COLD SPECKS NEW SINGLE ‘BODIES AT BAY’ OUT 1 SEPTEMBER 2014....
VILLAGE UNDERGROUND SHOW 30 SEPTEMBER
NEW ALBUM ‘NEUROPLASTICITY’ 25 AUGUST
Cold Specks, aka Al Spx, will release a new single Bodies At Bay through Mute on 1 September 2014. The follow up to Absisto, Bodies At Bay is propelled by shifting rhythms and pulsating hooks and taken from the forthcoming album ‘Neuroplasticity’ - released a week earlier on 25 August 2014.
Cold Specks, who recently previewed much of ‘Neuroplasticity’ an intimate fan show at The Lexington (The Line Of Best Fit wrote, “Based on tonight’s performance, not only is her upcoming album likely to replicate and expand on their successes, but their command over their own material will only continue to strengthen.”) performs at End of the Road Festival in August before a UK tour that includes Village Underground on 30 September.
29 - 31 Aug Dorset End of the Road Festival
25 Sep Portsmouth Wedgewood Room
28 Sep Bristol Colston Hall 2 The Lantern
29 Sep Brighton Green Door Store
30 Sep London Village Underground
1 Oct Manchester Band on the Wall
Cold Specks, has returned, two years and a world map of tours after 2012’s I Predict a Graceful Expulsion. Hailed as a masterful and wholly original debut, the follow-up is radically expanded. The 26 year-old Canadian singer, under the sobriquet Al Spx, began work on Neuroplasticity while holed-up in a cottage in Wick, Somerset during the winter of 2012. “The record was mapped out in the cottage. I was there for about three months,” she says, “A Formal Invitation, Old Knives and Absisto were essentially written there. They are the more unusual songs on the record. I may have been reflecting on my surroundings. Have you ever been to Glastonbury? It's a pretty fucked up place.”
When Cold Specks wasn’t writing or touring, she was pinballing between asks from an enviable roll call of collaborators and award panels. Shortlisted for the Juno Award and Polaris Prize, Spx also worked on Moby’s album and was invited to play with Joni Mitchell at the singer’s 70th birthday last year, alongside the likes of Herbie Hancock. She contributed to Ambrose Akinmusire's new record for Blue Note and the latest Swans album ‘To Be Kind’. These last two partnerships have left a significant impression on ‘Neuroplasticity’. The indomitable Swans founder Michael Gira appears midway through on Exit Plan, and Akinmusire joins him on the holocaust of a closer A Season of Doubt as well as permeating most of the record with trumpet lines of an anguished, cracking frailty.