King Nine

West Country post rock veterans Blueneck are set to release their fifth album, "King Nine" via Denovali Records on 10th November. Utilising gentle guitar lines, forlorn vocals, muted horns, soothing piano and mournful strings, King Nine is an album that feels orchestrated rather than merely written. Whilst the music often builds to a crescendo, rarely does it resort to the typical quiet-loud-quiet post-rock blueprint so often preferred by their peers. Rather, Blueneck have utilised a different approach, mixing their own brand of haunting, menacing, foreboding melancholy with subtle electronica elements. “King Nine draws a musical influence from a much more diverse array of artists than previous Blueneck records” says vocalist/guitarist/pianist Duncan Attwood. “The electronica aspects of artists such as Boards of Canada, the soundtracks of the likes of Carpenter, Reznor and Morricone and the melancholia of Kid A era Radiohead have all helped to produce a Blueneck album that is perhaps much more dynamic and accessible than its predecessors.” At times coming across as a soundtrack to a lost David Lynch movie, it’s not surprising when Duncan says the album was “inspired (thematically), in part, by one of the earliest episodes of The Twilight Zone.” There’s an ethereal quality that permeates throughout King Nine, an album that languishes in a beautiful hypnotic soundscape. This is uplifting melancholia at its most daring, beautiful and haunting. The band have already released four critically-acclaimed albums (2006’s Scars Of The Midwest, 2009’s The Fallen Host, 2011’s Repetitions and 2012’s Epilogue), toured extensively across Europe with acts such as Cult of Luna and Mono, and have soundtracked a number of independent films, having their work featured on NBC, HBO and SyFy channels. They also played a triumphant midnight set at this year’s Glastonbury festival. Says the press released announcing King Nine: “The band’s three key musical influences go some way to explaining King Nine’s ambitious, expansive (but always accessible) scope: the electronica of Boards of Canada; the movie soundtracks of Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter; the melodicism and melancholia of Kid-A era Radiohead and Arcade Fire.”