Maybeshewill + Bossk 18/05/24 @ Brudenell Social Club

Brudenell Presents...
Maybeshewill + Bossk
Saturday, 18th May 2024
Brudenell Social Club / Leeds / UK
19:00

Since 2006 Maybeshewill have released four full-length albums of towering, cinematic instrumental music. After a decade long career that saw them tour across four continents they bowed out in 2016 with a sold out show at London’s Koko. Having reformed briefly in 2018 at the request of The Cure’s Robert Smith for a show at Meltdown Festival, 2021 sees the band return with their first new material since 2014’s Fair Youth. Having worked on ideas separately in the intervening years, it was the sketches of music that would become ‘No Feeling is Final’ that pulled the band back together. Building on the songs that they felt needed to be heard, together. ‘No Feeling is Final’ was born from a place of weary exasperation. From the knowledge that we’re living in a world hurtling towards self-destruction. We watch as forests burn and seas rise. As the worst tendencies of humanity are championed by those in power; rage, fear, greed and apathy. We see every injustice, every conflict, every catastrophe flash up on our screens. We stay complacent and consume to forget our complicity in the structures and systems that sustain that behaviour. As the world teeters on the edge of disaster, we sigh and keep scrolling, the uneasy feeling in our stomachs eating away at us a little more each day. However easy it would be to switch off and pretend all is lost, there’s no choice but to remain engaged. To set that feeling of hopelessness aside and use the fear and frustration as fuel to make something positive. ‘No Feeling is Final’ is a message of hope and solidarity. It’s a story of growing grassroots movements across the world that are rejecting the doomed futures being sold to us, and imagining new realities based on equality and sustainability. It’s a reckoning with the demons in our histories and a promise to right the wrongs of the past. It’s a plea to take action in shaping the world we leave for future generations. It’s a simple gesture of reassurance to anyone else struggling in these troubled times: “Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Continuing and building on the self-sufficient, do-it-yourself ethos that has been core to their existence, ‘No Feeling is Final’ was once again recorded and produced by bassist Jamie Ward, and released on the bands own Robot Needs Home Collective Label, in collaboration with close friends Wax Bodega (North America), New Noise (Asia) and Birds Robe (Australasia).


BOSSK
BOSSK has always been something of an enigma. Formed in 2005, their output for the first decade of their on-off existence consisted of a handful of EP's and split releases alongside a smattering of live shows. Life can take precedence over art and it wasn't until 2016's stunning 'Audio Noir' that it felt like Bossk had truly arrived. This was a band brewed inside metal's avant-garde awakening propelled by labels like Hydra Head and Neurot; that their long-awaited debut album landed on Deathwish was no coincidence.

The connection with the likes of Neurosis and Converge are easy to make but less straightforward to hold tight. Cult of Luna's Johannes Persson guesting on new album 'Migration' perhaps comes as no surprise; but to pigeonhole Bossk so easily as post-metal in the slipstream would be a disservice to the depths they've clearly ploughed and defined for themselves.

Both 'Audio Noir' and 'Migration' display unique atmospheric qualities; ambience is not a term unfamiliar to the band and they are admirably unafraid to experiment. They crush as heavily as any of their peers and do so in a manner distinctly theirs. Rare live appearances at Roadburn and a near-complete sell out UK tour in 2021 have only enhanced their reputation. Bossk has well and truly arrived on a landscape welcoming it with open arms and ears.