Leeds-based Menace Beach return with news of their third album ‘Black
Rainbow Sound’, which is due out August 31st via Memphis Industries. New album
Black Rainbow Sound is the band's first new material since early 2017's Lemon
Memory, and after a self-imposed break from tour duties, the album exhibits a
profound shift in their sound, whilst still mainlining the blasts of noise,
visceral power, and timeless pop songsmithery of their previous releases.
Unlike the bands previous records, Black Rainbow Sound came to life in the bands
studio, where Liza Violet and Ryan Needham built dense late-night orchestrations
from drum machines, synthesizers, loops and guitar noise, before being ripped
apart and reimagined by the full Menace Beach cast at The Nave studio in Leeds
with coproducer Matt Peel (Eagulls). Never ones to shy away from an intriguing
collaboration, Black Rainbow Sound contains songs featuring Brix Smith of The
Fall, and Brix and the Extricated. The synchronicity of the universe just forced
us and Brix together. The very day l finished reading her biography she played
us on her BBC 6music show along with a wonderfully out-there monologue of how
the song made her feel. I said thanks, we got chatting and it went from there.
She's a burning comet of positive energy On Black Rainbow Sound, Menace Beach
continue to explore their own unique aesthetic, venturing much further into a
colourful world of bizzaro no-wave analogue synths and static drenched
electronic euphoria, which they have been circling for some time. Lustrous,
dizzying, and bursting with cacophonous vintage electronics – the sounds on
Black Rainbow Sound act as an otherworldly backdrop for the album's enigmatic
lyrics to play out. Celestial conversations, night terrors, love, anti-love,
good vs evil, light vs dark, friendly crows, death, depression, and teenage
tongues and are all here to absorb; the more introspective topics often hidden
in plain sight atop celebratory choruses, and melodic hooks.