Description
Okay – finally pressed on vinyl in 2025.
Pre-order now. Out in NOV. Date to TBC. Including BONUS of TWO T-SHIRTS with all initial orders while stock lasts. Please indicate size required in comments.
Regurgitator headed down south to Brazil during 2007 to record their sixth album LOVE AND PARANOIA… welcome to a jungle of 80s inspired, keyboard driven poprock tunes featuring opening track Blood & Spunk. Quan, Ben, Pete, and latestaddition Seja Vogel (from Sekiden) on keyboard duty packed their bags and jetted off into a great unknown to produce one of their most stylistically consistent albums ever. So after a string of B locations –Brisbane, Bangkok, Byron Bay, Britain, Bubble –it was Brazil’s turbulent hotbed of Rio de Janeiro that provided the base for this latest musical manifestation. Amid the spectacular beauty of this city, and rampant crime and poverty, they found themselves in a small studio camped under the looming Corcovado and the arms of the iconic Christo Redentor spruiking their wares… Never pedestrian in attitude or approach, regurgitator have always attempted to locate some element of the sublime or extraordinary in their album recordings. No matter what one thinks of their album output, there has never been a sense of going through the motions for the sake of just another release. From the very beginning, every complete album piece has been predicated on producing a unique situation, a displacement to encourage a response beyond the ordinary…
So with this, their first romance album, the decision was made that if there was going to be a sixth album then “let’s go to Brazil”. Ben threw up the idea, Paul (manager) set out to manifest it, googling “brazilian engineer” and coming up with Didie Cunha on MySpace, sourcing a studio, arranging the travel and accom. So all was set, money transferred via a convoluted system to people we had never met or spoken to, as we jetted off into the world with latest permanent addition on keyboards Seja (from Sekiden), via New York to witness the US (mis)interpretation of Band in a Bubble. We arrive in Sao Paulo to receive messages from Peter whose 1am arrival was met with no one other than the circling sharks of taxi drivers barking “taxi” at a never-ending rate for 10 hours or so prior to our eventual arrival… found sitting on his suitcase on the upper level of this 70s architectural marvel of an airport frozen in time. Still no Didie to meet us and things begin to look a little dire… fortunately a case of expecting us all the following day; so after some cab negotiations we set off into the amazing nature of Rio –looming mountains, vast favellas, Oscar Niemeyer’s 70’s scifi architectural vibe –to find the studio perched at the footof the cliffs of the Corcovado under the gracious arms of the Christo Rendentor. We are welcomed by Didie… and studio operators Guilherme, Felipe, Ales, Bruno and their ever-present assistants Paulo and Augustus –all warm friendly people excited by this international moment of collaboration. The studio initially suggests a more difficult scenario than anticipated but this is offset against the warmth and excitement of our hosts regaling us with stories of life in Rio, the local music scene, favella’s, drug gangs, abductions and stray bullets. The studio is also home to rehearsal studios where a large proportion of Rio’s musicians come to practice, jam and hang out. We head down to our apartment in Leblon (next to Ipanema) again revealing the luxury of a time gone and the decades of economic turbulence… we wander and eat… this city alludes to a wild intensity of life, a city of extremes mirrored in its geographical state. The recording starts immediately, the studio perched high on the hillside provides a spectacular vista of the city and an inspiration to the music that begins to quickly unfold. The songs quickly take shape, as we bounce through the world of Rio: visits to clubs to see local music artists; experiencing the nightlife in the human spectacle ofLapa; a trip to the top of Corcovado where we shot the album photos; a day at the soccer where at half time a little old man (about 70) came out and bounced a soccer ball all around the field one foot after another the entire half an hour without droppingit, and when he had finished someone just ran out and grabbed the ball off him and led him off the field and nobody clapped for him… (except us); and an invitation to a favella percussion school where over 100 people played percussion in this huge pink and green hall. Then before it was time… the long flight back to Australia beckoned where the album was finally mixed in Sydney at Velvet Sounds by long time associate Magoo and Anthony The; and mastered in New York at West West Side by Alan Douches.
