London art punk/avant-punk band Italia 90 have announced the release of their debut full-length album 'Living Human Treasure'.
The 11-track record will be out on January 20th via Brace Yourself Records. Pre-order your copy here.
Across the album, tracks from the band’s earliest days (New Factory, Competition) sit side by side with newer tracks, in a breadth of new styles for the band. "We consciously drew on elements from other genres, like new wave, goth rock, post-hardcore, jazz, jungle and ranchera that have inspired us but which we hadn't incorporated into our music previously”.
Regarding new single Leisure Activities, the band offer the following "Leisure Activities is a response to the tendency of countless modern bands who identify as, or are described as political, when their commentary amounts to little more than mundane descriptions of British life or sneering caricatures of an idle working class entirely of their invention. The fact that these groups seem to have far more hostility towards the apparently ordinary people they describe than the state or economic conditions that created them speaks volumes."
To record the album, the band decamped to the residential Echo Zoo studio in Eastbourne. With five days booked – far longer than the band had ever recorded for in the past – the whole album was tracked within two days with producer Louis Milburn. For the rest of the allotted time, they explored the nooks and crannies of the building and the bounty of unusual instruments lying around to add mystical textures to the bones of the songs.
Italia 90's songs aim to be timeless. Like the painting on the album’s cover, which shows a crowd of people all facing away from the viewer, the idea of the collective takes precedence over the individual. “I care deeply about the things that I’m singing about,” says singer, Les Miserable, “but I don’t think that it needs to be me that is saying it. I have my point of view, and think that the ideology that I’m forwarding in the songs is correct, and very important, but it’s not important that it’s me saying them. If I did, I would already be contradicting the things that I am saying in the songs.”
Across the record, the band step off the relentless, exhausting hamster wheel and create something fantastic with the abundance of ingredients already here, pointing a different way forwards.
Check out the album's tracklist and watch the video for "Leisure Activities", below.
Living Human Treasure Tracklisting:
1. Cut
2. Leisure Activities
3. Magdalene
4. Competition
5. New Factory
6. The MUMSNET Mambo
7. Funny Bones
8. Golgotha
9. Does He Dream?
10. Tales From Beyond
11. Harmony
Tags: Italia 90
