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KING KRULE

King Krule

Space Heavy

    Archy Marshall announces Space Heavy, the fourth studio album under his King Krule alias, via XL Recordings. Coming 10 years on from his debut album, Space Heavy presents King Krule at his most articulate; using his years of experience to create a dynamic body of work that reveals something new with every listen.

    Written from 2020 to 2022, between London and Liverpool, Space Heavy took shape over the course of commutes between the two cities where Archy Marshall was splitting his time. Befitting an album quite literally written on the commute between the two places he called home, Archy found himself fascinated by the notion of “the space between” - the space haunted by dreams of love, touching a narrative of lost connection, losing people and situations to the guillotine of the universe. Once written by Archy, the music was developed by frequent collaborator and producer Dilip Harris and long-time band mates Ignacio Salvadores (Saxophonist), George Bass (Drummer), James Wilson (Bass Guitarist) and Jack Towell (Guitarist).

    The result is a 15-track full-length by the musical polymath that inhabits the deepest reaches of the subterranean sonic world that Archy has constructed over the course of his career as King Krule. In it you hear a generational artist stepping into the height of their artistic powers – the auteurism apparent on his debut 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, the shapeshifting sonic palette of The OOZ, the primality of Man Alive! and the raw vulnerability expressed on You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down all coalesce into a wizened, dynamic body of work that reveals new elements with each listen. In line with Archy’s interest in the space between, it is an album wherein the negative space demands the same attention as the positive space. If one is willing to wade into the mire the reward is rich.

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Liam says: The gravely voiced troubadour is back! Following on from 2020's 'Man Alive', 'Space Heavy' showcases King Krule masterfully balancing his trademark mix of scatty punk and lo-fi jazz - resulting in some of his most dynamic and impressive work to date. Superb stuff!

    TRACK LISTING

    Flimsier
    Pink Shell
    Seaforth
    That Is My Life, That Is Yours
    Tortoise Of Independency
    Empty Stomach Space Cadet
    Flimsy
    Hamburgerphobia
    From The Swamp
    Seagirl
    Our Vacuum
    Space Heavy
    When Vanishing
    If Only It Was Warmth
    Wednesday Overcast

    King Krule

    You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down

      Mere weeks before the world went into lockdown, King Krule had performed a handful of European shows which featured tracks from his critically acclaimed third album Man Alive! Performed with a ferocious intensity, the recordings offer fans a glimpse into a live tour that never was, while also reminding them of the artist's unique stage presence and incredible performances delivered across his entire catalogue. Available on double LP and CD, You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down features a setlist of 17 songs that span the acclaimed artist’s entire discography including fan favourites “Easy Easy,” “Baby Blue,” “Out Getting Ribs” and more.

      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: 'You Heat Me Up..' perfectly displays the energetic live show that Marshall has become so known for, and includes some of the biggest tracks from the past couple LP's we've sold so many of in the past few years. A wonderfully immersive and thoroughly worthwhile listen.

      TRACK LISTING

      Out Getting Ribs
      Emergency Blimp
      A Slide In (New Drugs)
      The Ooz
      Cellular
      Stoned Again
      Slush Puppy
      Rock Bottom
      Comet Face
      Perfecto Miserable
      Alone, Omen 3
      Baby Blue
      Half Man Half Shark
      Underclass
      Energy Fleets
      Please Complete Thee
      Easy Easy

      After two feverishly received albums as King Krule, plus another low-key outing under his own name, this extraordinarily gifted 25-year-old from Peckham in South London adds further depth and substance to his oeuvre with another wondrous long-player called ‘Man Alive!’. It arrives packed full of his trademark sonic ambition and compositional skill, as well as the now-familiar corrosive lyricism and lurid social observation.


      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: Following on from his riotously well received LP's, and equally desirable solo album, Marshall returns with his darkest and most clashing outing yet. Snappy percussion and jazzy breaks work their way skilfully below the shadowy vocals and post-punk distortion. Experimental but cohesive, this is definitely the best Krule album yet.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Cellular
      2. Supermarché
      3. Stoned Again
      4. Comet Face
      5. The Dream
      6. Perfecto Miserable
      7. Alone, Omen 3
      8. Slinky
      9. Airport Antenatal Airplane
      10. (Don't Let The Dragon) Draag On
      11. Theme For The Cross
      12. Underclass
      13. Energy Fleets
      14. Please Complete Thee

      One of the most celebrated figureheads on the independent British scene, Archy Marshall returns with the dense, sprawling “The OOZ”, the much anticipated follow up to his debut “Six Feet Beneath the Moon”. Drifting and seeping through the cracks of South London like the album title, King Krule casts an unflinching eye over his kingdom, transforming his observations of all the disorientation and heartbreak of his youth into piercing narratives and poetry that are both startlingly honest and brutally beautiful. With “The OOZ”, Marshall finally takes the crown as poet laureate for the dazed and confused generation, painting a bleak and sometimes harrowing picture of a rapidly splintering city.

      Where “Six Feet Beneath the Moon”, released in 2013, was a rigorous, rambling excavation of Marshall’s expansive body of work to date, “The OOZ” snaps into focus quickly and sharply, his modus operandi coming into view almost immediately. Over jazzy curlicues and guitars, the opener “Biscuit Town” sets out its stall irresistibly as Marshall sings about rapidly disintegrating romance and personal dissolution with acute, almost painful detail. These wrenching themes of self-annihilation and fraying relationships seem inextricably linked in Marshall’s eyes – once you lose yourself to someone else, you inevitably wind up losing yourself completely when they leave – and recur in other tracks. “Why’d you leave me? Because of my depression? You used to complete me but I guess I learnt a lesson” he spits on the roiling “Midnight 01 (Deep Sea Diver)”, and, even layered with the warm vocals of Okay Kaya, “Slush Puppy” is an unsparing dissection of a couple with nothing left to give, like a Gainsbourg and Birkin ballad gone toxic. Elsewhere, things only get darker, as Marshall desperately tries to find safe harbor in the city he knows and loves, only to be thwarted constantly, as on “The Cadet Leaps” and first single “Czech One”. Not even the synthetic high of chemicals, as shown in “Emergency Blimp” and “A Slide In (New Drugs)”, can stanch the suffering.

      Although seeming at first abstract, “The OOZ” as a title proves oddly fitting. There are references littered throughout about its physical manifestation, or as Marshall himself says, “about earwax and snot and bodily fluids and skin and stuff that just comes out of you on a day to day basis”. But it works on a more figurative level too, with the OOZ also representing the unknown depths or horizons the solitary mind can travel to, whether it’s sinking into the deep sea or soaring through the night sky. It may be messy, unwieldy, even unsightly, Marshall seems to say - but we need The OOZ in order to exist.

      TRACK LISTING

      Biscuit Town
      The Locomotive
      Dum Surfer
      Slush Puppy
      Bermondsey Bosom (Left)
      Logos
      Sublunary
      Lonely Blue
      Cadet Limbo
      Emergency Blimp
      Czech One
      A Slide In (New Drugs)
      Vidual
      Bermondsey Bosom (Right)
      Half Man Half Shark
      The Cadet Leaps
      Midnight 01 (Deep Sea Diver)
      La Lune

      King Krule

      6 Feet Beneath The Moon

        As King Krule, 18 year old south east London based singer / producer / songwriter Archy Marshall has quietly and stealthily crafted a reputation for himself as one of the most raw and startling voices of a new generation. With his unexpectedly deep and mournful baritone tracing fissures of disappointment and social disorientation to devastating effect, Marshall has harnessed the inchoate frustration and fury of youth and translated it into a series of brilliant singles released on the likes of True Panther Sounds and Rinse over the past couple of years.

        Now comes ‘6 Feet Beneath The Moon’, his first full-length on XL Recordings / True Panther Sounds, and with it, the much anticipated unveiling of the full scope and scale of Marshall’s vision. Over the course of 14 tracks, Marshall’s passions and confusions are rubbed raw and laid bare, the only connective tissue throughout it all being one of searing lyrical clarity paired with a confounding musical deftness which utterly belies his tender years.

        From the opening clarion call of ‘Easy, Easy’ it is abundantly clear that this is a breathtakingly bold and arresting sonic worldview, as his songs, produced by Marshall along with Rodaidh McDonald (The XX, Savages), open up to become a loose knit meditation on regret and discontent, loss of faith and renewal of hope, and optimism in the face of desperation.

        Eschewing much of his previously released material, ‘6 Feet Beneath The Moon’ firmly yet soundly rejects any notion of contemporary trends or peers to occupy its very own unique place on the music landscape, oscillating gently between the classic 50s soul of Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley to the minimal, avant-garde experimentation of Penguin Café Orchestra, to even the electronic smog and dub textures of Marshall’s beloved Rinse FM. This is a record where the nakedly bluesy stomp of the likes of ‘A Lizard State’ and ‘Easy, Easy’ sit effortlessly next to the low-end frequency and shimmering beats of ‘Neptune Estate’ and ‘Will I Come, after all. It is reflective as much of Marshall’s own eclectic tastes as it is of the frenetic pulse and rhythm of the city around him, particularly the rapidly changing south east areas in which he grew up.

        There is a genuine grittiness and world weariness ingrained here, as exemplified so succinctly when Marshall sings, “Hate… runs through my blood” on the stunning ‘Out Getting Ribs’, the track which started all the fuss.

        All these esoteric textures and fidgety, off-kilter rhythms make perfect sense as an album however, especially when you consider that incredible voiceWhether he is singing ruefully of youthful disaffection and “the heat of my own treason” (‘Ceiling’), or spitting out venomous lines like “I’m not going to crack like you cracked… I don’t want to be trapped in the black of your heart” over the jittery ‘A Lizard State’, its clear that something which marks Marshall out is his stunning ability to turn intense emotional peaks and troughs into spectacular pieces of artful, atmospheric and anthemic balladeering.

        Some of the imagery is disturbing to be sure (as on the closer ‘Bathed In Grey’ where he offhandedly murmurs that “there was blood… found a body in the dark”) but the songs are also imbued with genuine heart as well. Taken as a whole, ‘6 Feet Beneath The Moon’ is the sound of a young man growing up - not for nothing is this album being released, unconventionally enough, on Saturday, which also marks Marshall’s 19th birthday - and attempting to grapple with the realities of the world he inhabits, an unsparing dissection of the social decay that has begun to set in around him - and a fascinating, brutal journey it is too.


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