Aquarian Blood

Aquarian Blood

Bending The Golden Hour

Goner

With Bending The Golden Hour, the third album from Memphis, Tennessee’s Aquarian Blood, husband and wife team J.B. Horrell (Ex-Cult) and Laurel Horrell (formerly of the Nots) continue the gorgeously stripped-down and atmospheric direction set on their critically acclaimed previous effort A Love That Leads to War. While Aquarian Blood has roots as a chaotic punk rock six-piece, the band shifted gears after two raucous cassette-only releases on ZAP Cassettes, a pair of seven-inches, and 2017’s Last Nite In Paradise, released on Goner Records. After drummer Bill Curry broke his arm, the Horrells redefined Aquarian Blood, reemerging in early 2018 as the more intimate, mostly acoustic balladeers behind the staccato, fever dream sound of A Love That Leads to War. Like its immediate predecessor, Bending The Golden Hour was recorded at the Horrells’ Midtown Memphis home. The band turned over forty-three tracks to Goner co-owner Zac Ives, who handpicked seventeen songs for the album. The final result is shimmering and hopeful; as beautiful and sparse as a Rockwell Kent snowscape.

Aquarian Blood

A Love That Leads To War

Goner

A Love That Leads To War is a clear departure in style and mood for Memphis Tennessee’s Aquarian Blood. The band’s 2017’s debut LP on Goner Records, Last Nite In Paradise, is a chaotic punk epic, rising and falling like the soundtrack to a paranoid nightmare. As a live act, the six-piece band’s sonic atrocity left clubs and house shows around Memphis on life support. The band’s follow up Goner release, A Love That Leads To War, is a more intimate offering of fifteen tracks. Indirectly sparked when full-band drummer Bill Curry was temporarily lost due to a broken arm, Aquarian Blood began playing out in February 2018 as a scaled-down, four-piece incarnation. This more personal album was written, recorded and (almost entirely) performed by founding husband / wife duo J.B. Horrell (Ex-Cult) and NOTS alum Laurel Horrell. Just grazing the surface of the album can draw a line backwards from the acoustic entirety of A Love That Leads To War to Aquarian Blood’s unsettling past. The opening track “There’s A World” is a finger-picked fever dream nailing the rarified “beauty jumps into bed w/ horror” sweet spot so squarely one can’t believe it’s not a cover of some hippy hangover perfection dating back to the Nixon administration. It’s no first-song / best-song hat trick, but rather a deft setup of the next thirty-nine minutes. “No Place I Know,” “In the Water,” and “Their Dream” would fit in well in the shimmier side of the Shimmy Disc catalog, and “Thought...

Aquarian Blood

(colored) A Love That Leads To War

Goner

A Love That Leads To War is a clear departure in style and mood for Memphis Tennessee’s Aquarian Blood. The band’s 2017’s debut LP on Goner Records, Last Nite In Paradise, is a chaotic punk epic, rising and falling like the soundtrack to a paranoid nightmare. As a live act, the six-piece band’s sonic atrocity left clubs and house shows around Memphis on life support. The band’s follow up Goner release, A Love That Leads To War, is a more intimate offering of fifteen tracks. Indirectly sparked when full-band drummer Bill Curry was temporarily lost due to a broken arm, Aquarian Blood began playing out in February 2018 as a scaled-down, four-piece incarnation. This more personal album was written, recorded and (almost entirely) performed by founding husband / wife duo J.B. Horrell (Ex-Cult) and NOTS alum Laurel Horrell. Just grazing the surface of the album can draw a line backwards from the acoustic entirety of A Love That Leads To War to Aquarian Blood’s unsettling past. The opening track “There’s A World” is a finger-picked fever dream nailing the rarified “beauty jumps into bed w/ horror” sweet spot so squarely one can’t believe it’s not a cover of some hippy hangover perfection dating back to the Nixon administration. It’s no first-song / best-song hat trick, but rather a deft setup of the next thirty-nine minutes. “No Place I Know,” “In the Water,” and “Their Dream” would fit in well in the shimmier side of the Shimmy Disc catalog, and “Thought...

Aquarian Blood

Last Nite In Paradise

Goner

Aquarian Blood is a crew of six (sometimes seven) Memphis degenerates from assorted generations playing hypnotic, synth-y tracks whose main ruminations are cults, the paranormal, and other obscurities—whirlwind, weirdo punk soaked in the brain-goo pouring out of the ears of an acid freak. Led by husband and wife duo JB Horrell (Ex-Cult, Moving Finger) and Laurel Ferdon (Nots, Moving Finger), the project began as bedroom recordings that yielded two now out-of-print tapes of total trippiness on the ZAP cassette label, and one completely unhinged monster of a single on Goner. Last Nite In Paradise is their debut album.

Aquarian Blood

Savage Mind

Goner

AQUARIAN BLOOD’s first offering was a cassette only batch of Father Yod/Manson Family cult punk hippie creepy crawl home recordings by JB Horrell (Ex-Cult, Moving Finger) and Laurel Ferdon (Moving Finger, formerly of Nots). But their live show is a six-piece heavy freaked out proto punk squall – chock full of synth burps, fuzzed out violin, guitar squeal and the ferocious vocals of Ferdon. Their debut single captures both aspects of the band, with the full band blowout on the two A-side tracks and the B-side a new home recording that is less unhinged but just as engaging.