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 basic human experiences of struggling, pleasure, and love. We discover a variety of the profound in these fundamental experiences. To us they’re by definition religious and price singing and screaming about. With this report, we needed to make music that connects the depth of every 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 which 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 in an effort to forestall himself from falling asleep,” Dan Meyer says of the primary single, additionally shared right now. ”At one time, one other monk approached him in his cave and pleaded ‘grasp, my head is on fireplace with anxiousness, are you able to pacify my thoughts?’ Bodhidharma simply stored staring on the wall and Huike waited exterior of the cave all night time 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 good grasp. Huike later turned Bodhidharma’s successor.” Take heed to Bodhidharma HERE.
Throughout its runtime, The Non secular Sound traces a story arc via extremes: searing, sky-cracking catharsis on facet A; a slow-burning, devotional undercurrent on facet 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 via 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 otherwise. They carry the burden of survival as every day ritual. Her writing asks learn how to honour queer group and collective wrestle with out turning it into id branding or private mythmaking—learn how to keep trustworthy, learn 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 elements, however as one unified expression.
Agriculture’s formation mirrors this duality. Whspirat started as a free collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer within the Los Angeles noise scene developed right into a shared pursuit of the elegant via heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the challenge solidified into the band’s present kind. 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 Dwelling Is Straightforward: 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 via battle, repetition, and deep belief. Richard provides guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms that are typically acquainted however usually unconventional. Lastly, with Richard producing, the ultimate type of every music is realized via 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 via inspiration, however via persistence.
But, even in its most bold moments, The Non secular Sound stays rooted within the unusual and within the day-to-day relationships between the individuals who made it. Gasoline station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on flooring. Taking part in exhibits in rooms that odor like mildew. The spirit right here isn’t summary, it’s reside. 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 fireplace. What it presents as an alternative is presence: a confrontation with the second, nevertheless insufferable, nevertheless divine. It insists that which means continues to be doable, even in a world hell-bent on decreasing the whole lot to content material, and the place struggling itself may be conducive to restoration. Because the Buddhist saying goes “the one approach out is in.”
There’s a type of quiet violence in how music is consumed right now—flattened into background noise, sonic fragrance fed into algorithms, bought as life-style. It’s leisure as anesthesia. Sound with out the burden. 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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