Noisy London post-punkers JOHN have today announced their long-awaited fourth album, A Life Diagrammatic.
The duo, made up of drummer and vocalist John Newton and guitarist Johnny Healey, from Crystal Palace, South London, will release the record on Brace Yourself/Pets Care Records on 22 September.
It is the eagerly-awaited follow-up to their breakthrough third album, Nocturnal Manoeuvres, which crashed the top 75 of the UK album chart in 2021.
The pair’s first two albums, God Speed In The National Limit (2017) and Out Here On The Fringes (2019) had established them as underground favourites.
March’s standalone 7in, Theme New Bond Junior/Hopper On The Dial, was their first new music in two years, and it reached No 1 in the UK Vinyl Single Chart.
The first taste of the new album was April single Trauma Mosaic, which reaffirmed their status as an uncompromising musical force, despite the fact there’s only two of them.
“Limitations are key for us,” says drummer and vocalist John Newton. “I never view being a two-piece as a minus – it’s a key idiosyncratic element of what the project is.
“We knew the direction we wanted to go in after the last record. We had started moving towards soundscapes rather than straight-up noise and four-to-the-floor structure.
“We wanted to further explore the space and ambience of our instrumentation. To offer an album that deliberately pushes and pulls in a multitude of directions throughout its duration.”
A Life Diagrammatic threatens to be JOHN’s biggest album yet, in more ways than one. As Healey succinctly puts it: “We’re not just a rock band. There’s more to it than that.”
The album is available to pre-order now on CD, standard weight silver vinyl, with a special indies-only edition on metallic sand vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with an exclusive poster and a customised architect’s ruler designed by the band.
A Life Diagrammatic features collaborations with award-winning actor Simon Pegg, and Barry Adamson (formerly of The Bad Seeds and seminal post-punk act Magazine).
JOHN will also make their debut journey throughout the US and Canada in October 2023.
- You can pre-order A Life Diagrammatic from JOHN’s Bandcamp page HERE.
