DIVORCE by DIVORCE

From 2012, DIVORCE's debut album and their collected post-Optimo single releases are presented on Bandcamp for the first time.

We continue to try to document older releases on Night School and Catalogue Number LSSN013, Glasgow band DIVORCE's 2012 debut album, stands out to me, still to this day, as the most brutal and forward thinking "noise rock" record to released from the city and probably from the era.

In 2012 Night School was a new label. I'd set out with a loose ESP-Disk style "anything goes" curatorial style with the only constant being that the music had to make me want to jump out of my skin, be it a floating beauty or, as is the case here, a gnarled, excoriating apocalypse. I primarily released the music of my friends and DIVORCE were old, old friends. Their line up at the time contained a couple of folk I'd known since I was a teenager but beside that I just thought it was the best noise around. DIVORCE were unstoppable, like a fast steamroller flattening anything and everything. Every element of it was unhinged and forward thinking. Vickie McDonald's guitar set a new bar for sheets of distortion and lightning, VSO's by now trademarked rhino bass tone itself sounded like the world ending. Andy Brown's hard hitting but inventive drumming was beyond this world and up front Jennifer Fulk's deranged strangling was genuinely disturbing. It was an instant yes when they approached me to release their debut.

I can pontificate now about the wisdom of a record label associated with quieter or more reserved sounds (up 'til then Julia Holter, Terror Bird, Group Rhoda were the main acts) releasing something so earth-shattering and of a different universe. It's a lesson I never really learned, never settling on a unified sound for the label. I think now that DIVORCE might have been better served by a peer's label who specialised in this kind of music but in all honesty I just believed in them, in the record and wanted to give it everything I had.

Initially, the reaction was incredible. The record sold well, a lot of people were waiting for this record and I think, =for the Glasgow scene at the time it was an important record for a lot of outsiders and kids fleshing out the particulars of their identities and desires. Here were a band who were doing these things in awe-inspiring noise and pain right in front of them. As messy and otherworldly as their noise was, DIVORCE spoke directly to those who needed it.

The intensity which fuelled the band eventually, as I see it, finished them. A group of people that intense can only burn so bright and harsh for so long before it becomes too much for the personalities involved. This is my own take on it, as an outsider to a group of outsiders and would never speak for them. From a label's perspective, having a band break up not long after you release their debut, for them never to tour the record does not spell commercial success for the future.

So everyone moved on. Everyone involved formed new bands, made their own solo music, moved countries and got on with their lives. Night School moved on to the next records. Now, just over 10 years since the album was released I'd like to re-present this essential piece of the global underground canon. I'm incredibly proud of this record and the people who made it.


Original LP Press Release.
Divorce is the culmination of four years of uncompromising noise-rock brutality. Long-time friends of ours, it is an honour to be releasing the debut full-length statement from a band who have set new standards in underground extremity.

Since their formation in 2008 they have progressed from no wave dirge practitioners to an unique cult that blurs the boundaries of what ‘punk’, ‘noise-rock’ or ‘metal’ are presumed to sound like. Remaining slippery in definition but relentlessly focused, Divorce have evolved into a singular, incomparable unit.

Recorded by Ali Walker at Glasgow’s Arc Studio & Devil’s Own Studio, Divorce finds the band pushing their furious sound further than ever before; a torrent of pummeling rhythms and serrated, overdriven riffs, extended freak outs and ecstatic push and pull dynamics. They have also explored their experimental tendencies more, incorporating power-electronics, white noise and, on the track Stabby (Stabby) Stab, free-jazz saxophone (courtesy of guest musician James Swinburne). All this, combined with an over-arching determination to take their music to new limits structurally and sonically, makes Divorce a unified audio experience. Divorce are Jennie Fulk (vocals), Vickie McDonald (guitars), VSO (bass) and Andy Brown (drums).


CD Release:

Singles is the first time many of these songs have been available in digital form and it documents a band growing in confidence, ambition and ferocity. From early cuts on Night School through a plethora of UK independent labels’ releases, each song warps the Divorce dynamic in different ways and hints at the now-established new baseline for intensity that is Divorce 2013.

Here’s a reminder of the first Divorce 7″ on Night School:

Recorded by Ali Walker at Glasgow’s Arc Studio & Devil’s Own Studio, Divorce finds the band pushing their furious sound further than ever before; a torrent of pummeling rhythms and serrated, overdriven riffs, extended freak outs and ecstatic push and pull dynamics. They have also explored their experimental tendencies more, incorporating power-electronics, white noise and, on the track Stabby (Stabby) Stab, free-jazz saxophone (courtesy of guest musician James Swinburne). All this, combined with an over-arching determination to take their music to new limits structurally and sonically, makes Divorce a unified audio experience. Divorce are Jennie Fulk (vocals), Vickie McDonald (guitars), VSO (bass) and Andy Brown (drums).

Together or not at all.

Glasgow-based independent.

nightschoolrecords.com