Spasmodique Hold On To A Scream

Release: 22-04-2023 | Label: Sounds Haarlem Likes Vinyl / Suburban

1x LP

Some of the best Dutch alternative bands from the eighties & nineties in one evening! Hallo Venray has been going on for an incredible 35 years, even more incredible: the guitar rock band is better than ever, as they prove on the new album Coffee & Cake (2022). Stuurbaard Bakkebaard is back in the original trio line-up – the music of this Eindhoven cult band is still an inimitable mix of rock, blues, trash, kettle music and Captain Beefheart. The Rotterdam dark new wave/post-punk band Spasmodique celebrates its fortieth anniversary with a new album.

The seventh studio album Hold On To A Scream by the Rotterdam based underground band Spasmodique will be released on April 15, 2023 (Record Store Day), followed by a number of performances in the Netherlands.

Hold On To A Scream will be released on LP and CD by the label Sounds Haarlem Likes Vinyl. Eight new songs were written and rehearsed during the period of lockdowns (20/21) and largely recorded live in early 22, in the Rotterdam based Far Out Sounds studio by Niek Driesschen. The album was completed, mixed and mastered in Studio 2X2 by Spasmodique’s drummer Reinier Rietveld.

Internationally acclaimed cult band Spasmodique existed for 40 years in 2021. Originated in 1981, in the corridors of a psychogeriatric nursing home in Capelle a/d IJssel, the quartet developed into a relentless live band that played throughout Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s and released four studio albums.

The group officially disbanded in 1992, but singer/guitarist Mark Ritsema, guitarist Arjo Hijmans, bassist Martin Docters van Leeuwen and drummer Reinier Rietveld continued to meet each other, with the album Villa Delirium (2002) as their first achievement. The last studio album Six was released in 2016, together with the career-spanning box set All And More of 11 CDs and 3 DVDs. Both products were received with success and Spasmodique can also still count on a loyal audience in the clubs.

On the new album Hold On To A Scream, Spasmodique once again excels in conjuring underground rock and post-punk, intuitively created and dominated by guitars and hypnotically tight rhythms. At the same time, the band broadens with pure, but no less dark songs like Orphaned Serenade and Meander. The ‘scream’ in the title does not express despair or fear, but rather refers to the urgent and inspiring primal scream that has been driving Spasmodique for more than 40 years.