Trace Amount is the one-man project of Brooklyn's Brandon Gallagher, a prolific musician and visual artist who's played in hardcore bands like Old Wounds and Coarse. In just a few years, he's already unloaded a wealth of harsh, confrontational industrial material under the Trace Amount moniker, and on April 15th he'll release his debut album, Anti Body Language, via Federal Prisoner — the label owned by ex-Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato and visual artist Jesse Draxler. Today (February 15th), we're stoked to be premiering its excoriating lead single, "Anxious Awakenings," along with its jarring music video.
The song lands somewhere in heavy industrial camp, with glitchy vocals, pounding drums, screechy noise soundscapes and a pummeling atmosphere. If you're a fan of bands like HEALTH and Author & Punisher, and/or modern noise-core artists like Dreamcrusher and Machine Girl, then Trace Amount are right up your alley. Watch and listen to "Anxious Awakenings" above via YouTube.
"Yeah, Trace Amount falls under the 'industrial' umbrella, but truthfully I get inspired by a lot of hip-hop and experimental 'pop' music as well," Gallagher explains. "Putting all 'electronic' music under the same umbrella, I think you're limitless as to where you can go with songwriting. I love Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb, but I also love M.I.A., Ghostemane, and Eartheater. It seems like it's an insane combination but I was heavily influenced by all of these artists and I think you can hear all of their influences through my music one way or another."
"The music itself on Anti Body Language is very dense, and I wanted to achieve visuals that matched that feeling, without it taking away from anything or even being too much," he says of the video. "Through direction with DP Mike Monto, who I've worked on the last couple of videos, I wanted to test myself by creating effects without going overboard in after effects... whether that was through organic camera shakes, pushing the focal length to get a fisheye look, creative backlighting, or even getting natural chromatic aberration from the projector. I love the rhythm of this track, and just wanted the focus to be on the beat and the end result to sync all together."
Anti Body Language is out April 15th via Federal Prisoner and physical editions are availble for pre-order here. Check out the badass artwork (designed by Draxler) and track listing below.
Anti Body Language track listing:
1. Anxious Awakenings
2. Anti Body Language
3. Eventually It Will Kill Us All
4. Digitized Exile
5. No Reality
6. Tone and Tenor (ft. Kanga)
7. Pixelated Premonitions
8. Suspect (ft. Statiqbloom)
