Simply Thrilled Records of Glasgow, Scotland are delighted to announce the debut album by lo-fi tropical-cosmic pop two-piece Miracle Strip. Titled Magic Milk, the 7-track collection will be released on cassette and download on May 25, 2015, with a limited number of copies available in select independent shops for Record Store Day on April 18. It’s preceded by the single ‘Took A Running Jump’, which is premiering now via Clash Magazine (“a deliriously fun return”), plus a launch party at The Old Hairdresser’s in Glasgow on Saturday, May 23. Miracle Strip have been announced for the End of the Road Festival in Dorset, September 4-6 as one of the winners of their unsigned bands competition, and will feature on the forthcoming End of The Road x Rough Trade Shops compilation.

Formed in 2012, Miracle Strip are a duo comprising of brothers Fergus Christie Jack (vocals, synths, lyrics) – formerly of meteoric noise-pop trio Dirty Summer – and Malcolm Bruce Jack (guitars, synths, programming). They hail from rural Fife, where they still write and rehearse, and are based in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Miracle Strip believe that lo-fi needn't mean low ambition. They aspire to the wry lyricism of the Magnetic Fields and Jens Lekman, the pulsing arpeggiators and fuzzy electronica of Hot Chip and The Radio Dept, and the gleaming playfulness of The Associates and glossiest Orange Juice. They stand for returning a spirit of adventure, mischief and meaning to pop music. So far as budget permits.

Miracle Strip’s debut single ‘Girl Gang’ (b/w ‘Stephanie on the Moon’) was released on 7” white vinyl in October 2013, attracting such plaudits as “thrusting, roughed-up pop music, imbued with a narrative flare that seems rare in much contemporary songwriting” (Tiny Mix Tapes) and “think Simple Minds fronted by Yoni Wolf recorded on eight-track” (Scotland on Sunday). The single was named by respected music critic Pete Paphides (The Guardian/BBC 6 Music) as one of his favourite vinyl releases of the year. Miracle Strip have supported the likes of The Wave Pictures, STRFKR, TRUST, The Sexual Objects and Man Without Country, and played festivals including the Kelburn Garden Party and, with an epic 3am stage-closing set, Lost Map’s Howlin’ Fling on the Isle of Eigg.

Magic Milk was recorded across a long summer at Cry Beach studio on the South Side of Glasgow under the expert guidance and input of producer, engineer and synthesiser/trumpet wizard Gavin Thomson (Findo Gask/GRNR/Honey and the Herbs/Glamour Muscle), with additional drumming – recorded in Berlin – by Yoshi Nakamoto (The Aislers Set/Still Flyin’). The natural culmination and encapsulation of Miracle Strip’s embryonic years from bedroom project to fully-fledged band, Magic Milk is a tribute at once joyful and solemn to transition, sedation, trauma, dreams of warmer climes and blind determination in the face of recurrent bad luck. From the gleaming ‘Took A Running Jump’ with its chiming melody and transcendent soaring middle, to the hazy sturm and jangle of ‘Daydreams of Crashing’, the down-tempo psychedelic wonder of ‘Flying Chances’ and the fruity electro-pop of ‘Lemon Sorbet’.

The short instrumental from which Magic Milk draws its title relates to anaesthesia – a recurring image across the record, both in the sometimes dreamy nature of the music and lyrics which naturally float somewhere between asleep and awake, consciousness and unconsciousness. Eight-minute closer ‘Two Silhouettes’ is maybe the album’s crowning achievement – an apocalyptic vision of love where “smoke spews from burning land and ruins the perfect horizon”, culminating with a pumping instrumental outro and a triumphant brass fanfare, and bookended by a field recording of bicycle wheels spinning down Woodlands Road in Glasgow one late summer evening.

MIRACLE STRIP LIVE:
 
SAT, APR 18 @ VOXBOX MUSIC, EDINBURGH (RECORD STORE DAY IN-STORE)

SAT, APR 25 @ BETAMAX CLUB NIGHT, STUDIO 24, EDINBURGH (LATE SHOW)

SAT, MAY 23 @ THE OLD HAIRDRESSER’S, GLASGOW
(MAGIC MILK ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY W/ GLAMOUR MUSCLE + MORE TBA)

SEP 4-6 @ END OF THE ROAD FESTIVAL, LARMER TREE GARDENS, DORSET 

MAGIC MILK TRACKLISTING

A:
1. TOOK A RUNNING JUMP
2. DAYDREAMS OF CRASHING
3. FLYING CHANCES
4. LEMON SORBET 

B:

5. MAGIC MILK
6. AN OCEAN APART
7. TWO SILHOUETTES 

Social Media

miracle-strip.co.uk /// simply-thrilled.co.uk