A Spectre Is Haunting Europe

A Spectre Is Haunting Europe is back in the business of playing shows, it appears. So there are two chances in August to check us out live, as per:

Mon Aug 3 – Vancouver – The Cobalt (917 Main), w/Stiff Valentine, Vancouver Killing Spree

Sat Aug 8 – Abbotsford – Matsqui Community Hall (33676 St.Olaf Avenue), w/Lillix (ALL AGES SHOW)

See ya there! More to come!

crap sound, false starts, (but the live streaming worked! straight out of the pocket!), fun times:

The final track recounts a badly damaged festival environment, put on by an overbearing and delusional CEO of a small tech startup, demonstrating labour exploitation in the high tech sector since its early 2000s deregulation in British Columbia, a crucial factor in our local tech/social media boom over the past several years. However, as this is poetry or theatre of a sort, the license to exaggerate has been also fully exploited. Here developers sign contracts in blood, get actual strings attached to their fingers so that their keystrokes will not deviate from what their bosses and clients desire, and are eventually cannibalized in front of their children, invited for a special Saturday ‘hot dog day’ in the plaza outside the commercial high rise.

With that we bring you “BBQMS“, the tenth and final track, concluding the album Embers with the full-on Arrival of Late Capital, washing ashore with its Colonial overtones in Act One, rapidly dehumanizing and hyperindividuating through Act Two, and eventually eating its own means of production, workers, or tail. Don’t say we didn’t give a fair, accurate and timely account of the utter demise of Western Techno-capital. Hope you have enjoyed the party.

The social media divide rhetorical styles and common understandings as much as they mash us together into the same stylesheet. Here we have an example of dialogue gone wrong at the edge of the chasm, an argument going nowhere, as no one is listening. Instead we are diverging, multiplying, becoming dialectic, polar, weird to each other. And with this comes apathy. Depressing, isn’t it?

Track 9 from Embers, “Arts and Entertainment“.

…and the logjam of higher education breaks, recalling an ennui of gargantuan proportions. Besieged by youthful desperation on one side, and blank faced bureaucracy on the other, you better take it in your hand before you lose control, or get trampled under the Airstream Trailers of God parked outside the community college campus…

Track 8 from Embers, “Remote Controls“.

Hey,

We’re playing our first live show since 2006 at the New Balmoral in Vancouver on Dec 5th, 2008. Here’s the Facebook event. Here’s the Last.fm event. Here’s a map. & when you go and take picture of the show, please tag them on Flickr with this: “lastfm:event=838633″.

This will be an exciting show for us – our 1st show performing the new material from Embers, and the 1st show with the new lineup. Nicely, things are coming together very rapidly these days!

See you there! We’ll have records and buttons for sale! Priced to clear, at Depression-era prices!

ASIHE live @ Balmoral Dec 5th

The despair of Empires gives way to strident defiance to unchecked growth, tempered by paranoid confusion between the personal and the political, ergo, “tapes all gone/games go home”. Games Go Home. With no further ado, we bring you Track 7 on Embers, “2M07“.

we took some video of our practice yesterday. enjoy:

Commemorating 4 November 2008, we give you new music about corrupt rulers. The Bush Is Dead. Long Live The Bush. & A Spectre Is Fucking Europe.

Our paranoid, quivering speaker, who here opens up Act Two of Embers, believes that this whole Erection business is for real. Such is the self-made pomo victim-subject as mediated, cut up, cut off, chewed at the roots.

Next week we’ll try and escape this gloomy situation.

Two practices in and the ASIHE steamship is now officially firing on all cylinders, or steam-pipes, or what-have-you. We are pleased to announce that we’re now a four piece band on the lookout for live gigs, welcoming Ciaran on board as our new drummer. Pictures to come.

And oh yeah – had some rethinking about mixes for the Second Act of Embers. We will release Track #6 for your listening pleasure later this week.