Scheduled for launch through The Flenser on October third, Agriculture have introduced their new album, The Religious Sound. Pre-order the album HERE.
”That is an album in regards to the actually elementary human experiences of struggling, pleasure, and love. We discover plenty of the profound in these primary experiences. To us they’re by definition religious and price singing and screaming about. With this report, we wished to make music that connects the depth of day by 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 fact?” He replied, ”Huge vacancy. Nothing holy.” This isn’t background music. This isn’t for vibe. The Religious 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 to be able to forestall himself from falling asleep,” Dan Meyer says of the primary single, additionally shared at the moment. ”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 grew to become Bodhidharma’s successor.” Hearken to Bodhidharma HERE.
Throughout its runtime, The Religious Sound traces a story arc by way of 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 by way of 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 in another way. They carry the burden of survival as day by day ritual. Her writing asks learn how to honour queer neighborhood and collective wrestle with out turning it into id branding or private mythmaking—learn how to keep sincere, learn how to keep current. Although distinct, their voices converge in a singular religious grammar—one which defines the totality of The Religious Sound, not as separate components, 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 advanced right into a shared pursuit of the elegant by way of heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the venture solidified into the band’s present type. 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 Residing 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 enable them to be pulled aside and rebuilt communally: reshaped by way of battle, repetition, and deep belief. Richard provides guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms that are typically acquainted however typically unconventional. Lastly, with Richard producing, the ultimate type of every track is realized by way of intense collaborative work within the studio. Though a time consuming and ego-frustrating course of, this enables the band to seek out the spirit of the songs not by way of inspiration, however by way of persistence.
But, even in its most bold moments, The Religious Sound stays rooted within the bizarre and within the day-to-day relationships between the individuals who made it. Gasoline station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on flooring. Enjoying reveals in rooms that odor like mildew. The spirit right here isn’t summary, it’s dwell. That is religious music that begins with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van.
Agriculture doesn’t supply salvation. The Religious Sound isn’t a map out of the hearth. What it presents as an alternative is presence: a confrontation with the second, nonetheless insufferable, nonetheless divine. It insists that which means continues to be potential, even in a world hell-bent on decreasing the whole lot to content material, and the place struggling itself could be conducive to restoration. Because the Buddhist saying goes “the one means out is in.”
There’s a form of quiet violence in how music is consumed at the moment—flattened into background noise, sonic fragrance fed into algorithms, offered as life-style. It’s leisure as anesthesia. Sound with out the burden. The Religious Sound stands as a pointed refusal of this situation. This isn’t a playlist. This isn’t a vibe.
~
The Religious 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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