Stream Pleasure Forever’s Distal, the first new record from the gothic California trio in 20 years

On Friday, the dark, theatrical California trio Pleasure Forever will release their first new set of musc in two decades, Distal, via Solid Brass Records. The group’s new mini-album arrives twenty years after the release of their last album, 2003’s Alter (which was Sub Pop catalog number 666). Now, Andrew Rothbard, Dave Clifford and Joshua Hughes have revived their long-dormant group for a new set of songs that find them tapping into the haunted atmosphere of their early recordings while imbuing them with a hypnotic, psychedelic glow. And their new seven-song release is now available to stream, ahead of its release on Friday. Hear it below.

From the mesmerizing synth drone of opener “Neolith Nonce,” Pleasure Forever bring a sense of urgency and grandeur to this new set of songs, which showcase a great deal of range and nuance despite the ominous tone they’ve carried over from their first two albums. They bring a slow build from a gentle, acoustic intro into an eerie dirge on “To the Last Recorded Syllable of Time,” a woozy breakbeat funk to “Lexicorpus Grimoire” and a dense, acid-krautrock groove to “Sunshine Super Hits.” There’s an eclectic array of sounds throughout Distal, but it maintains the band’s penchant for gothic psychedelia throughout, a thrilling return that marks a new era of creativity for the group.

Listen to Pleasure Forever’s Distal below.

Pleasure Forever Distal tracklist:

1. Neolith Nonce
2. Sigil Pathos
3. To The Last Recorded Syllable of Time
4. A Heavy Involvement in Unreality
5. Lexicorpus Grimoire
6. Sunshine Super Hits
7. Traipsing Elegiac