DECEMBER 13th ON CHERRYTREE/INTERSCOPE
ME AND YOU REMIX EP OUT NOW
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Nero, aka North West London producers, remixers du
jour, DJs and artists Dan Stephens and Joe Ray, now
one of the biggest names in both dubstep and drum and bass unleash their
debut album WELCOME REALITY on the U.S. December 13th.
Their August single “Promises” stormed
straight to the top of the UK charts, while WELCOME REALITY did
the same, debuting in the U.K. at #1 and rapidly reaching Gold status
across the pond. Nero’s indie/dubstep hybrid smash ME AND YOU REMIX
EP is available digitally now, and features a never- before
released brand new remix of “Me And You” by Steve
Angello of Swedish House Mafia, plus
a Skrillex remix of "Promises" that has
over 3 million plays on YouTube and has not been available for sale in the US
until now. "Me and You’ charted at number 15 in the
UK, was the most played record on Radio 1 for three weeks in
a row and is now the first U.S. single from WELCOME REALITY.
The epic, cinematic, widescreen quality to Nero’s grimy
symphonies come from their love of movie soundtracks: Joe, a trained
classical guitarist, loves the stabbing strings and eerie atmospheres of Bernard
Herrmann’s scores, as well as the baroque works of his favorite
composers. He believes Nero offer a shorter, more compact and intense version
of that classical sound in dance form. Stadium rock, electro-funk, jazz and
classical music, movie soundtracks, rave, the beats of drum’n’bass and the
distorted subsonic basslines and production methods of dubstep... then factor
in the freaktronic 90s releases of the Warp label (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher)
and you’ve got the recipe for a superb album. WELCOME REALITY
is that album.
A distillation of 30 years of dance, from disco to
dubstep, with some rock thrown in. Fourteen tracks, and one hour, of melodic
dance mayhem, it was recorded in the same South London studio used by Shy
FX, Caspa and Nero's MTA label bosses Chase & Status,
featuring music written and self- produced using equipment both new and
vintage, with some of the iconic 80s synths - a Roland Jupiter 8 and Yamaha
CS80 - that the likes of Madonna, Prince and Duran Duran used.
The lyrics were also penned with some help from their regular singer Alana
Watson who also performs live with Nero. “We’ve known her since
we were 16,” explains Dan. “She’s always been part of the
Nero gang, and she’s been on all the singles. Alana helps give us a ‘band’
feel, a bit like Massive Attack. The only outside assistance
came from a guitarist friend called Bush, and a certain 80s megastar
called Daryl Hall, who provided a cameo on the track ‘Reaching
Out’.
“We wanted to make a dance album that takes you on a
journey,” reveals Dan, “with segues and a sense of flow from beginning to
end.” “It’s the sort of album we’d have loved as kids,” adds Joe, who admits
that the benchmarks for WELCOME REALITY as a coherent, near-conceptual
piece of work were Radiohead’s OK Computer, Daft
Punk’s Discovery and Marvin Gaye’s What’s
Going On. “We wanted it to sound memorable but not dated,” says
Dan. “Some albums are very ‘now’ but won’t be relevant in a year. We want
ours to last.”
Mission accomplished. In fact, fully expect WELCOME
REALITY to rip the roof off a club and/or do damage to whatever the
future version of your bedroom stereo will be in, at the very least, the year
2808.
Nero will be playing select DJ dates this December. They
return for live dates this Spring. The visual led performance includes
a custom built booth consisting of ghetto blasters, retro TVs, old amps and
an arcade machine centre piece. Additional DJ dates are also announced and
all dates are below.
With a live show not to be missed, the musical storm of
Nero’s set with its thunderous dubstep bass, whirlwind drum’n’bass and hail
of house rhythms, lightning flashes of rave synths, squall of orchestra, and
occasional showers of guitar is truly epic. With nominations from BBC’s
Sound of 2011, XFM’s Sound of 2011, and Music Week’s Top 15, Nero have also
won several awards including 2010's Beatport Awards for Best
Dubstep Act and Best Dubstep Track for “Act
Like you Know.” The duo spent their summer performing on all the
major UK music festivals including Glastonbury, Bestival, Reading,
and Wireless, and still found the time to produce remixes for The
Streets, La Roux, deadmau5, N*E*R*D and Daft Punk.
"Nero's Joe Ray and Dan Stephens
ache to bestow post-dubstep with its can-you-believe-this-shit? flash of
stadium-size euphoria, enhancing (or defiling, depending on your perspective)
the genre's bass-heavy payload with trancey synths and wailing vocals.”
Spin
“Welcome Reality” will inevitably soundtrack thousands
of summer and fall blowouts. ...Nero understand how to make things
burn."
Los Angeles Times
"Glorious, splinter-thin moments when a sound is
both free to do whatever it wants and still functioning as a new power
source…"
The New Yorker
NERO NORTH AMERICA TOUR DATES:
12/15/11
Boston MA
Royale NightClub (DJ set)
12/16/11
Hartford CT
Webster Theater (DJ set)
12/17/11
Atlantic City, NJ Showboat
Hotel & Casino - House of Blues(DJ)
12/20/11
Victoria BC
9one9 (DJ set)
12/21/11
Edmonton AB
Edmonton Events Centre (DJ set)
12/22/11 Los Angeles, CA Music Box (DJ set)
12/23/11
Los
Angeles, CA Music Box (DJ set)
12/27/11
San
Diego, CA
House of Blues (DJ set)
12/29/11 San Francisco, CA Ruby Skye (DJ set) 12/30/11 Vancouver, BD Vogue Theater (DJ set)
12/31/11
New York,
NY Webster Hall (DJ
set)
12/31/11
Seattle,
WA
Showbox Sodo (DJ set)
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