Hugo Race & The True Spirit - Starbirth

Gusstaff Records

£18

Format: Vinyl LP
Catalogue No.: GRAM2009LP
Barcode: 5050580746091
Release Date: 16th October 2020
Genre: Alternative/Punk (Alternative)

01: Can't Make This Up
02: 2Dead2Feel
03: Darkside
04: Embryo
05: Heavenly Bodies
06: Only Money
07: Holy Ghost
08: Everyday
09: United
10: Expandable
11: The Rapture
12: Where Does It End

180g black vinyl Star Birth and downloadcode for "Star Birth" and "Star Death". Gatefold.

'Star Birth' is a flung fisherman's net, mighty in scope, irrevocable as looking up from the stone floor of a cathedral – there is space, yet there is profound intimacy from the immediacy of the lyrics, our thoughts rattling around like panicky goldfish. Race has taken aspects of areas
previously explored, and made a quantum leap into the unknowable. With opening track Can't Make This Up, the gauntlet is flung down – 'what is need, what is greed / it's a new crush, the brain trust/ hive mind rewrite rewind/ falsehood streaming'

'Star Birth' is international maverick and music icon Hugo Race's 15th album with his band of True Spirits. It's a double album and the twin album's name is 'Star Death'. Star Birth was recorded during Australia's bushfire summer apocalypse of 2019 and mixed as the 2020 covid-19 pandemic hit. When the stars align it all makes sense, Hugo explains, adding that one oceanic evening while writing the album a bright star exploded right before his eyes, the sign of a sudden end and a new beginning...

Hugo's writes of trials, tribulations, hopes, fears, heartaches, loves, losses, highs and lows – 'everyday I die a little bit more, in a thousand ways I fight my little wars – and he sings with exquisite pathos and depth, like he's singing just for you about the times in which we live –
political disasters, our planet, the absence and the presence of spiritual values, broken promises, cracked hearts and if any of it really matters anyway. With hell raising lyrics like,Expendable, you'd have to wonder if anyone of us will make it through alive – 'hey sister, are
we all expendable? nobody wins, but so many of you think they do / don't try to fool yourself people, deep down you know the truth - everybody gets their one hot shot but no one's bullet proof'. But then The Rapture reminds us that there will always be stars dying in the glory of
new life – 'give us this day comfort and bread / implant in us the living word / empower us with divine love and deliver us from evil / for you are the one true light / the power and the glory / forever /amen'

Hugo's True Spirit deliver a lush, sonic love letter of rock, electronica and dramatic orchestration, based in blues, hypnotic repetition and sonic exhilaration. Michelangelo Russo is a huge part of this atmosphere; his approach to music is that of an artist with a palette of
mysterious implements and machinery, but the entire band and production is incredible from start to finish. Star Birth is 48 minutes of mind expanding, mind blowing, heel tapping tunes, with its sister album 'Star Death', a dub version of remixes that will send you searching for
your own exploding star somewhere in the sky…

'live today like there's no tomorrow / watchin' you watchin' me / we're the nightmare and the dream / love is the energy / just atoms blowin' free'

Watch the stunning videos for Embryo and its B-side Virus Of The Mind:

https://youtu.be/bO8Z-J3BGY8
https://youtu.be/eg870OyUZWU

The True Spirit – Hugo Race, Michelangelo Russo, Nico Mansy, Chris Hughes, Bryan
Colechin, Brett Poliness. Recorded by Andrew 'Idge' Hehir at Soundpark, Melbourne.
Additional recording by Dugald Jayes. Further recording Los Angeles by Nico Mansy, and by
James Masson at Klangton Studio, Berlin.
The album was produced by Hugo at his Helixed studio in Melbourne.
All songs published by Peermusic.
The sleeve image is by Melbourne artist Josh Lord.

About Hugo Race: Hugo is a native Melbournian, class of '63. A former Bad Seed, he spent 3 decades in Europe, particularly Italy, travelling the channel back and forth – where the personal and the musical collide! Hugo has released 30 albums on Glitterhouse, Sub Rosa, RecRec, Normal, Bang!, Desvelos and the Polish independent label Gusstaff Records as well as Other Tongues, Village Roadshow, Citadel, Spooky and Rampant Records in Australia.
Hugo's alchemical fusion of rock, roots, experimentalism and blues has gained him an international audience and a network of collaborators, promoters and labels, releasing multiple albums and projects under many different names – Fatalists, Dirtmusic, Sepiatone, LDO, Merola Matrix, Gemini 4 and of course The True Spirit. In 2016, Hugo's first book, a memoir, 'Road Series', was published by Transit Lounge.