and also with the wider outside world - largely possible through looking further afield in the context of the whole universe or by focusing on the minute detail. Uplifting and joyous, it revels in serenity, but this is an all embracing serenity with a booming heavy bass and entwined guitar lines expanding and echoing through space rather than a mere silent mindfulness exercise."

Available on vinyl, CD and digitally, A Cornucopia is available here.

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:

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."

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!

New single from A Cornucopia

AND: Mind Palace is now a stand alone single as well as being track six on the first disc of the A Cornucopia trinity of albums.

With a video premiere on Vive Le Rock Magazine's website too. (Click the single sleeve image to go to the premiere.)

As they say: 

Mancunian psych explorers THE SPEED OF SOUND are back with another new single and video.Taken from their new triple album A Cornucopia,'Mind Palace'is described by the band as a "homage to individual identity, memory and self-awareness. Not the rose-tint re-run memory of nostalgia, rather the interactive memory that makes up the essence of a person; their very being. Sparked by a visit to Sintra Palace in Portugal and recalling a Sherlock Holmes memory-file technique, 'Mind Palace' ponders the loss of self with fading memory while the twelve-string Rickenbacker chimes and canters."

And they are correct we are explorers, it is what we have always done with music.

Find the whole full physical trinity of albums here: https://bigstirrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-cornucopia-minerva  

Single release day

The first day a new project steps into the outside world is always exciting and West Wind is now the first of the Cornucopia project pieces to break out be heard and also seen, huge thanks to Vive Le Rock magazine for giving the video a premiere on their website and for calling us Psychonauts! 

"Long-serving Manchester psychonauts THE SPEED OF SOUND are back with a brand new video which they're premiering with Vive Le Rock!

Described as "recklessly fast and invigorating rock and roll, borrowing a Bo Diddley beat cunningly melded with a Wagnerian horn section," 'West Wind' is the lead track from the band's forthcoming new album.

“Lyrically this is a protest song," says singer, guitarist and songwriter John Armstrong. "A metaphor for the dominance of the all-pervading major label ‘music industry’ onslaught, snowplowing independent artists out of the way.”

Out today through L.A. label Big Stir Records, 'West Wind' is available to stream/download here."

And! Here is the video... click the image to watch on YouTube:

 

The Day The Earth Caught Fire

Vive Le Rock Magazine has premiered our newest video release, The Day The Earth Caught Fire from Museum Of Tomorrow... and you can find it here: https://vivelerock.net/this-planets-on-fire/

"...Manchester sonic explorers THE SPEED OF SOUND have a brand new video which they’re premiering with Vive Le Rock!

‘The Day The Earth Caught Fire’ is taken from the band’s acclaimed album Museum Of Tomorrow, described by us as ‘unique and other-worldly’ and out now through Big Stir Records.

“A swagger borne of artistic confidence as wah-wah guitar lines blend with the rotating speakers of the organ leading into a bouncing infectious chorus, driven forward by the always propulsive rhythm section,” say the band. “Written while wild moorland fires raged in the hills around their native Manchester, The Day The Earth Caught Fire mixes the man-made horrors of climate malfunction with a joyous wake up call, encased within an alternative rock dance-anthem. All achieved while unloading The Speed Of Sound’s characteristic lyrical satire and wit against both those that party as the planet burns and those unable (or unwilling) to see beyond their own narrow field of vision. The video mixes allegorical volcanic eruptions with the pervading global adhesion to raw economics and untamed greed.”..."

Blood Sweat And Tears of psychnauts

A video premiere for Blood Sweat And Tears from Museum Of Tomorrow within the webpages of Vive Le Rock! magazine:

Apparently we are psychnauts, which sounds cool... click the image to go to the article...

Thanks to Gerry Ranson for the write up and for Vive Le Rock! for taking an interest in independent music, and not just pushing the corporate feed.

Vive Le Rock review of Museum Of Tomorrow

 Huge thank to Vive Le Rock magazine for reviewing Museum Of Tomorrow in issue 85, very nice:

“Bright and poppy future shocks.
8/10
Some very interesting and rather charming stuff here from Manchester’s The Speed Of Sound, who present a future shock with the science-fiction-drenched ‘Museum Of Tomorrow’, presented as two galleries ss opposed to two sides of vinyl, each tune representing a conceptual image. Musically this is a mixed bag from sunny and bright New-Wave styled pop to jangly indie in the style of 90’s bands such as Salad, all the way through to punky cuts thst have long shadows of Blondie trailing after them. There is even a 60s aesthetic at work on the spacey ‘Wired And Tired’. The duelling vocals of Ann-Marie Crowley and guitarist John Armstrong work a treat especially on tunes like ‘Opium Eyes’, while instrumentation remains at a high technical level as The Speed Of Sound launch themselves through various stratospheres. Unique and otherworldly.”
Bruce Turnbull
Vive Le Rock (no.85) 27Aug2021

The one-click-to-everywhere album link is here

and here's the review in its natural setting