Masa lenta + OutlanderMasa lenta + Outlander

Since forming in 2015, Chicago’s Slow Mass has been committed to pushing its artistic vision forward at all costs. Though Slow Mass was previously built around a core lineup, this has evolved into a fluid cast that has expanded to feature collaborators who are spread across the country, dipping in and out as needed. The current incarnation consists of Evan Bernard, Dave Collis, Sean Hallock, Emma McCall, Josh Parks, Josh Sparks, and Mercedes Webb. After springing to life and releasing the 2016 Treasure Pains EP, the band quickly got to work on its debut full-length, 2018’s On Watch, which garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork and was named one of the best Chicago albums of the 2010s by the Chicago Reader. Following On Watch, the band kept its nose to the grindstone, touring with the likes of La Dispute, Gouge Away, mewithoutYou, Horse Jumper of Love, and delivering a host of new releases that each expanded upon the sounds Slow Mass had become known for. With the trio of EPs in the ongoing Music For Ears series, 2020's Music For Rest and 2024's Drift Themes, they transformed their Fugazi-inspired post-hardcore propulsions into muted ruminations that could have fit on a modern Low album.  By blurring the lines between several different subgenres, and allowing collaborators to float in and out of the band as desired, Slow Mass has built a body of work that feels distinctly it's own. With multiple new releases prepped for 2025 and beyond, Slow Mass is ready to continue pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an indie rock band. Birmingham, England’s Outlander have been haunting stages around the UK and beyond for the best part of a decade, bringing their gloomy, caustic brand of shoegaze to support tours with genre heavyweights Bossk and Grivo and festivals including Dunk! and Arctangent. Emerging in 2016, with ‘Take Turns b/w I’ll Get Mine Too’, swiftly followed by 2017’s 3 track EP ‘Downtime’, the band found their sound with debut full length, 2019’s ‘the valium machine’, five patient, glacial tracks of long form slowcore inflected shoegaze.  When the world was unpaused, Outlander signed to Church Road Records and returned with 2021’s desolate Sundowning/Unconditional, their heaviest and most direct output to date, a demonstration of the band’s need to evolve and develop within the framework built over their first 5 years. Most recently, 2024’s ‘Acts of Harm’ found the band at their most introspective, sonically exploring the vast grey area between the languid slowcore of Duster and Codeine, the dream-like shoegaze of Swervedriver and Catherine wheel and the angular, glacial bombardment of Kowloon Walled City and True Widow. An intimate coming of age record of reconciliation with adulthood, ‘Acts of Harm’ finds beauty and despair in the mundane, and explores the cycles of decline that prop-up the fragile balance of normality in modern society. A singular body of work written mostly in isolation, pulled together piece by piece during the pandemic and recorded over two years by Neil Kennedy at The Ranch Production House in Southampton. The songs move at a funeral pace and take a sombre look at human themes, from the empty stare through the living room window of ‘Want No More’, the communication breakdown of ‘New Motive Power’, the cathartic breaking point of ‘Lye Waste’ and the fraught quiet beyond.