Armed with two new records, Berlin's Mary Ocher returns for selected European shows following dates in North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Ocher has been pushing the boundaries between pop and avant-garde for the past two decades, with playful and colorful form, and clever content that winks at everyone who recognizes its cultural and historical references. Her new album joins a series of apocalyptic and politically charged concept albums.
The critically acclaimed new album Your Guide To Revolution is a joyful ode to hope, released just six months after its predecessor, the edgy and experimental Approaching Singularity: Music for The End of Time. It was picked by The Quietus as "Album of The Week" and it joins Bandcamp's favorite Records of The Year. It also received the German Record Critics Prize.
The new recordings feature collaborations with Mogwai, Les Trucs, composer Roberto Cacciapaglia, pieces by fusion harpist Dorothy Ashby and 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, a homage to electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire and much more.
They cover a vast musical landscape from post-punk, folk and field recordings, to cosmic synth compositions and deconstructed techno.
The two albums are accompanied by the political texts:
- "A Guide to Radical Living: A no nonsense guide to living comfortably with just enough: Why wealth needs poverty and how not to play along"
(available digitally, as an accompaniment to "Your Guide to Revolution").
- The full "Approaching Singularity" essay (a short version of which is available in print with the album):
www.maryocher.com/essay-approaching-singularity-music-for-the-end-of-time
Mary toured in 40 countries with previous releases, recorded and produced with Canadian Psych guru King Khan and Hans Joachim Irmler of Krautrock pioneers Faust, and feature collaborations with avant-garde legends Felix Kubin, Die Tödliche Doris and Julia Kent, among others.
"There is no artist quite like Mary Ocher. Her music is like an organism, evolving with each project, adapting to the world around it. "
- The Berliner
"A compelling piece of genre-spanning avant-pop equally suffused with a love of humanity, reflected in its voracious appetite for the many nuances of groove and sound, and an abhorrence for the many ways humanity is oppressed, compressed, and vaporized via the soul-crushing pressures of capitalism and encroaching technocracy."
- Bandcamp - Best of 2024
"A fierce, anti-capitalist critique of the West’s indifference towards human suffering. A cheery challenge to our governments’ inability to demonstrate basic humanity towards others”
- The Fader
"The revolution that Ocher proposes is not a militaristic coup but instead a form of cultural reconditioning that prompts us to reassess the roles we play within the capitalist framework."
- The Quietus - Album of The Week
