tropic of cancer - stop suffering

[Guest Papillon]

My thoughts:

 

Joshua Eustis helped out on this release and you can hear his influence in these new tracks. This record has a lot going for it, sounds like what Slowdive might be doing if they hadn't stopped making music together.

 

If you listen to the audio (below) and skip ahead to 5:10 of "I woke up and the storm was over" that is like the best part, but both are really strong tracks IMO.

 

Some people compare this to Beach House but I don't personally know why, maybe becuase it's a female and she's American? I like both bands but think these two tracks are better than the last BH album.

 

 

 

Audio:

 

 

 

 

 

Press release:

 

Stop Suffering is the new EP from Tropic of Cancer, due to be released on 12" vinyl and digital formats on October 30, 2015.

It’s the first music to emerge from Camella Lobo’s project since the 2013 debut album, Restless Idylls, and features three new songs - ‘Stop Suffering’, ‘I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over’ and ‘When The Dog Bites’ – written and recorded by Lobo in LA, with additional production and mixing from Joshua Eustis (Sons of Magdalene, Telefon Tel Aviv).

Lobo’s deeply romantic, fatalistic music has always luxuriated in sadness, and that isn’t about to change: themes addressed on Stop Suffering include, she tells us, “disappointing yourself and others…burning your own house down...temporary feelings with permanent consequences.” It is music steeped in pain and regret, certainly, but unlike TOC music of old, these new songs feel less about surrender: even if the title track does seem to address the S-M dynamic at the heart of any meaningful relationship (“For you the world feels so brand new / When you cut me like you do”). On the contrary, they are self-possessed and constructive, even confrontational, embodying the stark command of the EP's title. This is not a record about loss, but about what comes after: and it is mature enough to know that what comes after is no walk in the park. Lobo identifies the idea of “self-help” as being particularly pertinent to these songs, and this comes across: rebirth, redefining the borders of the self, learning to be happy again. Gone, or at least receding, is that decadent, fin-de-siècle preoccupation with decay, with the end. Stop Suffering is a new beginning.

The towering, time-stopping title track is the culmination of Tropic of Cancer’s work to date, and sets the tone for the entire EP. This is music at once intimate and immense. Rarely does an arrangement so sparse exhibit such grandeur: Joshua Eustis's bravura mixing wrings spine-melting effect out of each component, and the dubwise harnessing of space and bass pressure first showcased on Restless Idylls is now a core, defining feature of the band. Lobo's melodic gift has always been strong, but the hypnotic, monochord intensity that characterised TOC’s previous records gives way here to a more concrete song-narrative - which serves only to heighten the sensation of drowned-world psychedelia. Her divine alto still swims in reverb, but the words are clearer, there’s a resolve to communicate through the aqueous haze: “I hope you’ll forgive me…”

‘I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over’, which appears here in a slightly different mix to that which opens the vinyl-only Blackest Ever Black compilation I Can’t Give You The Life You Want, is no less mesmerising, further highlighting Lobo's ever more sophisticated, painterly use of synth textures, not to mention her unmistakably plangent, otherworldly guitar work. She has spent a considerable amount of time crafting these songs, and it shows: for all that we cherish her earlier work, never has Tropic of Cancer sounded so poised, so assured, or so moving as it does today. The EP concludes with the elegiac, frozen-space ambience of ‘When The Dog Bites’; Lobo’s vocal is a radiant blur, consoling across a void of lonesome string-pads, vaporous noise and distant, tranquilized bass-drum detonations.

"I've searched all the world," Lobo sings on 'I Woke Up...', "And it turns out I want all the world." With Tropic of Cancer it always comes back to longing: for the impossible, the irretrievable, the unrequitable.

Tracklist:
A1. Stop Suffering
B1. I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over
B2. When The Dog Bites

Written and recorded by Camella Lobo.
Additional recording, production and mixing by Joshua Eustis.

Cover photograph by Jasmine Deporta.
Layout by Oliver Smith.
Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy, London.

12" vinyl pressed at Optimal, housed in black paper inner and full-colour LP sleeve printed on reverse board. Includes download code (MP3/FLAC).

Customers who buy direct from Blackest Ever Black will receive a free download code when their order is dispatched.

Also available on digital formats.

Distributed by Cargo.

Tropic of Cancer will be touring Europe this Autumn, including a performance at the Five Wretched Years Of Blackest Ever Black event at Berghain in Berlin on October 30, 2015 (alongside Raime, Prurient and more). The full list of dates as it stands is copied below, with many more to be added in the coming weeks. Please direct all booking enquiries here.

Stop Suffering coincides with another Tropic of Cancer release on Blackest Ever Black, Archive: The Downwards Singles (BLACKEST041).

[xox]

pretty good (but i still prefer htrk)

[jellyrajah]

pretty good, sounds very similar to some of the pygmalion demos from slowdive:

 

 

 

(poor quality unfortunately)

[ghOsty]

I like these guys, Restless Idylls was a decent album gonna have to check this one out.

[Guest Papillon]

pretty good (but i still prefer htrk)

 

What's htrk?

pretty good, sounds very similar to some of the pygmalion demos from slowdive:

 

 

 

(poor quality unfortunately)

 

Yeah that's what it reminded me of

I like these guys, Restless Idylls was a decent album gonna have to check this one out.

 

Yep I agree it really stands out for such a subtle sound.

[xox]

Youtube HTRK (read: hate rock). Its a band, the best of its kind, imo.

[Kavinsky]

my fav label at the moment

[WeAreOceans]

my fav label at the moment

 

amen, gutted I'll be missing their anniversary night at Berghain next week

 

Loving these tracks, can't wait to hear more.

[Guest Papillon]

 

my fav label at the moment

amen, gutted I'll be missing their anniversary night at Berghain next week

 

Loving these tracks, can't wait to hear more.

I found the last track online "when the dog bites" and it's so awesome. This is a really top release.

 

You can here the sample at trackitdown.net on the webstore if you search "when the dog bites"

 

The bass is so heavy it sound amazing on headphones, I can't wait to hear on loud speakers.