British psychedelic-rock outfit Temples have teamed up with Sean Lennon (The Claypool Lennon Delirium) to help produce their new single, “Paraphernalia”, out today via ATO Records. The dreamy, uptempo rock track is the band’s first new original release since their Hot Motion studio album arrived last September. Salvation has surfaced to save us all from the trials and tribulations of the so-called new normal. We’ve worked tirelessly over the past months with Sean Lennon at the controls, no borders, no rules, no distractions – just unfiltered sentiment.
The future begins with getting back in touch with yourself. The wait is almost over.
“I’d always been a fan of the band. Had seen them play some pretty great shows over the years,” Lennon added in a press statement about his collaboration with the rock outfit. “When I first heard the demo for ‘Paraphernalia’ I knew they had a great tune.” Listen to the new song below.
The 4:23 minute recording delivers swells of layered vocals and catchy lead lines from synth-driven strings. The song was recorded during the Hot Motion sessions and was mixed by Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips).
The band comprises of Primus vocalist and bassist Les Claypool and Sean Lennon, with the follow-up to 2016’s Monolith Of Phobos titled South Of Reality.
Released on February 22nd of this year via ATO Records. Speaking about his partnership with Claypool, Lennon tells Rolling Stone: “We are great friends indeed, and I guess I’m not nervous in quite the same way as I was in the beginning, but I still make sure to do as much preparation as possible.
“Ideas always come quick for us, and I think that’s why we like working together. But playing with Les is like knowing you’re gonna be playing tennis with Rafael Nadal – it makes you wanna brush up on a few things before you get on the court.”
The video for “Blood & Rockets,” from The Claypool Lennon Delirium, taken from their second album release “South Of Reality” suddenly I am no longer offended by Claypool’s sophomoric sense of humor and no longer bored with Mr. Lennon. Quite the contrary! “South Of Reality” is a smart, exciting, well-played, and admittedly, somewhat out of control mix of Pepper-era Beatles, Barrett-era Floyd, and all the listenable bits from your favorite psych and prog records. It has more than a few kitchen sinks, but always keeps you engaged by never forgetting to toss in a great hook or melody with everything else. This one is consistently entertaining, something that becomes increasingly more difficult to say.
From The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s new album “South of Reality” out Feb 22nd, 2019.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium, as the name suggests, has as its nucleus Les Claypool and Sean Lennon. Their latest album, “South of Reality”, was recorded at Rancho Relaxo — the name Claypool has given his home studio in Sonoma County, California. “I don’t bring in producers or engineers because I’m the only one who knows where to kick it when one of the relays sticks,” Claypool says.
In town for a show at the Varsity Theater, the Claypool Lennon Delirium — accompanied by keyboardist JoãoNogueira and drummer Paulo Baldi — visited The Current for a full studio session hosted by Mary Lucia.
“With Sean and I, we tend to push and pull each other,” Claypool says of the band’s creative process. “I think that’s what’s good about our relationship is we push each other into directions we wouldn’t normally go.”
“I think the thing about Les is that he doesn’t overthink things when it comes to recording because he has a sort of belief in capturing spontaneity,” Lennon adds. “He’s really into capturing the moment like a documentary filmmaker.”
Beyond talking about the latest record, Lucia asks about which instrument, during the learning phase, is probably least forgiving to neighbors. “I know the answer to that one, because I was that neighbor to someone beneath me. I was learning drums,” Lennon says. “I think like a lot of kids, I didn’t really have a sensitivity towards what it’s like to not want to hear the noise. So yeah, I used to actually practice [drums] really loud with the window open and the whole building would complain.”
One of Lennon’s neighbors didn’t complain, however. That neighbor? Roberta Flack.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium perform ‘Blood and Rockets’ from their 2019 album, ‘South of Reality’ (ATO Records) live in The Current studio.
The Band : Les Claypool, bass, vocals Sean Lennon, guitar, vocals João Nogueira, keyboards Paulo Baldi, drums
“Little Fishes”
“Blood and Rockets”
“Easily Charmed By Fools”
All songs from the Claypool Lennon Delirium’s 2019 album, South of Reality, available on ATO Records.
Just when it seems the shadow of The Beatles can’t get any longer and everything in rock has been done before, along come Sean Lennon and Les Claypool, asking the musical question: What if, instead of ducking The Beatles, you embraced the band’s tricks the galumphing marches, the sun-dazed harmonies and then made them a little weird?
South of Reality is the second album by the duo, who perform as The Claypool Lennon Delirium. As the bassist and chief prankster of Primus, Claypool has always been a bit of a mad scientist, pushing his gawky, tottering funk-metal creations to the brink of absurdity. But he’s also a secret pop fan, who says he’s spent 30 years trying, with mixed results, to write catchy hooks. In Sean Lennon (famous son of John), Claypool has a collaborator with an instantly recognizable voice, for whom this kind of candy comes naturally.
The two began working together in 2015, after Lennon’s band, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, toured as an opening act for Primus. They released their debut in 2016, and began work on this follow-up with a week of open-ended jamming they recorded on their phones. Then, each went off and wrote songs built on those riffs.
As with The Beatles, it’s clear who the primary composer is on each tune. But Claypool says both multi-instrumentalists felt comfortable offering tweaks and suggestions during the recording. Many of the songs explore a surreal intersection — where the fitful upheavals of progressive rock collide with soaring, blissed-out refrains.
From The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s new album “South of Reality” Released February 22nd, 2019.
South Of Reality, The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s epic sophomore album might be just the antidote this sick world needs. Music so potent it could repel an asteroid impact from space, these seasoned warriors of psychedelia have crafted timeless songs that may as well be chiseled in stone. The monolithic dream team’s new record was produced by Les Claypool and Sean Lennon themselves, and engineered and mixed by Les Claypool. Grab your goggles and a month’s supply of Kool-Aid because you’re about to go for a ride on a rock n roll rocket ship, and frankly you may never come back!
Listen to “Blood and Rockets- Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons – Movement II, Too the Moon”
From The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s new album, “South of Reality”, available everywhere February 22nd, 2019
Primus bassist Les Claypool and multi-instrumentalist Sean Lennon have united for their second collaborative album as the Claypool Lennon Delirium. The self-produced South of Reality due to be released February 22nd, 2019 via ATO Records and available for pre-orders now it follows their 2016 debut, Monolith of Phobos, and the proggy 2017 covers EP, Lime and Limpid Green.
The experimental psych-rock duo previewed the LP with the six-and-a-half-minute “Blood and Rockets,” a sprawling epic that finds Lennon and Claypool crooning and snarling, respectively, over spacey synths and chiming guitars. “How high does your rocket fly?” Lennon sings on the chorus, his voice elevated to a blissful falsetto. “Better be careful ’cause you just might set the world on fire.”
Lennon saysthe song’s dark lyrics document “the lascivious exploits of famed JPL rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the man who not only helped America get to the moon with liquid fuel technology, but was also a Magister Templi in Aleister Crowley’s cult, the Ordo Templi Orientis.” He added that Parsons “sadly passed away in a violent explosion during a secretive alchemical experiment at his house in Pasadena.”
The Lennon Claypool Delirium will promote the record on a headlining U.S. tour. Lennon and Claypool co-produced South of Reality themselves, with the Primus frontman engineering and mixing at his own Rancho Relaxostudio in Sonoma County, California. They wrote and recorded the album over roughly two months, prompted by what Claypool describes as “the desire to sit in a room and make space sounds again.”
“Basically it was the same setup in the same place,” the bassist says of their process. “I am a creature of habit and have all my old vintage gear dialed in the way I like it, so I like to helm from the same spot.” The South of Reality announcement arrives just barely a year after Primus issued their ninth LP, The Desaturating Seven, but Claypool emphasizes that he started with a clean slate on the latest Delirium set, with zero “cross-pollination between the two projects.”
Lennon, who was admittedly a bit intimidated years ago before his first jam session with Claypool, felt more at ease during their most recent sessions. However, he still describes Claypool as a disciplined “ship captain” who expects his musicians to be prepared on day one of any rehearsal.
“We are great friends indeed, and I guess I’m not nervous in quite the same way as I was in the beginning, but I still make sure to do as much preparation as possible,” he says. “Ideas always come quick for us, and I think that’s why we like working together. But playing with Les is like knowing you’re gonna be playing tennis with Rafael Nadal – it makes you wanna brush up on a few things before you get on the court.”
The pair wrote in every possible permutation: jamming, bringing in seeds of musical ideas, fleshing out tracks from scratch. Their resulting material feels like an organic extension of Monolith of Phobos, blending the wildly surreal and psychedelic with satirical social commentary.
The paranoid, Eastern-tinged “Cricket Chronicles Revisited” – a continuation of “The Cricket and the Genie” from their first LP – is a critique on what Lennon calls “our modern tendency to over-medicate both children and adults alike.” He elaborates: “Most people just need to eat better and exercise, but we’re told to believe the only answer is some drug that sounds like it comes from another galaxy. The [song’s] spoken word outro is just an extension of that Big Pharma advertisement language; the side effects are so unbelievably insane it’s hard to imagine taking any drug that can give you octopus tentacles, or make you spontaneously combust. Honestly the real ones are worse than that I just can’t mention them here.”
Claypool developed the bouncy, heady “Easily Charmed By Fools” from a line in a Charles Bukowski story that he swiped and let linger for years in his note book. “When it came time to flesh it out, there were no lack of examples to support that notion,” he says. “Who is the bigger fool; the fool or those that follow the fool? It may be the guy that tries to write a song about such things in an environment where rational thought is being vilified on a daily basis.”
South Of Reality, The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s epic sophomore album might be just the antidote this sick world needs. Music so potent it could repel an asteroid impact from space, these seasoned warriors of psychedelia have crafted timeless songs that may as well be chiseled in stone. The monolithic dream team’s new record was produced by Les Claypool and Sean Lennon themselves, and engineered and mixed by Les Claypool at his own Rancho Relaxo studio in Sonoma County, California. Available worldwide on Feb 22nd, 2019.
The Moonlandingz are about to start their final tour of the year, and in time for that, here’s an EP around the track This Cities Undone – that first appeared on their debut album Interplanetary Class Classics. There is a brand new song – Dirty Red Rose, a remix by Confidence Man, and a single version of the title track featuring guest vocals by Yoko Ono and Human League’s Phil Oakey.
“I’m a big fan of Yoko’s 70’s albums like Approximately Infinite Universe and during a late night semi drunken recording session, I suggested to Sean Lennon – who we were working with up at his studio in upstate New York – that this crazy psychedelic freak out track that we had on the boil – but had no lyrics for – could really work with Yoko doing her thing on it. Sean got it straight away, said that he thought it was a good idea and after that brief suggestion it was never mentioned again.
About 2 months later I’m at a tiny gig in some old spoon factory in Sheffield, watching a bloke play a home made synth in a shoe box with a wind up clockwork parrot sat on his shoulder, when I get an email off Sean titled MUMLANDINGZ... In the email was a video clip of his mum doing this incredible vocal over our music… The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, her voice stirs you like the most primal of rock and roll, it’s got so much spirit, it’s proper witchcraft!
After receiving the Yoko vocal, Lias Saoudi and I set about writing some words for the track back in Sheffield. A week or so later we got our friends Philip Oakey (Human League) and Rebecca Taylor (Self Esteem) to come and sing on the track and then Dean Honer & I went back to NYC to mix it. It was a song that went on quite a journey, but it was worth every bit of the trip. I see the track as a celebration of the activist in us all, the downtrodden, the ignored, people bullied by their local council, the government, the CEO’s in the workplace, the people you never voted for making a complete pig’s ear of running your cities, lunching out on decent hard working taxpayers money, whilst thousands of kids sleep rough in the street and whilst tower blocks burn. We live in frightening times, under the pretence of a so called democracy and something’s got to give!”
The whole EP can be heard now, and it’ll be coming out on 10″ next month
Black Lips have a new album out today, Satan’s graffiti or God’s art?, and to support it they have a new video for the snarling “Can’t Hold On.” This is their first video to feature the band’s new lineup: founding members Cole Alexander and Jared Swilley, joined by former guitarist Jack Hines, Oakley Munson on drums and Zumi Rosow on sax.
And man, this one’s gleefully dark and trippy, and has a budget lower than The Blair Witch Project. Scorpions, skulls, wandering dogs, teething babies, police officers, spinning hands and mounds of suds are all common images in the clip. There’s a point where the band is playing in a circle of flames, and that probably doesn’t even crack the top 10 of preposterous things.
Alexander snarls about not being able to hold on to anything, and that’s what this Ian Cone-directed video feels like. Everything is coming apart at the seams. And in that fracturing, a wonderful mess has been made.
Atlanta flower punk pioneers Black Lips and their first album in three years, Satan’s graffiti or God’s art?, is set for release May 5th on Vice Records. Produced by Sean Lennon at his studio compound in upstate New York throughout 2016, the album is the group’s most musically evolved to date, while still staying true to their original blistering take on fuzzy, dirty rock n’ roll.
During the recording the band isolated themselves from the outside world, infusing the album with a focused liveliness similar to the spirit that brought them together in the first place. On Satan’s graffiti or God’s art? founding members Cole Alexander and Jared Swilley teamed with former guitarist Jack Hines (who played in the group from 2002-2004) and recent additions Oakley Munson on drums and Zumi Rosow on saxophone. The album also features contributions by Saul Adamczewski of Fat White Family and guest vocals by Yoko Ono.
Satan’s graffiti or God’s art? vindicates Black Lips for sticking it out through many years of shifting trends and buzz bands; a sonically captivating document that is as creatively unhinged as it is precisely executed, one of the rawest and most expansive albums in the band’s storied history.
The Sean Lennon-produced Satan’s graffiti or God’s art? is out now on Vice Records.
The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger is Sean Lennon and his girlfriend, the fashion model Charlotte Kemp Muhl. This song is an ode to the grandson of oil tycoon Paul Getty, who in 1973 was abducted for ransom by Italian kidnappers and had his ear cut off before his grandfather finally agreed to their demands. Paul III was permanently affected by the trauma and became a drug addict and later suffered a stroke, which rendered him speechless, nearly blind and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Sean Lennon does currently resemble his father circa 1969. He and Charlotte Kemp Muhl have been songwriting partners (and also a couple) for six years, progressing from sweet acoustic sketches to the psych-rock of their current album, Midnight Sun, a big, crashy record that salutes Sgt Pepper and air-kisses the Flaming Lips.
With Muhl on bass and four capable, boho-looking utility players whipping up wigged-out guitar spirals and organ swirls, the GOASTT create a swampy, forceful sound. Lennon favours a mic that flattens and frazzles his voice.
Sean Lennon and his psychedelia Rock Band THE GHOST OF THE SABRE TOOTH TIGER ,
Sean Lennon recorded a song in honor of Andy Warhol to support a new exhibit, “Letters to Andy Warhol,” Exhibition which opened on Monday in New York City. “Being raised by a single mom, I was always looking for some kind of paternal influence,” the singer/songwriter says of Warhol, whom he met as a child. “Andy was like an eccentric uncle to me. He taught me a lot about art and humor.”
Despite his familiarity with his subject, Lennon was initially reluctant to pen a track inspired by Warhol. “When they asked me to write a song about him, I was hesitant at first, since [David] Bowie already wrote the quintessential Warhol song,” Lennon explains. (Bowie included “Andy Warhol” on his 1971 album HunkyDory.) When Lennon eventually agreed to write the song, he enlisted the help of girlfriend and bandmate CharlotteKemp Muhl and “tried approaching it more like a surreal biography.”
The resulting tribute, “Love and Warhol,” revolves around a sharp, loping beat and lightly strummed guitar. Warhol’s penchant for signatures makes it into the lyrics – “he collected every autograph” – as do other biographical details, like Warhol’s Pittsburgh birthplace and his connection to the famous New York City club Studio 54. The chorus serves as a breathy reminder of the Pop Art pioneer’s artistic impact: “He knows that they won’t forget the man/ Who could hold the whole world in a can.”
Andy Warhol freaked out Sean Lennon by giving him a taxidermied pet cat for his eighth birthday. When asked what Warhol was “going for” when he chose the gift, Lennon said, “I really don’t know.”
The singer revealed that when he unwrapped the gift, his mother, Yoko Ono, was “kind of disturbed despite her love of cats” and that the family’s (living) felines were “immediately enraged.” In the story — revealed for the first time included in an new “Letters To Andy Warhol” exhibit that just opened at the Cadillac House. Lennon writes, “After a brief time on a shelf in my bedroom, it was decided that Andy’s cat should reside permanently in the window of the office on the ground floor,” where it stayed until “neighbours complained and we had to take it down.”
He added, “Each day on my way to school I would walk by the office and wonder why it was that Andy gave me that cat.”
The Fat Angel Sings 