Scheduled for launch through The Flenser on October third, Agriculture have introduced their new album, The Non secular Sound. Pre-order the album HERE.
”That is an album in regards to the actually elementary human experiences of struggling, pleasure, and love. We discover lots of the profound in these fundamental experiences. To us they’re by definition religious and value singing and screaming about. With this report, we wished to make music that connects the depth of day by day life with the depth of an encounter with Spirit” – Agriculture.
When the founding father of Chinese language Zen, Bodhidharma, was requested by the emperor of China ”What’s the true that means of the holy reality?” He replied, ”Huge vacancy. Nothing holy.” This isn’t background music. This isn’t for vibe. The Non secular Sound is music that asks.
”Bodhidharma, the founding father of Zen Buddhism, was an Indian monk who famously stared on the wall of a cave for 9 years. He even minimize off his eyelids with a view to stop himself from falling asleep,” Dan Meyer says of the primary single, additionally shared as we speak. ”At one time, one other monk approached him in his cave and pleaded ‘grasp, my head is on hearth with nervousness, are you able to pacify my thoughts?’ Bodhidharma simply saved staring on the wall and Huike waited exterior of the cave all evening till he was buried in snow as much as his waist. Lastly, as a gesture of desperation he minimize off his arm and provided it to the nice grasp. Huike later grew to become Bodhidharma’s successor.” Take heed to Bodhidharma HERE.
Throughout its runtime, The Non secular Sound traces a story arc by means of extremes: searing, sky-cracking catharsis on aspect A; a slow-burning, devotional undercurrent on aspect B. The album is essentially a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters, Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson: distinct voices, deeply complementary.
Dan writes like somebody clawing towards the divine by means of noise, channelling Zen Buddhism, historic collapse, ecstatic grief. Whereas, grounded in queer historical past and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the current, Leah’s songs transfer in a different way. They carry the load of survival as day by day ritual. Her writing asks find out how to honour queer group and collective wrestle with out turning it into identification branding or private mythmaking—find out how to keep sincere, find out how to keep current. Although distinct, their voices converge in a singular religious grammar—one which defines the totality of The Non secular Sound, not as separate components, however as one unified expression.
Agriculture’s formation mirrors this duality. Whspirat started as a unfastened collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer within the Los Angeles noise scene developed right into a shared pursuit of the elegant by means of heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the venture solidified into the band’s present type. The ecstatic black metallic basis was laid on 2022’s The Circle Chant, expanded into one thing extra exact and far-reaching on their 2023 self-titled full-length, and deepened additional with 2024’s Residing Is Simple: a report that embraced devotional depth and radiant heaviness in equal measure.
Agriculture’s writing course of is constructed on dismantling and revision of self. Dan and Leah carry songs to the band after which permit them to be pulled aside and rebuilt communally: reshaped by means of battle, repetition, and deep belief. Richard provides guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms that are typically acquainted however typically unconventional. Lastly, with Richard producing, the ultimate type of every tune is realized by means of intense collaborative work within the studio. Though a time consuming and ego-frustrating course of, this permits the band to seek out the spirit of the songs not by means of inspiration, however by means of persistence.
But, even in its most bold moments, The Non secular Sound stays rooted within the abnormal and within the day-to-day relationships between the individuals who made it. Gasoline station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on flooring. Taking part in reveals in rooms that scent like mildew. The spirit right here isn’t summary, it’s stay. That is religious music that begins with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van.
Agriculture doesn’t supply salvation. The Non secular Sound isn’t a map out of the hearth. What it affords as an alternative is presence: a confrontation with the second, nevertheless insufferable, nevertheless divine. It insists that that means continues to be attainable, even in a world hell-bent on lowering every little thing to content material, and the place struggling itself could be conducive to restoration. Because the Buddhist saying goes “the one approach out is in.”
There’s a sort of quiet violence in how music is consumed as we speak—flattened into background noise, sonic fragrance fed into algorithms, bought as life-style. It’s leisure as anesthesia. Sound with out the load. The Non secular Sound stands as a pointed refusal of this situation. This isn’t a playlist. This isn’t a vibe.
~
The Non secular Sound tracklist –
1 – MY GARDEN
2 – FLEA
3 – MICAH (5.15AM)
4 – THE WEIGHT
5 – SERENITY
6 – THE SPIRITUAL SOUND
7 – DAN’S LOVE SONG
8 – BODHIDHARMA
9 – HALLELUJAH
10 – THE REPLY
Agriculture | Web site | Bandcamp | Instagram
{Photograph} | Olivia Crumm ©
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