Kim Gordon Announces National Australian Tour For July

Celebrating The Collective’s arrival, musician and visual artist Kim Gordon today announces a national Australian tour adding a fresh run of dates to her international schedule.

Taking in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne in July, she’ll feature on coveted festivals UnsoundAdelaide and Open Frame.

The tour will highlight her recently released second solo album The Collective via Matador / Remote Control Records. It arrived alongside a video for the focus track ‘Psychedelic Orgasm’, directed by Kim Gordon and musician/filmmaker/producer Vice Cooler. With its quick cuts and upside down tableaus of desiccated pumpkins, giant inflatables and shopping mall escalators, the Los Angeles-set clip is as disorienting as ‘Psychedelic Orgasm’ itself.

‘Psychedelic Orgasm’ follows previously released singles and videos ‘I’m A Man’ and ‘BYE BYE,’ which both star Coco Gordon Moore. 

The Collective:
There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’swords in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.

Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. Can I love you with my eyes open? “It’s Dark Inside.” Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears. We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed.

She sings ‘Shelf Warmer’ so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop, assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a return policy. But – novel idea – A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption.

I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. ‘I Don’t Miss My Mind.’ The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title ‘BYE BYE.’ The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers.

She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?

– Written by English artist Josephine Pryde

Recorded in Gordon’s native Los Angeles, The Collective follows her 2019 full-length debut No Home Record and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisin’s damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon’s intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation and sensory overload.

Stream / DownloadKim Gordon – The Collective:https://kimgordon.ffm.to/thecollective

Kim Gordon The Collective Tour

Thursday, 18th July
TBA, Sydney

Friday, 19th July
TBA, Sydney

Saturday, 20th July
Unsound Adelaide @ Dom Polski Centre
TICKETS
*On-sale 10am, 2nd May

Sunday, 21st July
Open Frame, Brisbane Powerhouse
PRE-SALE | ON-SALE
*Pre-sale starts 10am, 2nd May, on-sale 10am, 3rd May

Wednesday, 24th July
Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
PRE-SALE | ON-SALE
*Pre-sale starts 10am, 2nd May, on-sale 10am, 3rd May

Acclaim for The Collective

“What Gordon has proved in this past decade is that her art, her life, her cool…has never been contingent upon anyone else. With time, and through continued art-making, she has righted her own ship and pointed it once again in the direction of thrillingly uncharted waters.” – New York Times

“For decades in Sonic Youth and on her own, Gordon’s exuded her own kind of avant-garde cool, but forging her own lane through thrashing, trash-rap? We are not ready for this shaking hell.” –NPR

“Gordon will turn 71 next month, and she’s made one of the most daring albums of her career. If you want to get it though, you have to turn it up and submit.” – Rolling Stone

“Decades later, and forever, Gordon’s art is not for the faint of heart.” – Associated Press

“A marvelously weird left-turn” – Paper Magazine

“An immersive, entrancing listen — music fit for both exhilaration and examination.”- Stereogum

“As rappers search to redefine rock stardom, Gordon is offering a path forward simply by reasserting her pedigree.” – Fader

“A potent distillation of the multifaceted nature of Gordon as a songwriter, auteur, and iconoclast.” – UPROXX

“The former Sonic Youth bassist’s concepts are intrinsic and rapturous on her second solo album, rendered in blankets of feedback and nonsense phrases that are expressionistic and accessible all the same.”  – Paste Magazine

“Gordon has managed to create an album that pushes her legacy as an experimental force even further, another piece in a discography that refuses to be categorized. Rather than drift off quietly into the sunset, she might just be making the most interesting music of her career.” – EXCLAIM!

“‘The Collective’ rivals that of Sonic Youth’s strongest albums” – Glide Magazine

““The Collective” is a further journey into the claustrophobic grooves, car-chime synths and playground cadences of SoundCloud rap, with lead singles “I’m a Man” and “Bye Bye” eviscerating toxic masculinity and mining menace from a to-do list, respectively.” – Washington Post

“Riotous” – Town & Country

“The indie-music icon is still making art after four decades, and she’s only gotten cooler with time” – LA Magazine

Kim Gordon – The Collective

1. BYE BYE
2. The Candy House
3. I Don’t Miss My Mind
4. I’m a Man
5. Trophies
6. It’s Dark Inside
7. Psychedelic Orgasm
8. Tree House
9. Shelf Warmer
10. The Believers
11. Dream Dollar

Kim Gordon – The Collective is out now via Matador Records / Remote Control Records