Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GYBE) returns with its first single LP-length release since the group's earliest days in 1997-99. 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' clocks in at a succinct 40:23 and is arguably the most focused and best-sounding recording of the band's career. Working with sound engineer Greg Norman (Electrical Audio) at studios in North Carolina and Montreal, GYBE slowly and steadily put the new album together through late 2013 and 2014, emerging with a mighty slab of superlative sonics, shot through with all the band's inimitable signposts and touchstones: huge unison riffage, savage noise/drone, oscillating overtones, guitar vs. string counterpoint, inexorable crescendos and scorched-earth transitions.

Following Godspeed's return from a long hiatus at the end of 2010 to begin playing live shows again, and with the hugely acclaimed 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! release in 2012 marking their first new release in a decade, the group continued to perform regularly on their own headlining tours (and as headliners at many leading festivals), often including a new multi-movement piece in concert over the past couple of years. Known to fans and through live show recordings by the sobriquet "Behemoth", GYBE has gradually distilled this new work down to a fastidious and uncompromising essence in the studio, with the swing-time swagger of the opening unison riff in "Peasantry or 'Light! Inside of Light!'" giving way to increasing microtonal divergences and an exhilarating immersion in the harmonic power of massed amplified instruments, before collapsing into some of the most visceral and unalloyed noise/drone the band has yet committed to tape on "Lambs' Breath" and "'Asunder, Sweet'". The album closes with "Piss Crowns Are Trebled", a classic 14-minute piece of vintage Godspeed, where ascending and descending guitar and violin melodies intertwine over gut-rattling distorted bass in 3/4 time, segueing into a pummeling four-on-the-floor series of sparkling, soaring crescendos

'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' finds Godspeed in top form; a sterling celebration of the band's awesome dialectic, where composition, emotion and 'note-choice' is inextricable from an exacting focus on tone, timbre, resonance and the sheer materiality of sound. The album is available on 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeve and insert poster, on CD in a 100% recycled custom paperboard jacket, and on all manner of formats in our fractured digital marketplace.

Xylouris White, the unlikely collaboration between Dirty Three drummer Jim White and Cretan lute player George Xylouris, follow-up their Sydney Festival, MOFO and sold-out Melbourne club show appearances of earlier this year with a return tour this coming March. The return tour sees the duo appearing at festivals including Spectrum Now Festival in support of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and art galleries, zoos, clubs and universities ahead of a new album release in early 2016.

"This transcendental folk, deconstructed by the volatile rhythms of rock demands to be danced to, and when the music hit the loud and fast end of the spectrum - an all out head-banging mosh" - Sydney Festival / The Guardian

The former residents of Melbourne have spent the better part of the last 12 months touring the globe in support of GOATS, their debut release and No.1 album on Billboard's World Music Chart; a first for an Australian band. An album that has also found friends and favour from the New York Times to Uncut Magazine, Swans to the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and fans of traditional and progressive musics alike. Truly there is no other like Xylouris White.

"At only 36 minutes, Goats is dizzying, a sometimes chaotic smear of styles, tempos, tones, and harmonics woven through musical history. It sounds and feels live, like the duo is just getting started when it ends. Yet it is long enough to reveal something not only new, but previously unfathomable with each listen" - Allmusic.com

The Big Top concert series is a licensed, all ages (16+ recommended) event. Spectrum Now Festival recommends parents/guardians should consider whether the Big Top concert is appropriate for their child and recommends that any children under 16 years of age who attend the Big Top are accompanied by their parent or guardian. Persons who are 18 years of age or older and wish to purchase alcohol MUST have valid photo ID (passport, Australian driver's license, proof of age card). Spectrum Now Festival @ The Domain welcomes and caterers for all ages, is family friendly and free to attend outside of the ticketed Big Top events.

The Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum Now Festival presented by ANZ is Sydney's newest cultural festival, returning in March 2016 for its second year. The festival is set to entertain and amaze, with free and ticketed events across art, music, stage and talks, including a limited capacity Big Top venue installed in Sydney's Domain to house 11 nights of music and comedy.

Experience Now. Remember Forever.

spectrumnow.com.au