Cover of vinyl record VIRTUe SIGNAL by artist AATHENS

AATHENS

VIRTUe SIGNAL

LP - BLANK - - POSTPUNK - In stock
€ 24,50

Aathens formed when Marcus Browne (vocals/guitar), Hannah Gledhill (guitar), Jason Jaworski (drums) and Ed Shellard (bass) began rehearsing in the basement of London's now defunct Powerlunches in late 2015, having met through the mutual bands and like minds that once called the space home. The same spiky DIY spirit and urban angst that ran through that venue and its community runs through the band's debut album Virtue Signal.

Recorded in a frantic overnight session at the beginning of the year, Virtue Signal taps a rich vein of acerbic humour and punk brio, as Aathens mull over many of the bigger questions taken on by their peers: gentrification, stagnation, automation and the rank absurdity of daily life in 2017. But in doing so, they are just as likely to admit being complicit in these dubious currents as they are critical of them – for all their objections, the band never (or at least try not to) lapse into witless sloganeering or po-faced posturing.

The spindly guitars and lockstep rhythms found on Virtue Signal, which first showed up on their 2016 debut release, the EP-length video TVEP, put Aathens in the company of Fugazi, Television and Minutemen, as well as Blank Editions labelmates Housewives and Thurston Moore. And that's not bad company to keep at a time when so little makes sense.

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