Pity bands who can’t think up a novel ways to excite fans with new releases, especially when their music hasn’t been successful in doing the job itself. Don’t pity Mercury Rev, though, as those godfathers of saccharine indie grandeur are planning to release two albums at the end of September. One, Snowflake Midnight (sample tracks: “Runaway Raindrop,” “Dream Of A Girl As A Young Flower”) will be a regular release while the other, Strange Attractor (sample tracks: “Taken Up Into Clouds, Changed And Rained Down,” “Persistence And The Apis Mellifera”) will be available at no charge for anyone who joins their mailing list. You may see this as a sop to the cult or a way to inspire curious types to give up their e-mail addresses, but once you’ve read the band’s poetic waxings on the upcoming albums, such cynical considerations will slip into the ether, replaced by visions of faeries and “mandala-like forms pushed to the brink of incredible pressures then lost in an instant.”

On September 29, 2008, MERCURY REV will release their seventh studio album, SNOWFLAKE MIDNIGHT, a set of nine self-luminous and astonishing new songs. Zooming in at any part of SNOWFLAKE MIDNIGHT, at nearly any conceivable magnification, always reveals the forces of symmetry and chaos at play, shimmering, vibrating close-ups and vistas of Life driving itself onward, bursting with patterns and mandala-like forms pushed to the brink of incredible pressures then lost in an instant… blown apart by their own majestic desire to share themselves, spirals of new momentum inter-twingling with the vastness of limitless new creation… The entire album sequence appears to be a resplendent fractal, folding in upon itself, into something continually new, unpredictable and spontaneous, and yet, paradoxically at times so subtly self-aware, never failing to resemble itself in the whole…

But wait, there’s more…

Also on September 29, MERCURY REV will release STRANGE ATTRACTOR, the 11 song, full-length companion album to SNOWFLAKE MIDNIGHT absolutely FREE for MP3 download. While still conscious of its ‘other’, STRANGE ATTRACTOR’S own radiance reflects an even subtler kind of self-organization, its own ground state of order not immediately perceived but rather felt over the course of a complete listen. The less said and the more listened, the better…This album is totally friggin’ FREE to download for anyone who chooses to do
so.

Which label will release Snowflake Midnight now that V2 has gone under? Yep Roc. Funny, I thought those guys only released albums from alt puds well past their prime, not “astonishing” albums “folding in upon itself, into something continually new, unpredictable and spontaneous.” But there’s a first time for everything.

Snowflake Midnight – September 29th [Official Site]
Mercury Rev to release new album as free download [NME]
Mercury Rev – In A Funny Way [YouTube]