NJ screamo band Massa Nera just announced a split LP with Quiet Fear on Friday (12/1), and the very next day, they surprise-released D//Q//B[2.0], a remix album of last year’s Derramar | Querer | Borrar, released on the exact one-year anniversary of that album. Derramar | Querer | Borrar showed off Massa Nera’s love of deep house on the track “Shapeshift,” and this new remix album takes the screamo band’s music much further into realms like that one, fusing it with ravey club beats, hip hop beats, ambient music, breakbeats, and more. Remixers include Planning For Burial, Amy Christine of Obroa-skai, yajirobe (Kyle Guerra of Infant Island), Fainting Couch (Justin Orr of Crowning), Seaphoamm (ex-Massa Nera), Kuuma, Andrew Noseworthy, Phong Tran, and more.
“While writing Derramar | Querer | Borrar, we derived a great deal of inspiration from electronic music, particularly its endless mutability and unparalleled capacity for world-building,” the band says. “Through this exploration, we rediscovered remix albums by bands like Nine Inch Nails, Explosions in the Sky, and Isis. These releases had once fascinated us with their wild integration of seemingly disparate styles and textures, their total disregard for rigid generic boundaries, and their promise of a future musical landscape marked by endless reinvention. Since Derramar | Querer | Borrar is partially an exploration of ‘the lost futures contained within the past,’ we thought a remix record would provide us with another opportunity to explore those ideas while simultaneously allowing us to pay homage to a bygone era.”
“D//Q//B[2.0] is a companion to Derramar | Querer | Borrar,” the band continues. “It represents a re-examination of that album’s ideas, as well as a chance to have our musical perspective refracted through the eyes and ears of artists we deeply admire. We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. It was a joy collaborating with these talented, lovely individuals, particularly given their disparate musical backgrounds. We gave everyone complete and total freedom to remix the songs as they saw fit, and each and everyone one of the remixers delivered in spades. We hope listeners welcome these experiments with open ears and allow themselves to luxuriate in the textures on offer.”
The band also provides some background info on each remixer: “Amy Christine plays bass, does vocals, and writes lyrics for Obroa-Skai; Fainting Couch drums in Crowning; Yajirobe is both a hip-hop producer and the bassist of Infant Island; and Yearswallower used to play in Beast Jesus; Kuuma (Adam Cuthbert), Andrew Noseworthy, and Phong Tran are all respected composers who primarily operate within the modern classical sphere, though Andrew also plays in This Place is Actually the Worst; Afk and Manikineter explore the intersection of noise/punk with hip-hop; Yajirobe and clwdwlkr also make hip-hop music, albeit of a much different, chiller sort; Seaphoamm (who used to play bass in Massa Nera, actually, as well as Our Wits), trades in vibes as deep as the summer night in long, and Planning for Burial is of course one of the most exciting voices within modern experimental metal. Last, but not least, Uninerve is our very own Christopher Rodriguez!”
About the video, the band says, “All I can say is that it makes sense to us. It’s for anyone who has ever found themselves wandering through the factory district.” Check it out below.
As mentioned, Massa Nera are doing a short Northeast tour this month with Infant Island (who just announced their new album Obsidian Wreath for Secret Voice). That hits NYC on December 15 at Trans-Pecos with Sonagi and Auxiena Saint. All dates are listed below.
Tracklist
1) An Endless Cycle // I Was More Than the Weight of My Work (Amy Christine Remix)
2) Hipócrita (Seaphoamm Remix)
3) Lost Faces (Yearswallower Remix)
4) Adrift (Uninerve Remix)
5) Shapeshift (Kuuma Remix)
6) April 7th (Fainting Couch Remix)
7) A Faint Goodbye (Andrew Noseworthy Remix)
8) Tristeza Consume (Lowering the Blinds) (AFK Remix)
9) Eyeless Faces (clwdrobe remix) (prod. by yajirobe & clwdwlkr)
10) Wanting (Ghosts Haunting Ghosts) (Planning for Burial Remix)
11) You Mean So Much More Than Misery to Me (Phong Tran Remix)
12) Anchored (Manikineter Remix)
Massa Nera — 2023/2024 Tour Dates
Tour with Infant Island:
12/14 – Pittsburgh, PA (West Egg) with Kaiba and Violence
12/15 – Ridgewood, NY (Trans-Pecos) with Sonagi and Auxiena Saint
12/16 – Boston, MA (Democracy Center) with New Forms
12/17 – Philadelphia, PA (Kung Fu Necktie) (matinee) with Lastima and Mt. Ida
12/18 – Richmond, VA (Bandito’s) with Ostraca and Humanitarian Deficit
Southern CA Tour:
01/18 – Fullerton, CA (Programme Skate & Sound) w/ Onewaymirror, Clay Birds, and Washer
01/19 – La Jolla, CA (Che Café) w/ Habak, Aren’t We Amphibians, …and today, it was you, and a Special Guest
01/20 – Los Angeles, CA (Bad Dog Compound) w/ Quiet Fear, Lagrimas, Knumears, and Ghost Spirit
01/21 (Matinee) – Riverside, CA (Back to the Grind) w/ Trains to Juniper, and Triple Exposure
01/21 (Evening) – Pomona, CA w/ Knumears, Quiet Fear So Concerned, and Othiel
