Torres — Three Futures (29th Sept. 2017) Her last record Sprinter (2015) was lauded across the board from The Observer who called it “astonishing” to Pitchfork scoring it 8/10 as well as making ‘Cowboy Guilt’ a Best New Track, and the New York Times claiming “her music can smoulder while she considers exactly where she stands, and it can roar into feedback~edged howls when her rage or despair boil over.”
φφ → “I guess ultimately what I’m trying to do is take these really bizarre influences and create something brand new out of them,” says Torres’ Mackenzie Scott.
Location: Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Genre: Indie Pop~Rock / Avantgarda
Album release: 29th September 2017
Record Label: 4AD
Duration: 46:12
Tracks:
01. Tongue Slap Your Brains Out 3:20
02. Skim 5:18
03. Three Futures 4:05
04. Righteous Woman 3:51
05. Greener Stretch 4:45
06. Helen in the Woods 2:34
07. Bad Baby Pie 4:40
08. Marble Focus 5:03
09. Concrete Ganesha 4:31
10. To Be Given a Body 8:05
℗ 2017 4AD
Personnel:
→ TORRES (guitar, vocals)
and band
→ Erin Manning (keyboards, vocals),
→ Cameron Kapoor (guitar) and
→ Dominic Cipolla (drums) φφ TORRES is the creative alter~ego of Brooklyn~based Mackenzie Scott. In describing the new album Three Futures, Scott says it “is entirely about using the body that each of us has been given as a mechanism of joy”. The 10 original tracks on Three Futures embrace ecstasy, desire and indulgence rather than self~denial, and exude this idea via immersive music. Mechanized grooves are placed at the forefront, providing a framework for perforated electro~pop static, harsh gothic / industrial textures, and insistent Krautrock motifs.
φφ For Three Futures, Scott reconnected with producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey), who worked on TORRES’ last album Sprinter, to record in Stockport and Dorset, England. David Tolomei (Beach House, Future Islands) mixed the album.
Press:
φφ “A stunning and important album.” — Q
φφ “The dissonant guitars and whirring synths land on the more accessible side of avant~garde rock… though revelling in never quite resolving its melodies” — Uncut [8/10]
φφ “She is singing intensely personal, even florid, lyrics to an unnamed loved one: “We lined the Hudson with our tangents/ You trusted me to love your parents.” The effect is a bit mannered, like we’ve walked in on Scott mid~transformation, but her voice cuts through the murk like an approaching stranger, locking eyes.” — Pitchfork
φφ “A gorgeously languid song laced with synths, just barely brimming over with quiet, but subtly menacing guitar work.” — NPR Music
φφ “Rendered with the repressed, vibrant sadness of a Todd Haynes melodrama.” — The FADER
φφ “Truth~bombing songwriter TORRES makes ome of themost darkly powerful indie rock around.” — Rolling Stone
Review
Matt Williams | Tuesday 1:00pm | Score: A–
φ During the final, meditative track of Torres’ third album, Three Futures, Mackenzie Scott sings, “To be given a body is the greatest gift.” That sentence by itself could be the thesis statement for all that comes before it: Three Futures is radically sensual, exploring vividly lush, expansive realms of atmosphere. Scott says she crafted it to be a “completely consuming experience,” something you take in with not only your ears but every sense at your disposal. Every note breathes and pulses with that ambition.
φ From spooky opener “Tongue Slap Your Brains Out” on, Three Futures takes its time. It’s dark, yet never cold; the closest it comes to chilly is “Helen In The Woods,” Twin Peaks~ian in a strange horror narrative that’s all the more hair~raising for Scott’s unhinged vocal delivery. This is followed by the blissful yet jagged “Bad Baby Pie,” a kindred spirit to the dreamy “Greener Stretch,” which offers a hopeful ode to staying positive over skittering cymbals and waterfall cascades of synth. Its gorgeous, St. Vincent~esque guitar stabs and squalls are mirrored in the robotic throbs of “Skim.” Throughout, Scott matches those beautiful layers with lyrics that touch on the cryptic and bizarre.
φ There aren’t many hooks to be found here, which means a lot of Three Futures sort of blurs together. But it’s all hazily fascinating, flowing naturally through its various peaks and valleys, and it succeeds in Scott’s goal of being truly immersive listening — something that reveals itself to you in strange new ways each time you return.
φ https://www.avclub.com/
Label: http://www.4ad.com/
Bio:
φ Torres is a promising young talent out of Nashville. Velvet~toned vocals and amped~up guitar fuzz. TORRES knows the darkness. The Brooklyn~based singer~songwriter otherwise known as Mackenzie Scott waits until anything — an idea, an emotion, a memory — gnaws at her, tearing at her fingers and throat until she releases it in song. Scott escaped the confines of her churning mind in order to find herself by recording Sprinter in the market town of Bridport in Dorset, England; and then at the Bristol studio of Portishead’s Adrian Utley. With his guitar riffs and synthesizers lingering in the background like a lowland mist and PJ Harvey’s Robert Ellis and Ian Olliver on rhythm — the two fortuitously reuniting 23 years after the release of Dry, and in Scott’s 23rd year of living — she crafted a “space cowboy” record. “That’s as simply as I can say it,” says Scott, who cites inspirations as diverse as Funkadelic and Nirvana, Ray Bradbury and Joan Didion. “I wanted something that very clearly stemmed from my Southern conservative roots but that sounded futuristic and space~y at the same time.” It seems like an odd thing to look for in the picturesque seaside green, rolling hills in the south of England, but Scott had never been there before, and as a stranger in a strange land she found what she was looking for: a lost childhood. Sprinter was recorded in a room that had formerly been used as a children’s nursery, which combined with the alien landscape fuels the self~searching that roils TORRES’ music. Following her self~titled debut in 2013, TORRES pushes herself to even noisier extremes on Sprinter, a punishing self~examination of epic spiritual and musical proportions.
φφ → “I guess ultimately what I’m trying to do is take these really bizarre influences and create something brand new out of them,” says Torres’ Mackenzie Scott.
Location: Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Genre: Indie Pop~Rock / Avantgarda
Album release: 29th September 2017
Record Label: 4AD
Duration: 46:12
Tracks:
01. Tongue Slap Your Brains Out 3:20
02. Skim 5:18
03. Three Futures 4:05
04. Righteous Woman 3:51
05. Greener Stretch 4:45
06. Helen in the Woods 2:34
07. Bad Baby Pie 4:40
08. Marble Focus 5:03
09. Concrete Ganesha 4:31
10. To Be Given a Body 8:05
℗ 2017 4AD
Personnel:
→ TORRES (guitar, vocals)
and band
→ Erin Manning (keyboards, vocals),
→ Cameron Kapoor (guitar) and
→ Dominic Cipolla (drums) φφ TORRES is the creative alter~ego of Brooklyn~based Mackenzie Scott. In describing the new album Three Futures, Scott says it “is entirely about using the body that each of us has been given as a mechanism of joy”. The 10 original tracks on Three Futures embrace ecstasy, desire and indulgence rather than self~denial, and exude this idea via immersive music. Mechanized grooves are placed at the forefront, providing a framework for perforated electro~pop static, harsh gothic / industrial textures, and insistent Krautrock motifs.
φφ For Three Futures, Scott reconnected with producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey), who worked on TORRES’ last album Sprinter, to record in Stockport and Dorset, England. David Tolomei (Beach House, Future Islands) mixed the album.
Press:
φφ “A stunning and important album.” — Q
φφ “The dissonant guitars and whirring synths land on the more accessible side of avant~garde rock… though revelling in never quite resolving its melodies” — Uncut [8/10]
φφ “She is singing intensely personal, even florid, lyrics to an unnamed loved one: “We lined the Hudson with our tangents/ You trusted me to love your parents.” The effect is a bit mannered, like we’ve walked in on Scott mid~transformation, but her voice cuts through the murk like an approaching stranger, locking eyes.” — Pitchfork
φφ “A gorgeously languid song laced with synths, just barely brimming over with quiet, but subtly menacing guitar work.” — NPR Music
φφ “Rendered with the repressed, vibrant sadness of a Todd Haynes melodrama.” — The FADER
φφ “Truth~bombing songwriter TORRES makes ome of themost darkly powerful indie rock around.” — Rolling Stone
Review
Matt Williams | Tuesday 1:00pm | Score: A–
φ During the final, meditative track of Torres’ third album, Three Futures, Mackenzie Scott sings, “To be given a body is the greatest gift.” That sentence by itself could be the thesis statement for all that comes before it: Three Futures is radically sensual, exploring vividly lush, expansive realms of atmosphere. Scott says she crafted it to be a “completely consuming experience,” something you take in with not only your ears but every sense at your disposal. Every note breathes and pulses with that ambition.
φ From spooky opener “Tongue Slap Your Brains Out” on, Three Futures takes its time. It’s dark, yet never cold; the closest it comes to chilly is “Helen In The Woods,” Twin Peaks~ian in a strange horror narrative that’s all the more hair~raising for Scott’s unhinged vocal delivery. This is followed by the blissful yet jagged “Bad Baby Pie,” a kindred spirit to the dreamy “Greener Stretch,” which offers a hopeful ode to staying positive over skittering cymbals and waterfall cascades of synth. Its gorgeous, St. Vincent~esque guitar stabs and squalls are mirrored in the robotic throbs of “Skim.” Throughout, Scott matches those beautiful layers with lyrics that touch on the cryptic and bizarre.
φ There aren’t many hooks to be found here, which means a lot of Three Futures sort of blurs together. But it’s all hazily fascinating, flowing naturally through its various peaks and valleys, and it succeeds in Scott’s goal of being truly immersive listening — something that reveals itself to you in strange new ways each time you return.
φ https://www.avclub.com/
Label: http://www.4ad.com/
Bio:
φ Torres is a promising young talent out of Nashville. Velvet~toned vocals and amped~up guitar fuzz. TORRES knows the darkness. The Brooklyn~based singer~songwriter otherwise known as Mackenzie Scott waits until anything — an idea, an emotion, a memory — gnaws at her, tearing at her fingers and throat until she releases it in song. Scott escaped the confines of her churning mind in order to find herself by recording Sprinter in the market town of Bridport in Dorset, England; and then at the Bristol studio of Portishead’s Adrian Utley. With his guitar riffs and synthesizers lingering in the background like a lowland mist and PJ Harvey’s Robert Ellis and Ian Olliver on rhythm — the two fortuitously reuniting 23 years after the release of Dry, and in Scott’s 23rd year of living — she crafted a “space cowboy” record. “That’s as simply as I can say it,” says Scott, who cites inspirations as diverse as Funkadelic and Nirvana, Ray Bradbury and Joan Didion. “I wanted something that very clearly stemmed from my Southern conservative roots but that sounded futuristic and space~y at the same time.” It seems like an odd thing to look for in the picturesque seaside green, rolling hills in the south of England, but Scott had never been there before, and as a stranger in a strange land she found what she was looking for: a lost childhood. Sprinter was recorded in a room that had formerly been used as a children’s nursery, which combined with the alien landscape fuels the self~searching that roils TORRES’ music. Following her self~titled debut in 2013, TORRES pushes herself to even noisier extremes on Sprinter, a punishing self~examination of epic spiritual and musical proportions.