You can guess even from gazing at the cover art for Grey Aura‘s new album (by Dutch photographer/artist Sanja Marusic) that you may be about to experience something that’s well off the usual beaten paths, and that turns out to be undeniably, unmistakably, true.

The album’s name is Zwart Vierkant, and it will be released on May 7th by Onism Productions. In creating it, this Dutch band from Utrecht have crafted a fascinating, hard-to-categorize musical narrative that is bound to a novel written by Grey Aura’s Ruben Wijlacker which follows the journey of an early 20th-century painter through Europe, a character who has become obssessed with the Russian art movement Suprematism.

Onism has provided a description of the album, which we’re going to share with you because it really does provide a good introduction to the music — but we will also be giving you a chance to actually listen to some of the music, through our premiere of the album’s opening track, “Maria Segovia“. Continue reading »

Grey Aura are a two-man Dutch band who have recorded a massive debut album, a double-record entitled Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort that was initially self-released on Bandcamp and will now be released in June by the astute Finnish label Blood Music, both digitally and in a remarkable 2-CD set housed in a 60-page hardback book with foil-stamped printing.

Now, you may have already heard something about this unusual and tremendously ambitious album. In fact, if you have long memories, you may have heard about it here at NCS, because I wrote about two of the songs when they were first released for streaming in late 2014. Yes, this has been in the works for a long time, but when you understand more about the nature and scope of the project, you’ll understand why so much time has been invested in it. And so here’s the context of this album — followed by our premiere of yet another song: “Ijshoek“. Continue reading »