Shouting Out Loud! announce the release of Island, the new collaborative album from Ana da Silva (of The Raincoats) and Japanese electronic musician Phew. A bracing odyssey in industrial noise, Island is full of absorbing textures, tactile beats, and a masterfully dynamic compositional style. Each cavernous track feels like a conversation, and out of the ominous dark comes a generative hope. Ana and Phew contribute pointillist bits of spoken word in each other’s native tongues of Portuguese and Japanese, reflecting on isolation, friendship, and nature. The quotidian is made profound. A gripping mood is set by the shared stoicism and subtle playfulness of these two cult punk icons. Each song was collectively composed by both Ana and Phew, who exchanged files via email. At times, Island evokes the sinister throb of Phew’s recent Light Sleep album (which in turn recalls Suicide). Island’s logic is one of wise minimalism. There is a feeling of discovery that will be familiar to Raincoats fans —a sense of poetry and inquisitiveness, of intuition and invention, of new languages taking shape // Ana da Silva is a founding member and songwriter of the pioneering post-punk band The Raincoats. Across four daring full-length records, The Raincoats helped shape the timeless notion that punk is what you make it to be an act of raw expression, not any one sound. The Raincoats have offered creative and spiritual inspiration for several generations of artists, cited as a formative influence by Kurt Cobain, Carrie Brownstein, Bikini Kill, and Sex Pistols’ John Lydon. They set a crucial precedent for feminist work within a DIY punk context, marked all the while by Ana’s poetic lyrical style and innovative noise guitar playing. Ana’s recent appearances with The Raincoats include a 2016 collaboration with Angel Olsen for Rough Trade’s 40th anniversary, as well as a 2017 presentation at The Kitchen, New York of The Raincoats and Friends, a celebration of Jenn Pelly’s book The Raincoats.
// With the 2017–18 international release of her album Voice Hardcore (on her own BeReKet and New York’s Mesh-Key labels) legendary Japanese musician Phew consolidated her binary interests as vocal performer and, latterly, analogue electronics improviser. Indeed, since her 2013 conversion to analogue electronics Phew has continued evolving her live solo project around the world. In 2015 she released her first almost entirely solo-driven CD, aptly titled A New World, on the Japanese label Felicity featuring nine songs backed by herself on electronics and drum machine, with contributions from Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, and synthesizer / electronics player Hiroyuki Nagashima.
Including “Finale 2015”, her remake of her 1980 debut single “Finale”, it turned the Phew story full circle. In Japan she has made a series of acclaimed records under her own name, or with leading bands such as Novo Tono and her contemporary punk group Most. Her other projects include the electronics and voice duo Big Picture with Hiroyuki Nagashima.