World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid - Always Foreign - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Sometimes, the best place to begin is at the end. If you really want to dig deep into Illusory Walls, the fourth album by The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, it definitely helps to do that. That's because epic closer InchFewer AfraidInch-all 19 minutes, 44 seconds of it-doesn't just revisit the themes and ideas on the ten songs that precede it, but also offers a self-aware summary of the Connecticut band's entire history. It's the conclusion of all the stories within the record as well as a nod to all the lives that helped make them-little glimpses of everything that's come before, on both a micro, immediate level, and a more universal one. InchThat song is a higher level look at my whole life and the whole world,Inch explains vocalist/guitarist David F. Bello, Inchas well as the album, our band and our discography. It places the band in the context of the rest of the world, as if we're listening to everything that came before. It touches on all the themes of the previous songs, but there are also callbacks to songs from earlier in our career. But in this song, they're the object, not the subject-I'm talking about a world in which these things happen, not talking about these things happening.InchDue to the coronavirus pandemic, the band-completed by Steven K. Buttery (drums and percussion), Joshua Cyr (bass/vocals) and Katie Dvorak (vocals/synth)-had nothing but time to realize the full extent of their musical and thematic aspirations. And so, four years on from lauded third album Always Foreign, they were able to make what is undoubtedly the band's most ambitious and epic record to date. Written and recorded remotely-a first for the band-Illusory Walls takes on the weight of human existence while it's buckling under the pressure of today's near-dystopian society. Personal anxieties and political struggles collide with a series of portentous

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die return August 22 with Dreams of Being Dust, an album that finds the Connecticut- formed collective plumbing the depths of emotional ruin and emerging with their most scorched, unrelenting work yet. Co- produced by guitarist Chris Teti (Fiddlehead, Anxious) and Greg Thomas (END, Misery Signals), the album exchanges the band's usual sprawl for something more serrated-folding djent-like heft and post-hardcore volatility into their post-everything DNA.Dreams of Being Dust is the band's fifth studio album, and follows up their well- received 2021 album, Illusory Walls which arrived as their Inchheaviest, proggiest, most audacious to dateInch according to Stereogum. Tackling complex social and political themes like religion and capitalism, Pitchfork praised it's scathing indictments as Inchfuming with resentment for the ruthless greed and self-interest fueling societal collapse. If Illusory Walls was their grand reckoning, Dreams Of Being Dust is the aftermath raw, furious, alive.But even amid the chaos, the band's core remains intact-a belief in community, resistance, and making sense of the world through sheer volume and vulnerability. TWIABP have always blurred the lines between hope and despair, and here, that duality feels sharper than ever. Now a decade in, the band- David F. Bello (vocals), Chris Teti (guitar/vocals), Joshua Cyr (bass), Katie Dvorak (synth/vocals), Steven K. Buttery (drums), and Anthony Gesa (guitar/vocals)-deliver a message that sounds less like a eulogy and more like a rallying cry.

W.a. Mozart - Concerto 10 for 2 Pianos / Piano Trio, K. 502 [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/06/1990