Author: dtr

Yo Riverites,

Happy New Year! Thanks so much for coming to our shows and buying our records in 2014 – we’re profoundly grateful for your continued support.

We’ve just announced a whole bunch of new shows in all the towns and cities we missed on our UK and US tours in September and October. Check the shows page for tickets.

We also started 2015 by committing one of our favourite moments of last year to film – the video for our new single Rollerskate is out now, and features footage from our Kentish Town Forum show in October. If you were there you might see yourself, check it out below!

Thanks again, and see you all soon,

DtRx

After two years in the making, across all kinds of physical and personal terrains, Alarms in the Heart is out today. The feeling for us is impossible to describe, really, suffice to say that we are deeply grateful for your continued support, and excited by this new chapter in the ongoing story of Dry the River.

You can buy the album in your preferred formats here:
iTunes & Amazon (Digital)
Rough Trade & Record Store (CD & Vinyl with bonus flexi-disc)
Music Glue (Bundles including tickets & merch)

You can also stream the album in full on Spotify.

Your own responses are important to us – tell us how it makes you feel on Facebook or Twitter, and share it with your friends in the same places.

In-Stores
We’re playing some in-stores this week to celebrate this milestone. Come find us in these places to pick up the exclusive vinyl edition of Alarms in the Heart with bonus track New Cross on flexi-disc, only available in independent stores.

Banquet Records, Kingston – 26.08.14 [info]
Rise Records, Bristol – 27.08.14 [info]
Rough Trade East, London – 28.08.14 [info]

Reading & Leeds
Thanks to everyone who watched our set at Reading or Leeds. It was a very special moment for us and the perfect way to prepare for the release of the second record. In case you missed it you can watch our Reading main stage set on BBC iPlayer here.

Thanks to all of you, wherever you are, for sticking with us. In rainy London or the brighter corners of the world, please put on this record and turn it up.

Yours,

DtRx

In anticipation of our second LP, Alarms in the Heart, coming out on Aug 25th (26th US), our friends at Popmatters have shared Jake Dypka’s 10 minute documentary of our weird and wonderful time making the record in Iceland.

Check it out here:

http://www.popmatters.com/post/184702-dry-the-river-the-making-of-alarms-in-the-heart-video-premiere/

DtRx

On a hungover morning in February I was walking through London Fields on the way back to my flat. It was typically overcast and my eyes were on my feet. I was thinking about a similar park near my secondary school in Newbury. Somehow, the opening lines of a song appeared unbidden.

“I was lying on the floor of the playground. You were chasing off a kid with a greyhound. I remember thinking you’re the coolest girl I know.”

At the time Dry the River were in something of a wilderness, creatively and temporally. There were a lot of uncertainties surrounding the record – when it would be finished and how we would get there, who we wanted to work with in terms of our wider team.

In the practice room later that day I mumbled the words over some chords for the rest of the boys to hear, and by the evening the song existed, dreamt up out of our collective subconscious, as though it had just been waiting for us to find it.

The rest of the record kind of reconstituted itself around that new knot of music, and now we find ourselves a month from the release of our second album, renewed and excited.

For me, Everlasting Light represents the path out of the wilderness – a kind of unlikely moment of clarity where we remembered what its like to be a band in a room. Listening to it now, it feels like we were trying to exonerate ourselves, trying to articulate the feeling that all the detours we’d taken were part of the process, and that we were beginning to find our feet in our own way.

Who knows – still, it feels cathartic to shout “I had my reasons at the time”.

The combative video came from these themes – of getting back up after a setback, dusting ourselves off. The black belts are real, and so is the pain. See you in the dojo. DtR x

Our second record, Alarms in the Heart, is available for preorder now.

It’s a modest enough milestone in the grand scheme of everything, but to us it’s a very meaningful marker. We’re still struggling to find words to describe the thing – the story of its making reaches from rough bedroom demos to lost hours in dark practice rooms. From endless studio weeks in the weird moonscape of Iceland, to a Glaswegian industrial estate and a West Country farmhouse. And the finished record sounds like those sprawling geographies, in a way – like a map of our own troubles and triumphs that ran alongside, from start to finish. It describes an arc, both in terms of the collection of stories it’s telling, and in the sense that it reflects a period of growth and great change for Dry the River itself. That’s as close to a description as we can get. Now for the cold hard facts:

The album will be released on Aug 25th 2014.

It will be supported by an autumn tour. Full UK dates and ticket links in the shows section, with more to be added further afield very soon.

For those of you who’ve waited so long – who keep thinking to check, and to ask, and who spur us on – we’ve put together preorder CD and LP bundles, with autumn tour tickets, and a beautiful (very limited!) signed poster designed by Luke Drozd around the themes of the album.

PREORDER CD, LP & POSTER / TICKET BUNDLES HERE

Alternatively, you can preorder the digital download on iTunes below. All iTunes preorders come with a free instant download of the first song we wrote for this record, Gethsemane.

PREORDER ON iTUNES

AUTUMN TOUR DATES HERE

Finally, we’re very excited to be able to share the video for Gethsemane below.

Thanks for listening.

DtR x

Spring approaches, things are waking up, coming to life, resurrecting. And so are we.

One year ago, we migrated to the snowy emptiness of Iceland, holed ourselves up and began work on our second record. We didn’t know anything, really, about what form that record might take, or how long it would take us to get there.

It was our first break from touring in three years, and it became a chance to reflect. We’ve always done things on the fly, blissfully unconcerned with the details, but suddenly we had this breathing space to deconstruct our music and our processes. We had time to figure out what we want to get from Dry the River, and what we want our supportive listeners to get from it all, too. The journey took us to many places, from bedrooms to farms to city studios spread across three countries and many months. On the way we had a lineup change, as violinist Will moved on to new things, and other significant team changes behind the scenes. There were times when we got pretty disconcerted, when everything went quiet and we couldn’t see how it would work out, but slowly we started to see a path in the wilderness.

Over the past months we’ve moved from deconstruction to reconstruction. We’ve addressed our uncertainties, taken control and everything has come together in a better way. There have been rehearsals and planning meetings, excited chats with artists and filmmakers and friends from across the creative spectrum. There’s a lot to say – a lot of exciting announcements. All will be revealed in the coming weeks. For now, though, the honest truth is that we’re feeling happier and more focused and better prepared than ever.

See you soon, gang.

DtR x