Pynch's second album, Beautiful Noise, is out today on Chillburn Recordings.
In the band's own words:
We've put everything into this record over the past two and a bit years and are so proud of what we've made. Thank you to everyone that's helped and been there along the way, we wouldn't have been able to do it without you all.
About the record
Following their acclaimed debut Howling at a Concrete Moon, a coming-of-age record that captured the disaffection of youth in austerity-era Britain, Pynch return with their second album Beautiful Noise, released via their own Chillburn Recordings label. Less concerned with making sense of the world around them, their second full-length shifts its gaze inward, taking a trip through love, death, faith and the pursuit of meaning through art.
Produced by frontman Spencer Enock in the band's home studio, with drums recorded by Stereolab's Andy Ramsay at Press Play Studios, Beautiful Noise is a lo-fi odyssey that feels both more intimate and more ambitious than its predecessor. Mixed by Jimmy Robertson (Fat Dog / Los Campesinos!), the record weaves distortion, new-wave synths, and breakbeats with slacker charm and poetic sincerity.
Throughout the album, everyday snapshots like searching for the perfect pair of jeans or reading relationship advice on Reddit are set against plainspoken philosophy. "Microwave Rhapsody" ponders the meaning of life, while the title track poses the album's guiding question:
Is it all just a Beautiful Noise? / Daily pain and joy before we return to the void?
These juxtapositions form the heart of Pynch's sound: intimate but cinematic, melancholic but playful, lo-fi yet expansive.
Just as inspired by Jonathan Richman and Sufjan Stevens as they are Pavement and New Order, the songwriting on Beautiful Noise is sharper, more confident, and often more vulnerable. This is not a record of answers but of small moments and big questions. Of spiritual yearning disguised as slacker pop. As Spencer puts it:
We wanted to make a record that's authentic and reflective of who we are as a band. We mostly recorded it in my bedroom in Brixton with the help of some incredible people. It's all about love, death and the wonder of being alive in the first place. It was a joy to make, and I think you can hear that in the music.
At its core, Beautiful Noise is a deeply personal record made by a band still figuring things out and finding something transcendent in the process.