Absolute Devotion/The Coldest Shoulder

Dear friends,

we've just uploaded two new songs from our upcoming LP "Paper Skin". You can listen to them here:

Absolute Devotion/The Coldest Shoulder (from "Paper Skin" LP/CD) by Ritual

Please spread the word about this! If you like what you hear, you can preorder our album at shop.reflectionsrecords.com
Oh, and the Reflections Records tour kicks off this Friday. Don't miss it!

Companion Otremba

There's this really good friend of ours called Hendrik Otremba. He's playing quite an important role on our new record, because he has contributed both a short story and a really nice drawing to the artwork of our new LP. So don't just download our new album - you won't get the full picture.

We really like the way he draws, so we thought we'd let you know about the exhibition he is a part of: On March 27th the vernissage is happening at Galerie Artemis in Recklinghausen. His work can be viewed for one month from then on. The title of the exhibition is »Abwesenheiten« (engl. »absences«) and there are four other young artists participating by contributing drawings, sculptures, photographies and an installation.

Besides being a part-time artist, he's also a writer and publishes his essays on his blog: ekstatischewahrheit.blogspot.com. It's mostly cultural theory related and in German only, sorry. Apart from that he has just started a new band with Pascal and Philipp. It's called »MESSER« and we'll keep you posted about the way this band shaping up.

Thanks for your interest.

(This is not the drawing that's included in our LP, by the way.)

"Kissing Pavement" - Free MP3

Today we give you a free MP3 (320 kbps) of our song "Kissing Pavement" taken from last autumn's 7" single with the same name. It's still available at the Reflections online store and we'll continue playing this song live. Enjoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?0rgdarx92np90u1

"Paper Skin"

We're excited to announce the title of our new album:

"Paper Skin".

We found this to be the best way to sum up what is happening on the record. It's coming out on all formats on May 3rd through Reflections Records, but we will already have some copies with us on our trip to Finland in the end of April. Preorders are going to be shipped in April as well.
Reflections Records is starting to take preorders in the middle of March, so that's in like two weeks and that's also when we're going to upload the two songs "Absolute Devotion" and "The Coldest Shoulder" to our soundcloud. So watch out for this! We're also going to play these two songs on the Reflections Records tour already.

The complete tracklist looks like this:

A1: The Great Decay
A2: Reaping Loneliness
A3: Dunkerque
A4: Distant Glance
A5: White Caskets
B1: The Coldest Shoulder
B2: Absolute Devotion
B3: This Shell Has Got a Soul Again
B4: Rusty Fingers Touching Nothing
B5: Pieces of Me

We'll keep you posted about everything. Also watch out for upcoming Reflections newsletters for more information. Until then, enjoy "The Roller" just like we do:

This is it.

Finally!

These discs are now heading to the Reflections Records headquarter.

Up next: Finishing the artwork.

Reflections Records tour: All dates are confirmed now!

Hello everyone,

our first tour in 2011 is completely booked now. All shows are together with NO TURNING BACK, DEAL WITH IT and NEW MORALITY. MIDNIGHT SOULS are only playing those shows that are marked. Here's where we're heading to:

18.03. Germany, Ibbenbüren @ Scheune*
19.03. Belgium, Mol @ Jeugdhuis Tydeeh*
20.03. France, Paris @ Péniche Alternat*
21.03. France, Bordeaux @ Heretic Club
22.03. Germany, Karlsruhe @ Stadtmitte
23.03. Austria, Salzburg @ Rockhouse Bar
24.03. Germany, München @ Sunny Red
25.03. Germany, Erfurt @ E-Burg*
26.03. Germany, Rosswein @ Jugendhaus*
27.03. Netherlands, Den Bosch @ W2*

Here's the official facebook-page for this tour. Please spread the word about this!

A quick update on the current state of the new record: We're awaiting the final master within the next week and are working on the artwork meanwhile. We hope to get the record out in April. More news on the title, the tracklist and a first glance at the artwork very soon!

Have a nice weekend eveyone!

ATTN

RITUAL

EUROPA

GEGEN

RASSISMUS

(by: Hendrik Otremba, aus Holland)

Day 6

"A perished relationship, a gift to the sea. I'm still searching the dirt for pieces of me. You could never give me what I need. I know it's hard to believe. We drift apart, we got lost in this city's sleeping streets. And I got rid of the dreams you had left inside of me."
from "Pieces of Me", the last song of our new album

This is a harmonium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonium
Since the tones are being produced by air, it sounds somewhat similar to an accordion. It was an urgent wish of ours to include this instrument on our new album. We love the sad, yet beautiful sound of it. That is exactly what we thought would fit to our new draft of hardcore.

I love classic synthesizer music like this:

but the harmonium sounds way more organic, for sure. But there's a bit of that spacy feeling in it, as well.

This is our last day at Tonmeisterei, Oldenburg and it's going to be a short day. When we finish the harmonium, we'll do a quick rough mix and then we'll leave to celebrate New Year's Eve with our friends at home. Being in the studio is a bit like being on tour. Once it's over, you're happy to go home and once you're home, you want to go back so badly.

This doesn't mean that our record is actually finished now. We will continue adding details to the sound in Robin's smaller studio in Münster. We plan to invite some friends of ours to include their instruments, whereever it fits in.

To all our sisters and brothers, have a beautiful New Year! "May nothing but happiness come through your door", as Mogwai called one of their most beautiful songs in 1999. Speaking for us, we can't wait for 2011 to come. There are so many exciting things to happen: Our new record and shows, shows, shows, ...

See you all!

"Oh no, not Finland!!"

Yesss, thanks to our friend Kimmo, drummer in the superamazing hardcore-outfit ILLS, all the Finland-tourdates are confirmed. Our flights are booked, so everything's ready to go for this adventure.

Here are the dates:
27.04.2011 Finland, Helsinki @ Semifinal
28.04.2011 Finland, Turku @ Klubi
29.04.2011 Finland, Petäjävesi @ YC Feeniks
30.04.2011 Finland, Lappeenranta @ Lucky Monkeys

And as we do it in our postpostmodern age, here's the facebook-event-page. Please everyone, help us spread the word about this!

Day 5

The ghost is him.

Today we recorded the vocals. Julian did a great job and put everything he had into his voice. That's why he was totally fucked, when he was finished. But since it's conserved now forever, I think it was worth it. Look at this crybaby:

Then we worked on some little details. This is Robin explaining a nice old-school synthesizer. Whatever he does - we love it!

Finally, we recorded a blues. Yep, that's what we did. And it will be on the record. Pascal played the upright bass, Julian did some Captain Beefheart-inspired singing, Robin played an acoustic guitar with a bottleneck and I drummed on a floor tom and a desk. The whole thing was recorded with three room microphones. We love the result. It's gonna be fun to see, if someone else is gonna like it, too.

Tomorrow is our last day in studio. And all there is to do is recording some additional feedbacks and some harmonium. Yes!

Good night to everyone. Pay tribute to the genius of Captain Beefheart!