Bassvictim Announce Album ‘PEACE + WAR’ and Share Single ‘White Flag’

The duo’s 19-track follow-up to ‘Forever’ lands 6th November.

Bassvictim have announced their new album, ‘PEACE + WAR’, due 6th November, and shared a new single, ‘White Flag’, to go with it.

The track opens on a hush. Maria Manow’s vocals sit close and quiet before the whole thing gives way to a rush of blown-out textures. It’s the sound of the duo leaning into their clubbier side and steering things further towards the dancefloor.

That fits an album built on contradiction. Across 19 tracks, ‘PEACE + WAR’ keeps up the abrasive electronics and warped pop that Manow and producer Ike Clateman are known for, but there’s a new self-awareness in it, and moments of real tenderness. Lyrics are whispered over biting distortion, twisting around Clateman’s bruising production and Manow’s gleeful, mangled delivery. Vulnerability and volatility share the same space, and the fun lies in not knowing which way a song will turn, with humour and provocation never far away.

The release date has a neat twist. Bassvictim play London’s Troxy as part of Pitchfork Festival London on the night the album comes out, a full-circle moment for Manow, who used to work at the venue. First, they’re finishing their White Flag headline tour of North America, which has already taken in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Austin and Miami, and heads on through Chicago, Philadelphia and more before closing at New York’s Knockdown Center on 31st October. A handful of European shows follow, including Paris’s Trabendo.

It’s been a fast, strange rise for the pair. After the early ‘Basspunk’ releases and a debut album, ‘Forever’, they pushed into stranger and more emotionally open territory on the ‘Basspunk 2’ follow-up and the ‘?’ EP.