KEN mode have shared the full stream of their new album, Loved, ahead of it’s release on Season Of Mist this Friday, August 31st. Plus European tour dates are incoming this autumn, full dates below.
About the album Jesse Matthewson reveals:
“With ‘Loved’ our entire album was influenced by the cover piece – “Happy Person Having a Pleasant Conversation in Public”, which Randy debuted Sept 26, 2016. We knew from the moment he posted it that we needed this to be the cover to our next work – ‘Loved’, which we had earmarked shortly after we’d finished recording ‘Success’. For Randy, we know the piece is a bit of an encapsulation of his relationship with sleep paralysis, but for us, it’s come to represent the face of ‘responsible’ adult life in 2017/2018. In late 2016 he printed stickers for the piece, just as a bit of a promotion – but I kept one of these stickers on my dresser from that moment on…our eyes meeting every morning upon my waking; every day, for the entire year we worked on ‘Loved’. I felt like this ritual encouraged an artistic arms race, where we had to create an album that would live up to the ecstatic nastiness of this image. We were also just generally fed up with much of what life in 2017/18 has come to represent, working in the music industry in general, and wanted to create something wholly noisy and ugly, yet with an underlying humour – because if you’re not laughing these days, you’re probably crying..”
Echoing this sentiment in relation to the album cover, artist Randy Ortiz comments, “Just look at the illustrations and listen to the music. They are made for each other. A guttural mess covered in spit-moistened charcoal. The crunchy grit I felt in my teeth as I inhaled the black carbon and ash from making this work, representing the noise they’ve created but exhaled and shot out in reverse. It’s perfect.”
EUROPEAN LIVE DATES:
w/Birds In Row & Coilguns
Nov 15 – Joué, FR @ Temps Machine
Nov 16 – Orléans, FR @ Astrolabe
Nov 17 – Bordeaux, FR @ Void
Nov 18 – Toulouse, FR @ Rex
Nov 19 – Montpellier, FR @ Blacksheep
Nov 20 – Clermont, FR @ Raymond
Nov 21 – Lausanne, CH @ Romandie
Nov 22 – Besancon, FR @ L’Antonnoir
Nov 23 – Kalsruhe, DE @ Die Stadtmitte
Nov 24 – Gigors, FR @ CBGC’s
Nov 25 – Milano, IT @ Magnolia
Nov 27 – Nantes, FR @ Le Ferrailleur
Nov 28 – Le Havre, FR @ Fort de Tourneville
Nov 29 – Paris, FR @ Le Petit Bain
Dec 1 – London, UK @ MacBeth
Dec 2 – Brussels, BE @ Magasin4
Prior to that the band shall be playing the following dates:
w/Shallow North Dakota
Sept 28 – Winnipeg, MB @ The Good Will Social Club
Sept 29 – Saskatoon, SK @ The Black Cat Tavern
Sept 30 – Calgary, AB @ Palamino Smokehouse
w/Birds In Row
Oct 13 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club
Oct 14 – Chicago, IL @ Live Wire
Oct 15 – St. Louis, MO @ Fubar
Oct 16 – Memphis, TN @ Hi-Tone
Oct 18 – Atlanta, GA @ Basement
Oct 19 – Columbia, SC @ New Brookland Tavern
Oct 20 – Falls Church, VA @ VFW 9278
Oct 21 – Boston, MA @ Middle East
Oct 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
Oct 23 – Portland, ME @ Geno’s
Oct 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Saint Vitus
Oct 25 – Rochester, NY @ Photo City
Oct 26 – Toronto, ON @ Bovine Sex Club
Oct 27 – Montreal, QC @ Turbo Haus
Oct 28 – Quebec City, QC @ La Source De La Martiniere
Oct 29 – Ottawa, ON @ House of Targ
Check our review of KEN Mode’s awesome new album Loved.