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POND
shares new single + video
HUMAN TOUCH

+ New studio album
‘9’
Out Friday 1 October

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Photo credit: Matsu

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“Sex, glitz and humour combine… as Nick Allbrook and co. channel Prince, David Bowie and the psychedelic vibe of their Australian surroundings.” – GIGWISE

“If Pond’s last album saw them doing Pond-as-Springsteen, this song is entirely Pond-as-Prince — and it’s fucking cool.” – PAPER MAGAZINE

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On Friday 1 October, Pond will release their highly anticipated ninth studio album 9 via Spinning Top Records. Today, the Fremantle five-piece are excited to share new single Human Touch, a vacillating psych-rock jam with impressionistic one liners. Human Touch is another cog in the polychromatic music machine that makes up Pond’s forthcoming album, 9.

Frontman Nick Allbrook described the inspiration for the song, saying, “One time a woman was smashing up a car outside my house, begging me to help her steal it. It was a lovely day. She was wired but sweet in a way. Her dog, Josie, was sitting in the passenger seat being very cute and fluffy. We talked for a good few hours in the sunny cul-de-sac and neither of us ended up committing grand theft auto. The music started with a grimey Casio loop Jay made, that we built the song around.”

The band has also released an electric video to accompany the gonzoid thrash sounds of Human Touch. Allbrook went on to say, “My original idea was to be dancing in the central business district of Perth, being thoroughly ignored by suits on their lunch break. Turns out me and Duncan Wright (Director) are both quivering Fremantle natives and terrified of the City. When Duncan saw a pretty sliver of morning sunlight in the West End we figured, stuff it, let’s do it there. Zero people is kind of the same thing as being ignored by lots of people, right? I need some human connection blah blah blah.  It was super fun to make. We didn’t really have a strict plan and I overcame my anxiety about dancing in platform shoes to no music at 9am on a Tuesday morning like a kook.”

Featuring blissed out album track Toast, elastic hipped robo-funk single America’s Cup and the high energy, no-wave lead track Pink Lunettes, on 9, Pond recaptures an anarchic sense of uncertainty and fly closer than ever before to the creative supernova that has blazed across so much of the band’s music. 

“We sort of gave ourselves permission to make something stuffed this time. We’d settled into a pretty tight routine with the last few albums and wanted to shake a boat with this so we started off with filling a few tape reels with some absolutely heinous improvised sonic babble which, after much sifting, became the first few songs of the album. We also wanted to up the tempo. The last few albums have a neat little mantra or repetitive theme. If I was forced to find something like that in 9, I guess it would be ‘biography’ or ‘observation’ – a lot of the lyrics seem to focus on single people’s lives, or the lives of small moments or small things when you zoom real close up and they reveal something deeper. Stuff like my cheap Chinese slippers, or a soiled teddy bear, or Agnes Martin (not to put them in the same category, although maybe Agnes would’ve appreciated it). In the Rorschach test of re-reading lyrics, one thing that sticks out is a fixation on leaving behind a time of golden optimism and uncynical abandon. We can’t look at ourselves the same anymore, and the world we’ve built provides a scary lens for viewing our past,” muses Allbrook on the album.

Produced by Pond and mixed by Jay Watson and James Ireland, on 9, Pond’s explorations are funnelled into electrifying bursts of pure psych-pop joy. No tune even veers past the five minute mark. Above all though, what you get from 9 is a sense of creative abandon and just plain fun.  9 is available for pre-order in digital formats as well as multiple colour options in 12” vinyl, CD and cassette HERE.

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POND
TOUR DATES

Thursday 2 June
+ Saturday 11 June 2022
Primavera Sound, Barcelona 
SOLD OUT

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New single Human Touch – OUT NOW
New album 9 – OUT OCTOBER 1

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About POND

Originally formed in the turn of the 2010’s, as “a Royal Trux-cum-Cream power trio,” fronted by Allbrook with Jay Watson and Joe Ryan, Pond added Jamie Terry shortly afterwards, with James Ireland later rounding out the irrepressible five-piece.   Ever prolific, Pond boasts an impressive eight studio albums in their ever expanding repertoire.  2019 was a milestone year for the one-of-a-kind collective with the release of their most critically acclaimed album to date, Tasmania.  The LP debuted at #15 on the ARIA album chart and #2 on the AIR independent chart.

Pond possesses an ever-expanding performance resumé, having toured with Arctic Monkeys, MGMT and Flaming Lips. They have stunned at premiere musical festivals around the world including Glastonbury, Coachella, Primavera, Bonnaroo, Reading and Leeds, The Governors Ball, South by Southwest, St Jerome’s Laneway, Splendour in the Grass and more, and have sold out countless venues around the globe from New York’s Bowery Ballroom to Paris’ La Gaite Lyrique and London’s O2 Forum.

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AMNPLIFY – DB