MEMORIALS – Cut Glass Hammer
MEMORIALS, the duo of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire), announce their second album “All Clouds Bring Not Rain”, out March 27th via Fire Records, and share lead single “Cut Glass Hammer”. Just over a year after their debut “Memorial Waterslides”, they return with a record that sounds like an unearthed lost classic.
The album was recorded mostly at Studio St Rémy, built in a barn deep in the woods of southwestern France. Susman and Simms locked themselves away and emerged with something melodic but unconventional, writing, performing, recording, and mixing everything themselves. They travelled around sourcing specific equipment: borrowing a harpsichord from 4AD’s London studio, getting a vibraphone and vintage Leslie speaker from Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay’s Press Play studio.
“We are increasingly drawn to the way records used to be made,” they explain. “There wasn’t the option to tinker for ages, it was about capturing a moment in time and committing to that. It’s far more satisfying to record sounds that exist in a real space and become unique to us rather than samples available everywhere.”
“Cut Glass Hammer” started as an experiment in not changing chords. Built around two modular synth lines in different time signatures, they continuously evolve as a pair even though each individual line repeats. The motorik beat drives forward while Susman’s vocals drift over the top. The lyrics came from a visit to the Yoko Ono retrospective “Music of the Mind” at London’s Tate Modern, inspired by Ono’s glass-hammer artwork. As the song says, “nothing is exactly as it feels.”
The duo spent the first half of 2025 composing the soundtrack to a Kate Bush documentary that aired on France’s Arte television, then recorded “All Clouds Bring Not Rain” in the summer before touring the US with Stereolab. The album will draw from folk, dub, post-punk, experimental tape music, 60s soul, garage rock, 70s spiritual jazz, and Canterbury prog.
Tracklist:
- Life Could Be a Cloud
- Cut Glass Hammer
- I Can’t See A Rainbow
- Dropped Down The Well
- In The Weeds
- Reimagined River
- Mediocre Demon
- Bell Miner
- Lemon Trees
- Watching The Moon
- Wildly Remote
- Holy Invisible
Europe:
- April 08 – Le Hasard Ludique, Paris, France
- April 09 – Le Tangram, Évreux, France
- April 10 – Variations Festival, Nantes, France (w/ Einstürzende Neubauten)
- April 11 – Calm, Limoges, France
- April 12 – La Petite Populaire, La Réole, France
- April 14 – Le Consortium, Dijon, France
- April 15 – Le Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France (w/ Bibi Club)
- April 22 – The Croft, Bristol, UK
- April 23 – Little Bully, Oxford, UK
- April 24 – Prince Albert, Brighton, UK
- April 26 – Heartbreakers, Southampton, UK
- April 29 – The Lexington, London, UK
- April 30 – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds, UK
- May 01 – The Castle Hotel, Manchester, UK
- May 31 – Nachtasyl, Hamburg, Germany
- June 01 – Kantine am Berghain, Berlin, Germany
- June 02 – Noch Besser Leben, Leipzig, Germany
- June 03 – Kohi, Karlsruhe, Germany
- June 04 – Club Manufaktur, Schorndorf, Germany
- June 05 – Bellevue Di Monaco, München, Germany
- June 06 – Rotown, Rotterdam, Netherlands
