Schande Announce 'Once Around' LP & Share 'Relevant Campaigns' Single

UK-based noise rock outfit Schande have announced a new LP entitled Once Around, due in April 2024 via The Daydream Library Series, the house record label of Ecstatic Peace Library operated by Thurston & Eva Moore. Alongside this announcement, Schande has shared “Relevant Campaigns,” a poignant and restrained piece of guitar ambience written by frontwoman Jen Chochinov (and mixed by French musician Nopse). 

She explains, “I had written this song when my mother's illness returned and I both wanted and needed to create something beautiful for her. It was a way to conjure love and healing and try to balance out my own fear and anxiety which felt all too consuming. After my mom passed away at the end of 2023, this song being released now feels like a gifted timely reminder to hold on to what was shared while navigating loss. ‘Relevant Campaigns' is essentially about picking your battles, to really assess where your priorities and energies lay because time is such a finite resource. More to the point it's about choosing love, hope, and resilience.”

The track comes with an animated music video co-created by Sarah Lippett and Duncan Barrett, featuring a melancholy silent dialogue between its protagonist and the moon. She explains, “Sarah and I are both people who look to the moon for counsel, so I like to think of this song as a soundtrack for moon-dreamers who do the same.” The result is a somber yet beautiful clip balancing the weight of loss and the warmth of love.

Inspired by the works of writers such as Hannah Arendt and Adriana Cavarero, Once Around focuses on notions of personal existence and subjectivity. As Chochinov puts it, the record consists of “contemplations on the ways in which we do and do not disclose ourselves to each other, our responsibilities towards ourselves and others, and the ways we do or do not acknowledge the experiences of others.”

Mirrored by the band's collaborative musical process (Chochinov writes the lyrics to instrumentals formed out of jams and group revision), the album aims to explore the ways in which even the most personal journeys depend on others, something the band of expats — Chochinov is from the US, drummer Ryan Grieve hails from Canada, and bassist Gio Villaraut is from Italy — navigate daily as they establish and reinvent themselves in their adoptive home of the UK.

Schande's current sound was shaped by Chochinov's stint playing in the Thurston Moore Guitar Ensemble, led by the legendary frontman of Sonic Youth. On the heels of playing with the group, Chochinov started experimenting with alternative tunings, including those she learned from Thurston himself.

The freedom offered by new tunings gave the band a chance to approach songs and song writing in a new way. “It was like being given free reign in a science lab where nothing was off limits. At worst you create an awful sound and at best you get the chance to surprise yourself and land on something exciting.” 

The California-born Chochinov has been crafting catchy, propulsive rock in DIY circles since the early 1990s. Solo and full band adventures throughout the years have included a split 7” with The Cribs and James Murphy's pre-LCD Soundsystem group Speedking, playing the legendary Indie Tracks festival (UK), and playing Happy Happy Birthday to Me's Athens Pop Festival (US).

Since relocating to London in 2013, she has continued playing shows throughout the UK and US both solo and with her full band. In 2018 and 2019, she was a touring member of Thurston Moore's Guitar Ensemble and played shows throughout the UK and Europe alongside James Sedwards (Nøught, Thurston Moore Group), Deb Googe (My Bloody Valentine, Thurston Moore Group), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Jem Doulton (Thurston Moore Group, The Oscillation), and Jonathan Leideker (Wobbly). 

Photo credit: Heidi Weber

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