NY Art-Rockers Disturbios Share 'Surf Gnossienne' & 'Summer Loves'

Underground New York art-rock duo Disturbios return today with a double knockout punch of new singles and videos ahead of their self-titled debut album out this Friday via Midnight Cruiser Records. Premiered by Under the Radar, first up is the slinky, instrumental "Surf Gnossienne," a riff on composer Eric Satie's 19th century Gnossiennes pieces. "Satie is not just for First World War documentaries anymore," says Rocio and Matt Verta-Ray (Madder Rose, Speedball Baby, Heavy Trash).

Disturbios churned this haunting mood piece through all the galvanic dreaminess of their '60s surf-lounge echo box afforded to them at their legendary NY HED Studio (Elliott Smith, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Suicide's Alan Vega, The Ronettes' Ronnie Spector, etc). Accompanying "Surf Gnossienne" is similarly 60's-inflected "Summer Loves," finding British artist Gemma Ray singing about a faithful girl tricked by the balmy summer air into looking past her lover's casual cruelty. The releases today follow the duo's psychedelic "Starr" premiered with The Big Takeover. NY HED Studio also put together Vinyls for Good last year to support local bars and restaurants affected by Covid.

The duo's debut album is an electroshock fever dream - a marriage of blissed out, raunchy, and angular vintage rock & roll aesthetics with the pitiless tyranny of robotics gone wrong. Forged in the crucible of NY HED's array of vintage analogue gear, the duo take a specialized approach to songwriting by experimenting on a vast array of sounds until the seed of an idea is planted.

Rocio explains, "the writing process is enmeshed with the sound making, which is to say that recording, writing and performing are all on a continuum, all elements of the same whole. This extremely organic approach lets the important stuff kind of bubble up to the surface and announce to us what its shape should be." Disturbios are hands-on to the last detail and conceive, perform, record and produce their music with Rocio creating their graphics and videos. From this method emerges a record filled with songs about longing, sorrow, love and revenge that are also somehow joyful and exhilarating as a backflip into an icy lake.

Rocio, who comes from the worlds of film and philosophy, cut her teeth playing Farfisa organ in Spanish surf bands, completing the buzzing short circuit between primordial ibero-arab melodies and twanging, sizzling Jimmy Smith riffs by-way-of the Ventures and Erik Satie.

Matt has been slinging six string hash and riding the underground zeitgeist like an electrobilly monorail since the New York '80s - haunting, jagged riffs channeling directly from a deep vein of Sun Records and Link Wray. Disturbios takes the listener on a wild ride into the greasy depths of the human psyche that will leave her breathless, revved up and dying to blast the record out into the air again and again.

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