Aleks and the Ramps Release New Single, Re-release Two Lps

Posted: 27 October, 2011

We're super excited to announce that Melbourne experimental pop outfit par excellence, Aleks and the Ramps, have joined Gaga Digi. We've just released their awesome new single, Middle Aged Unicorn On Beach With Sunset, and re-released their first two lps: Pisces vs Aquarius and Midnight Believer. Buy them all here.

Aleks and the Ramps started out more or less by accident when, in 2005, Aleks Badham, taking a break from studying film, recorded an EP of meandering, blippy psych folk. Needing a band to play a launch show, Aleks gathered together a few friends to help out, under the name the Ramps; six years, two albums and a couple of line up changes later, Aleks and the Ramps are still together. Indeed, they're better than ever.

The Ramps' released their first album, Pisces and Aquarius, in 2007. Recorded in a temporary studio in a Scout Hall in the middle of nowhere, the Ramps' first lp instantly outed the Ramps as a new species of band/human, taking in stoner jams, indie spaz outs and morose country singalongs, all of it possessed of a wonderfully cracked wit and charm that would characterise everything to emerge from Ramps HQ.

After a DIY tour of Canada and a change of drummers, the band returned to the studio (a real one this time) in 2009 with Chicago ex-pat Casey Rice to record Midnight Believer, an album of strange and addictive delights that rightly won the band a heap of new fans and some well-deserved critical acclaim.

Check out the Aleks-directed clip for Antique Limb, from Midnight Believer, below:

Last year, after a quick tour of Japan, Aleks and the Ramps returned to recording, laying down the tracks that would become their third lp. This third album does not yet have a name, but we can tell you this about it: since we received it from Ramps HQ, we have not been able to stop listening to it. It's a remarkable album, full of hooks and sharp left turns and Aleks' typically drily hilarious observations on the absurdity of human life.

Ramps Album #3, as we're calling it for now, will be out on Gaga Digi on Valentine's Day, 2012. In the meantime, though, you can feast on the first two singles from the album: Bummer, a highly habit-forming track we were gifted a few months ago, and the new single, the thoroughly excellent Middle Aged Unicorn On Beach With Sunset.

Have a listen to Bummer on our player above, and check out the great new clip for Middle Aged Unicorn below, in which Aleks croons with a flower for a head in a dark room full of flashing skulls. Of course.

If you have not seen the Ramps live yet, your life has little to no chance of being complete. Catch one (or all) of their last shows for 2011:

10/11/11: Melbourne @ Buffalo Club w/ with Near Myth and Seagull
11/11/11: Sydney @ The Gate w/ Charge Group, Valar and N. Martin
12/11/11: Newcastle @ Emma Soup w/ Boatfriends and Polyfox
13/11/11: Sydney @ Newtown Festival (Free entry! 2:30pm)

Pete : 27 October, 2011

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