Preoccupations - Release their second single 'Death of Melody' off 'Arrangements'

September 9th 2022

Album / Single Release

Another slice of the upcoming album!!!

Calgary quartet Preoccupations release punishing new effort 'Death of Melody', the second track taken from the band’s fourth album 'Arrangements' which is set to arrive September 9th (Self Release). The follow-up to lead single 'Ricochet', ‘Death of Melody’ throws you inside a tumbling, six sided reverb tank filled with shape shifting Shoegaze haze.

It recalls the martial, machine like rhythms of the band’s 2015 full-length, eventually descending into a deeper level of avant pop, a shimmery mine of dystopian Glam. The track gives a further indication of what is to come: a Preoccupations record that weaves their guitar-heavy origins with their newer Synth based work. The result is 'Arrangements', a record that is at once the band’s most intense, engaging, and playful work yet.

Work on Arrangements began in the fall of 2019, when vocalist and bassist Matt Flegel and guitarist Danny Christiansen met up with Guitarist / Synth player Monty Munro at his Studio St. Zo in Montreal. The three wrote the record’s material and recorded all of the bed tracks, then drummer Mike Wallace joined and laid down his parts. All told, drums, guitars, and bass were completed during the sessions at Studio St. Zo. The band planned to reconvene in a couple of months and decide what else the songs needed.

When Covid hit, those plans were halted. Munro was in Calgary on tour with his partner when shutdowns began, so he ended up staying in the city with his parents for the next sixteen months. He whipped up a make-shift studio in their house, and the record was finished remotely via Munro and Flegel sending tracks back and forth. All of Munro’s vocals and keyboard parts were completed in this new set up, while Flegel’s vocals were done in New York. Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) mixed the record, and Mikey Young (Total Control) mastered it.

The album’s title like that of their 2018 LP 'New Material' is literal and cheeky, a sharp contrast to the band’s sonic aesthetic. Having finished it entirely on their own, the band has decided to self release the record outside of Canada. Longtime co-conspirators Flemish Eye will handle the record’s Canadian release, so go to there to buy it when it's released if you live in Canada.

With 'Arrangements', Preoccupations finally and confidently inhabit the dystopia that they have been carefully creating from their musical genesis. In a room with taped up windows, with only a tiny pinprick of light beaming from the otherworld onto the far wallupside down and blurred, yet recognizable enough to fill you with warm familiarity and nostalgia of unknown origins.

'Arrangements' tracklisting Below:
01 Fix Bayonets!
02 Ricochet
03 Death of Melody
04 Slowly
05 Advisor
06 Recalibrate
07 Tearing up the Grass

Check Out! the Video for 'Death of Melody' Below...