We're delighted to announce that Helicon has been selected to perform as part of the Made In Scotland Gigs Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August.
Presented by Scotland's music convention, Wide Days, in partnership with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, the showcase highlights some of Scotland's most exciting emerging artists to audiences, industry professionals and international delegates during the Fringe.
One ticket gets you into 3 venues to see all of this year's line-up, which features Azamiah, Bikini Body, Cathal Murphy, Dara Dubh, Fright Years, Haiver, Helicon and Tom Campbell Trio, with performances taking place across Bannerman's, La Belle Angele and Sneaky Pete's.
The showcase comes at an exciting time for the band following the release of ARISE, our collaborative album with Los Angeles producer AL LOVER, and the launch of the trailer for WE SOUND LIKE HELICON, our forthcoming documentary exploring psychedelia and creative collaboration.
We'll be performing on 17 August as part of the showcase, with the documentary premiering around the same time.
We'd love to see you there.
‘ARISE’ our new collab album with Los Angeles-based artist and DJ, AL LOVER, is out now on Fuzz Club.
"Arise confronts a culture of individualism at the mercy of opportunistic grifters," says John-Paul Hughes, "offering a reminder that empathy, compassion, and authenticity are still choices." Reflecting that tension, Helicon and Al Lover deliver a maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse — fusing Helicon’s trademark psychedelia with Al Lover’s genre-bending electronics.
Produced by Tony Doogan (Mogwai, The Jesus & Mary Chain) at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow, the result is a dense, hypnotic, and fiercely rhythmic record that layers trip-hop breaks, deep low-end and dub textures into "a visceral wake-up call to rise above the bullshit and reclaim meaning from the madness."
The record's alchemical creative approach was built initially on a trans-Atlantic online back-and-forth of demos between Helicon and Lover. Once upwards of 20 demos had been bounced across the ether and eventually whittled down, the Helicon band (clocking in at eight members at the time of writing, with Belle & Sebastian's Chris Geddes also playing piano on 'Goodbye Cool World') headed into Castle Of Doom to lay down the bare-bones, ready for Lover to fly over and join them and work his magic on drum machine, synth and samplers.
“For me, psychedelia is about breaking things open and seeing where it can go next",John-Paul says: "How far can it stretch and still feel vital? Working with Al Lover let us twist it into something new and prove it can still evolve, still surprise, and still mean something in a world of conformity where everything begins to look and sound the same.”
With Al Lover adding: “The process of working with Helicon on this project has been nothing but a joy. It’s so nice to have music be the conduit for human connection. This is an ongoing theme with any creative endeavour that I’ve undertaken. I hope that connectivity reaches through the music to the listener, helping them feel like a participant in the music, not just passive observers.”