The Airborne Toxic Event return to the UK this spring for the release of their new album, Dope Machines, on 6th April, and a four date UK tour.
The Los Angeles group’s fourth full-length album, Dope Machines marks a change in the band’s sound and is The Airborne Toxic Event's first album produced by the band’s frontman, Mikel Jollett. The album is preceded by the single, California.
Following the release of the new album, The Airborne Toxic Event play the following dates:
Tues 14 APRIL LONDON, Koko
Weds 15 MANCHESTER, Sound Control
Thurs 16 LEEDS, Stylus
Sat 18 GLASGOW, The Garage
Formed by novelist Mikel Jollett during a tumultuous period in his life, The Airborne Toxic Event (named after a section in American author Don DeLillo¹s novel White Noise), combine literate indie rock with real literary credibility. Formed in 2006, the group initially took shape as a duo, before expanding to their current line-up. The band released their first EP in 2007, fast making waves in the LA indie scene. Signed to Majordomo Records in 2008, they released their self-titled first album, later that year. Lead single "Sometime Around Midnight" became a Top Ten modern rock hit, prompting Island Records to sign the band in early 2009. Two years later, The Airborne Toxic Event, issued their second album, All At Once , with the third, Such Hot Blood, following in 2013.
After hearing an acapella recording of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” a switch in Mikel’s head flipped and he was inspired to embark on a quest for the sound that we now hear on Dope Machines. “It blew my mind,” he recalls. “My mindset changed. It was about inventing a musical logic that was unabashedly catchy and rhythmic, but way weirder than anything we’ve done in the past.”
The process for creating the album was “massively challenging and super fun,” and the resulting material is a calculated marriage between electro-synths, programmed drums, and live rock instrumentation enhanced by Mikel’s consuming vocal presence & songwriting. Songs like “How To Be A Man” bring in reverberating 80’s synths and live rock & roll drums, juxtaposition made fluid by its anthemic chorus. This blend of shimmering electronic sounds and gritty rock sensibilities carries on throughout songs like the single, “California” (co-written by Linda Perry), “One Time Wrong,” and the driving, southern-rock influenced “Hell & Back,” a track whose subtle computerized elements crescendo to a pulsing fever pitch during the conquering choral refrain. Intro track and lead single “Wrong” serves as a shining example of Mikel’s vision of catchy, rhythmic, and weird as the defining elements of Dope Machines.
Dope Machines tracklisting: Wrong; One Time Thing; Dope Machines; California; Time To Be A Man; Hell and Back; My Childish Bride; The Thing About Dreams; Something You Lost; Chains.
The Airborne Toxic Event are Mikel Jollett, Steven Chen, Adrián Rodríguez, Daren Taylor and Anna Bulbrook.
www.theairbornetoxicevent.com / www.vevo.com/the-airborne-toxic-event
