Comprised of Lauren Voss (vocals, guitar, synth) and John Panza (Hiram Maxim/ drum machines, samples, synth), Arms & Armour have announced a new EP called This Wide Unknown, which releases June 21 via Erroneous Exegesis Records (run by Panza).
"As a band that began more than a decade ago as a guitar and drums act, we've moved deeper and deeper into electronics in recent years," Panza says of the band's evolution over time, adding, "This approach also plays well into the themes we have explored recently...From agency to pregnancy to motherhood to exegetical frameworks that compel us one way or another, make us feel pity, shame, envy, compassion, derision, and especially vulnerability. We work to find a melding of voice and music that unsettles as much as it inspires. Arms & Armour is flesh as much as it is protection.”
Voss adds that, "The concept for this album is centered around the Divine Feminine and all the beauty, power, and horror that energy encompasses...It’s creation coincided with the birth of my daughter, and though much of the music had been written prior to pregnancy, it had a profound impact on the production of our EP and the direction we have been going.
"While the divine feminine is a more common and even widespread topic in music today, motherhood is less so. This is due to a lot of reasons I won’t go into here, but it was important to me to challenge the perception that women in music quit and disappear if we choose to become mothers."
The EP was recorded by Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Unsane, Violent Femmes) at BCStudios.
