LA post-punk trio Automatic have announced a UK tour.
Since the release of their Stones Throw debut album Signal in September, the band has soundtracked Hedi Slimane’s Paris Fashion Week show for Céline, toured the USA, and opened for legendary post-punk band Bauhaus’ reunion shows at the Hollywood Palladium. Signal was chosen as an album of the year by Norman Records and Resident Music, who described it as “inventive, enticing and new”.
Automatic, composed of Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon (bass, vocals), worked with producer and engineer Joo Joo Ashworth of FROTH for the album. Signal ties together the band’s taste for dub reggae, motorik rhythms and gnarly synth work inspired by bands like NEU! and Suicide with the eerie atmosphere of films by auteurs like David Lynch and Dario Argento, to capture what it’s like to feel at an angle to the world.
Signal speaks directly to the band members’ experiences, tied together by a sense of anxiety and alienation so common to life in the 21st century. “Humanoid” echoes “Too Much Money”s sentiment on the disappointing falsity of social media, “Electrocution” recounts a near-death freak accident singer Izzy experienced – alluded to on the album art – and the title track captures the feeling of being trapped in the drudgery of a mundane life “and the realization that nobody is going to rescue you from it but yourself.” As they put it: “The world is so fucked up, we don’t know how any musician could say, ‘This is all peachy.'”
UK 2020 TOUR DATES:
11th February – Brighton, Late Music Bar
12th February – Manchester, YES
13th February – Glasgow, Flying Duck
14th February – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall
15th February – London, Peckham Audio
