Record Store Day 2023 Read More

📻 Guest Mix Drift'in with Paul Hillery. Listen Now.

Pre Order - Black Country, New Road, Big Star, Protomartyr, Alison Goldfrapp, Benefits, Talking Heads ...  Read More

March Record of the Month: H.Hawkline - Milk For Flowers.

Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today [Love Record Stores Edition]

Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today [Love Record Stores Edition]

$26.00
Subscription Save

Description

Following the release of Relatives In Descent, the band’s critically acclaimed headlong dive into the morass of American life in 2017 (Drift's Record of the Year), Ultimate Success Today continues to further expand the possibilities of what a Protomartyr album can sound like.

+ Love Record Stores Edition is pressed on Brick Red Vinyl. 

“There is darkness in the poetry of Ultimate Success Today,” says punk legend, founding member of The Raincoats, and friend of the band Ana da Silva. “The theme of things ending, above all human existence, is present and reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Our world has reached a point that makes us afraid: fires, floods, earthquakes, hunger, war, intolerance…There are cries of despair. Is there hope? Greed is the sickness that puts life in danger.”

"The re-release of our first album had me thinking about the passage of time and its ultimate conclusion,” says singer Joe Casey of Ultimate Success Today. “Listening to No Passion All Technique again, I could hear myself hoping for an introduction and a long future, but also being cognizant that it could be ‘one and done’ for us. So, when it came time to write Ultimate Success Today, I was reminded of that first urgency and how it was an inverse of my current grapple with how terribly ill I’ve been feeling lately. Was that sick feeling colouring how I felt about the state of the world or was it the other way around?”

“This panic was freeing in a way. It allowed me to see our fifth album as a possible valediction of some confusingly loud five-act play. In the same light I see it as an interesting mile marker of our first decade of being a band - a crest of the hill along a long highway. Although just to cover my bases, I made sure to get my last words in while I still had the breath to say them.”

“There are exquisite, subtle gifts from other instruments that always heighten the guitar, instead of fighting with it,” explains da Silva. “They help to create a harmonious wall of sound all of its own. This was intentional. Greg Ahee wanted to use different textures other than pedals, and the drone quality of some of those instruments colours the guitar and the whole sound with a warm, rich in reverb, yet all-consuming landscape for Joe Casey’s voice.”

The video for “Processed By The Boys,” directed by David Allen & Nathan Faustyn and produced by HLPTV & LooseMeat.Biz, is a play on a bizarre Brazilian TV clip the band became infatuated with. A man sings to a studio audience, while a member of the audience becomes enraged by a puppet, leading the whole situation to devolve into total chaos. “As soon as we heard the concept, we knew how to take the band's ideas and coalesce them into this sort of timeless public access chaos,” says Faustyn. “Because of the nature of HLPTV & LooseMeat.Biz and who we are - professional and hobbyist technicians - we knew we could pull off a really strange, funny and sardonically dark compendium to this song that is equally such.”

Protomartyr is Joe Casey (vocals), Greg Ahee (guitars), Alex Leonard (drums), and Scott Davidson (bass guitar). Ultimate Success Today was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios, a late 19th century church, in upstate New York and co-produced by the band and David Tolomei (Dirty Projectors, Beach House) with mixing by Tolomei. Featured guest musicians on the album include Nandi Rose (vocals) a.k.a. Half Waif, jazz legend Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello).
Artist: Protomartyr
Label: Domino Recording Company
Catalogue: WIGLP464L
Barcode: 0887828046447
Format: LP
Release Date: 11th December 2020
                               

Shipping Info

Free Shipping

We offer free delivery on orders of £85 and over, sent within mainland UK. To qualify for free delivery, your order will be sent as one dispatch.

Read More.

Click & Collect

On all orders, we offer a Click & Collect option for you to come and collect your order in Totnes. You will be offered shipping and click & collect options during the checkout process.

Contact Drift

Royal Mail Tracked®

✔️ End-to-end tracking
✔️ SMS or email notifications
✔️ 48 hour delivery aim
✔️ Compensation cover up to £100
✔️ Change your delivery options before delivery is attempted

Read More

Playlist

Drift Recommends


Alongside a weekly playlist of new and old tracks (tune in via the news section), all of the Drift staff also contribute to a weekly 'Drift Recommends' playlist.

Updated every Friday, it's full of new tracks that we love, absolute bangers that have popped back into our heads and all sorts of other weird avenues. It is supposed to sound a little bit like that feeling of walking through the door at Drift.

You can subscribe to it via our Spotify public profile.