Full Album Stream: Rosetta: The Anaesthete – new album

It turns out that on August the 8th, 2013, Philadelphia finest, ROSETTA, have independently released their fourth full-length album ‘The Anaesthete’. Reportedly, their goal was to find out whether an independent publishing and distribution model can be self-sustainable for a small DIY band. Right now they consider the experiment a qualified success. Hosted by BandCamp, ROSETTA “hope that if you like the record enough to download it (pay-what-you-wish option available), you would pay what you’re able to, even if it’s only a couple dollars”. It appears that being given the option of free download, approximately 25% of the people who downloaded the album paid for it. Of those who did pay, the average purchase price was worth about $9.40. Physical copies (CD/vinyl) of ‘The Anaesthete’ will be released by the band as soon as the funds allow and will be distributed by Debemur Morti Productions, Monolith and independently by the band. The album was recorded at Studio G in Brooklyn, New York, produced by Andrew Schneider and ROSETTA, engineered by Andrew Schneider and Francisco Bolero, mixed by Andrew Schneider and mastered by Colin Marston at The Thousand Caves in Queens, New York. Cover photograph was taken by Renee McMahon. Buy ‘The Anaesthete’ here (BandCamp):

[Explained ROSETTA:] “ ‘Anaesthete’ can be understood to mean “someone who can’t appreciate beauty” but also suggests “anaesthetic” or induced numbness. Over the past couple of years we’ve been thinking a lot about if/how music communicates, and about the responsibility that artists may have for how their work affects people. Music can be deeply therapeutic, and seems to be a space where pain and beauty coexist in tension. There’s a paradox in that killing our pain often involves killing our sensitivity to sublime beauty and wonder. Music can be a means by which people confront pain with beauty, or falsehood and injustice with truth. We’ve heard countless stories of people who have found this kind of value in our music – often people who couldn’t be more different from the standard “metal kid” demographic. These people aren’t passive recipients of some kind of artistic charity from us. Rather, the music itself has connected us together in a way that is really hard to understand. Their stories work in us in a similar manner to how our music works in them. We’ve come to understand that music is bigger than musicians, bigger than fans, bigger than entertainment. It has a life of its own, which is mysterious:”

Agents of “metal for astronauts”, ROSETTA, exist since 2003; they operate out of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Through Translation Loss Records they released their debut two-disks album (of interconnected music meant to be played simultaneously on two separate stereos), ‘The Galilean Satellites’ in 2005. They dared to top this daring enterprise with their second opus, 2007's ‘Wake/Lift’, described by Eduardo Rivadavia, AllMusic as “a series of meticulously constructed trance-metal epics, as rife with futuristic, prog-ambient sophistications as they are with visceral primal sludge - but arguably more fluid and satisfying in their violently alternating mood swings than anything that came before” (more here). ROSETTA embarked on their third interstellar voyage in 2010 via ‘A Determinism Of Morality’:

“Their mission,” [wrote Eduardo Rivadavia, AllMusic] “to escape the dreaded black hole of trance-metal repetition that has sucked in so many of their peers near the end of the 2000s, put the entire movement's viability into question, and helped convince at least one of its leaders – ISIS - that the time had come to retire. … ‘A Determinism Of Morality’ positions ROSETTA not as clear-cut, groundbreaking post-metal saviors capable of taking the style to another evolutionary place, but as well-seasoned stalwarts able enough to keep things fresh long enough to get there, by other means…hopefully. Quoting from the POLICE: “When the world is running down, you make the best with what’s still around.” ROSETTA are surely among the trance-metal best.” [More here]

ROSETTA features: BJ McMurtrie – drums, Dave Grossman – bass and vocals, Matt Weed - guitar, piano and vocals and Mike Armine – vocals and electronics