{"title":"Activity","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"spirit-in-the-room-2","title":"Spirit In The Room","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn their sophomore album Spirit in the Room, Activity is haunted by technology, the loss of loved ones, capitalism, and humanity's relentless death march towards environmental destruction. Produced by Psychic TV's Jeff Berner, the album is an emotional seance held through an unearthly haze of menacing trip hop, ambient electronica, and synth-based noise rock. A sense of longing and hopelessness in the face of monumental loss comes through almost instantly on opening track \"Department of Blood,\" in which lead vocalist Travis Johnson sardonically indicts both neoliberalism and \"whatever the lord is,\" beneath a grim collage of processed electronics and a sinister drum machine beat. The David Berman-inspired \"Heaven Chords, was written shortly after the iconic songwriter's death, and atmospheric track \"Where the Art is Hung,\" is a haunting lament over the omnipresence of technology and surveillance in the modern world. Spirit in the Room is no lighthearted journey, but the band's playfulness and obvious natural chemistry keeps the collection from being burdened by its own solemnity. \"Unlike the first album, where we'd barely played live before we recorded, we got to take some of the less electronic songs out on the road in the fall of 2021,\" Johnson explains. \"Some tracks had been incubating for over a year in our rehearsals. We could feel them change and open up in a live setting, so when we got back home, we went back to the drawing board on a lot of them. Some got scrapped altogether and we haven't played them since. You get an idea in your head of what it is, but it's something else when you're trying to hold other people's attention. Every part needed to feel earned or necessary.\" On the one hand, Spirit in the Room is a harrowing journey through a Bosch-like landscape of illness, global capital, and human-caused destruction. On the other hand, it's a room full of friends who are simply trying to make it through the day and process this world we've created. When asked why this album needed to be made, Johnson put it best: \"None of us can stand to not make music is all, really.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Western Vinyl","offers":[{"title":"Clear LP","offer_id":50482976293195,"sku":"2029992","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50482976784715,"sku":"2030000","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Spirit_in_the_Room_c634b970_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727559078"},{"product_id":"unmask-whoever","title":"Unmask Whoever","description":"\u003cp\u003eSupergroup featuring members of Grooms, Field Mouse, and Russian Baths. Produced by Jeff Berner of Psychic TV. Mastered by Heba Kadry, known for her work with Bjork, Slowdive, Deerhunter, Japanese Breakfast, Cass McCombs, et al. Activity are an avant four-piece featuring Travis Johnson, and drummer Steve Levine, both from the band Grooms, bassist Zoë Browne from Field Mouse, and guitarist Jess Rees from Russian Baths. Produced by engineer Jeff Berner of Psychic TV, their debut forms a casually menacing framework for lyrical themes of paranoia, exposed character flaws, and the broader human capacity for growth when an ugly truth is laid bare. Lead single \u003ci\u003eCalls Your Name\u003c\/i\u003e, establishes the record’s spectral aura with nauseated electronic bells, and a relentless Geoff Barrow-esque drum beat beneath a half-sung, half-spoken lyrics inspired by C.S. Lewis’s 1945 novel The Great Divorce. In the novel, characters stuck in a grey, joyless conception of hell repeatedly deny opportunities to be taken into heaven, instead making excuses as to why they should remain in their embittered purgatory states. Allegorically, this speaks to the kind of opportunity for metamorphosis and positive change that’s possible when the depths of disillusionment are reached, an idea which permeates much of the album. Despite recurrent aches of discontentment, each track glows with radiant waves of catharsis while elegantly evoking jubilation and anguish within the same breadth, showing that the two are always around the corner from one another. For fans of Blonde Redhead, Clinic, Deerhunter and Broadcast. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Western Vinyl","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50498683142475,"sku":"1088249","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/cb4acdfc-dd07-4161-a730-591de5379434_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727753520"},{"product_id":"a-thousand-years-in-another-way","title":"A Thousand Years In Another Way","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Evil is very real and having its way, and love is also real and hasn’t lost yet.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s how Activity’s Travis Johnson described their third album, \u003cem\u003eA Thousand Years In Another Way\u003c\/em\u003e. A friend had asked why these songs seemed to capture the strange, heavy feeling of being alive right now better than anything else—and that was his answer. The album doesn’t try to explain this time we’re living in; it simply feels like it. It’s a mix of violence, alienation, and tenderness—reflecting the surreal, dreamlike (or nightmarish) rhythm of daily life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross ten songs, Activity blends experimental rock, electronics, and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, flickers of hope, and a warped reality. Working with producer Jeff Berner (of Psychic TV), the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorienting—like the air is thick and the walls are listening.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eComing out of a period of uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet—Travis Johnson, Jess Rees, Bri DiGioia, and Steven Levine—pieced the album together from fragments: clipped samples, looping guitar lines, ghostly melodies. Rees, DiGioia, and Johnson share vocal and writing duties, shaping a record that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. There’s a constant sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second—nothing stays one thing for long.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Thousand Years In Another Way\u003c\/em\u003e might not offer answers, but it captures the feeling of right now better than most. And maybe, it sounds a bit like your world too.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Western Vinyl","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":51596340625739,"sku":"R5439-0782","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a471411b-31a4-9695-af22-8fe210b1cf6d.jpg?v=1744024218"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/activity.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}