The album Psychic 9-5 Club, released next spring, marks the beginning of a new chapter in HTRK (spoken Hate Rock, but you know that). It’s the first collection of music entirely by Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang as a duo, after bandmate Sean Stewart tragically passed in 2010.

Give It Up is the tease here you need to upgrade your stereo setup now for. A skeletal, deep magic massage draped in Standish’s spoken-sung vocal, it signals a further evolution of the band’s sound, stripping away growl and glacial guitars to dub – a passion of Yang’s – so lean it’s preternatural. We’ve been listening to it on loop for an hour.

Love is the word that reccurs throughout the long player, entwined in lyrics and titles. Love as a distraction, loving yourself, loving others. Standish’s lyrics explore the complexities of sexuality and the body’s reaction to personal loss, though there’s room for wry humour too – a constant through much of the best experimental Australian music of the past few decades. It was recorded in New Mexico, at altitude, with Excepter’s Nathan Corbin, refined in Australia and completed in New York over summer.

Tracklist
01 Give it Up
02 Blue Sunshine
03 Feels like Love
04 Soul Sleep
05 Wet Dream
06 Love is Distraction
07 Chinatown Style
08 The Body You Deserve

Ghostly International will release Psychic 9-5 Club on 1st April, 2014
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