York Factory Complaint and Thought Broadcast releasing LPs, celebrating together at Nothing Changes (streams)

by Wyatt Marshall

York Factory Complaint at Saint Vitus, January 2013 (more by Caroline Harrison)

If you’re not familiar with the NYC duo York Factory Complaint, you may know some of their other projects–Ryan Martin is the co-founder of Dais Records, and Michael Berdan also is/was in Believer/Law, Uniform, Veins and Drunkdriver. Their new album, Lost In The Spectacle (preorder) is a hellish, disgusted trip through noise-drenched industrial waste. A track, “Loved,” is streaming at NPR along with a Q&A with the band in which they expound upon the theory-intensive concept behind the album. Here’s a bit:

Otis Hart: Lost In The Spectacle is the name of your new album as York Factory Complaint. Is that the same “Spectacle” French philosopher Guy Debord addresses in his book The Society Of The Spectacle?

Michael Berdan: It is indeed the situationist idea of the Spectacle that we’re referencing, yes. Ryan and I both stand in agreement that the Spectacle is a very real social constraint and encompasses the whole of our psychic and spiritual existence. The individual idea no longer exists. The individual feeling disappears the more we allow our computers to socialize us. We believe what we are told to believe, we feel how we are told to feel, we make what we are told to make and we buy what we are told to buy. There is no such thing as a subculture in 2014. Any a—— can manufacture the full illusion of a clandestine identity within 10 minutes on Tumblr.

Now, it’s a pointless exercise in futility to rebel against the Spectacle, as it absorbs all that it touches. So what can we do? We can acknowledge it for what it is and stare it dead in the eyes. Through a series of conversations, we decided that we wanted to make something that openly acknowledges the fact that taste and politics are bought and sold and how everything we create is just another cog in the Spectacle. This record is about our collective spiritual death.

The rest of the interview and song stream are over at NPR.

York Factory Complaint will be celebrating (perhaps the wrong word, given that interview excerpt) the release of their record next Wednesday, 7/16, at the weekly Nothing Changes party at Home Sweet Home. The show doubles as the release date for a new LP from the industrial ambient noise project Thought Broadcast, who will be releasing their new album Votive Zero. Give that a stream below.

Michael’s Uniform project next play on July 31 at Union Pool with Noothgrush and Trenchgrinder.

Stream that Thought Broadcast song, with the full upcoming Nothing Changes schedule, below…

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Nothing Changes Schedule

7/23 – TOTAL ABUSE // RECTAL HYGENICS // LIGATURE

7/30 – DARK ENTRIES TOUR: BEZIER // MAX&MARA // REDREDRED w/ DJS JOSH CHEON

8/6 – VIOLENCE (OTTAWA) // PAWNS

8/13- THE RETURN OF FUTURE BLONDES // TBA

8/20 – SCOUT // BLOOD & SUN

8/27 – YELLOW TEARS

9/3 – VANIISH (SF) // TIERS // OFFING (SF)

9/10 – PROFLIGATE // BERNARD HERMAN

9/17 – APPETITE // TBA