Goldrush Play SXSW, NY & LA, Album Due Out April 10th

Goldrush have created a stunning and defiant record that steps beyond the British alt-Country anthems of 2005’s “Ozona” full-length.

After two years of constant worldwide touring, Goldrush returned to their homes in the Oxfordshire countryside and their ‘cowshed, turned studio’ to write and record this new full-length. Producer/musician James Rutledge [aka Pedro, instrumental hip-hop artist on Mush Records] helped Goldrush realize their vision for this new record. Goldrush had previously worked with the legendary David Fridmann [Mercury Rev/Flaming Lips], but Rutledge took a different tag, and encouraged the band to be more sonically adventurous, while simultaneously helping them re-discover their supreme song writing ability. The result can be compared to the spacey, experimental turn taken by The Byrds on “Notorious Byrd Brothers” or Wilco on “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel”.

Goldrush also found inspiration from their shows supporting Brian Jonestown Massacre, Broken Social Scene, Flaming Lips and Vashti Bunyan. In the middle of writing this record, Truck Festival occurred on the very farm Goldrush has their studio. Robin Bennett of Goldrush is one of the founders of Truck Festival held on this farm just outside of Oxford, England every July. What started as a gathering of friends in a field, watching bands playing on the back of a truck bed, became a legendary happening with more than 5000 guests every year. Even though they have bands like Forward Russia, The Magic Numbers, Battles, The Futureheads, Mystery Jets and Chicks On Speed headlining the billing, it’s not your usual festival. It’s a community fest involving nearly everyone in the village. All the money they make goes into charity organisations like Amnesty International and or the Youth Centre in Steventon, England.

Robin Bennett of Goldrush explains: ‘By the time of the Truck Festival, when our small village becomes Woodstock for a weekend, we were spending all our time building stages, and the record was still being worked on. I noticed things creeping in - other worlds past, future and supernatural, magic realism. These were literary influences that I could no longer avoid. A character, or series of characters, seemed to move through the songs in a ghostly way. Our music was no longer set in America, or its music. It was in our own location and our own minds. The record became about all these things, and the relation of love to mental collapse… A battle against material constraints and shallow emotions.’ DH Lawrence. Aldous Huxley. Jack Kerouac. But, especially, a strange charity shop book called 'reflections on life after life', by Raymond A Moody MD, an American doctor dedicated to researching near-death experiences and detailing regular themes. Recurrences such as a warm bright light, a city of light. A presence of love.

Check out "Heaven's My Destination" MP3 at this location.