LA post-punk band, Agender, celebrate queerness in new single & video for "Top Bottom Top"

For immediate release:

April 19, 2022

LA POST-PUNK BAND

AGENDER

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QUEER DISCO-PUNK ANTHEM & VIDEO

"TOP BOTTOM TOP"

OUT TODAY

LISTEN TO "TOP BOTTOM TOP" HERE | WATCH VIDEO HERE

AGENDER'S SOPHOMORE LP,

NO NOSTALGIA

IS DUE OUT MAY 27, 2022

PRE-ORDER THE LP NOW

Download hi-res single artwork

"While Hoffman’s vocal style is demanding and raw, there is a sense of purpose and reason in her breath. Her vocal lines end with a sweet touch of dyspnea where the listener is worried the singer might faint due to lack of oxygen.”

"Agender is a uniquely ferocious Los Angeles, California-based four-piece indie post-punk/synth band. They make that earth-shattering music that easily breaks the fragile windows down — on small-minded people who just don’t get it — and is packed full of biting symbolism that causes your blood-filled heart to suddenly beat much faster than before."

“No Nostalgia” barrels into you with force and gravity, striking hard musically, visually and philosophically."

"['Astro Tarot'] energises elements of primal 70s rock and punk, plus hints of electroclash and an air of Gothic theatricality. It uses the purposeful anger, and righteous darkness of those genres to take the listener on a helter-skelter ride into the realms of the unknown."

Photo credit: Jen Rosenstein | Download hi-res image

LA-based post-punk band Agender have returned today with a queer disco-club soundtrack, "Top Bottom Top," accompanied by a steamy video, featuring a cameo from revered performance artist Sheree Rose, among others. The single is pulled from their forthcoming album, No Nostalgia, due out May 27th and available for pre-order now. The band, made up of Australian lead singer Romy Hoffman, bassist Cristy Michel, drummer Christy Greenwood and synth player Sara Rivas makes schizo, synthy, paranoid, post-punk with a dash of dysmorphic desire and have been turning heads in the post-punk scene since their debut album in 2014, Fixations, and most recently for their 2021 single and album title track. Coming this summer from the band is a remix EP, in collaboration with JD Samson and Harvey Sutherland.

An homage to queer sex and sexuality, "Top Bottom Top" blends disco and punk underneath lyrics that repeat the playful words often used to label positions and power structures in queer sexual dynamics. "'Top Bottom Top' is a disco-punk bop. A straight up, no frills jam," says Hoffman. "It's an homage to queer sexuality and power dynamics. Perhaps we've transcended this terminology, but it's still important to celebrate these specific binaries. Words are indicative of the times and the times are captured by a sound, and this song's sound and sentiment evoke the post-punk/dance punk of the 80's. A steady, repetitive vocal line and stomping bass propel the verse into a feel good chorus that one might have heard in the Chicago House era."

Punky guitar shreds, cow bells and subtle synth sequencers flutter over a classic disco beat, as Hoffman refrains, 'Top, bottom, bottom, top'. Whatever your vantage point, from the top or the bottom, from under or above, it's all love," Hoffman notes, referencing the track's lyrics.

WATCH "TOP BOTTOM TOP" OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

The track's video, directed by queer filmmaker, writer, designer and activist, Graham Kolbeins celebrates queer love and depicts a wide array of folks from across the queer spectrum. Kolbeins explains, "'Top Bottom Top' is a new queer anthem and we aimed to create a video that reflected the song's playful, sexy energy. Bringing together a variety of folks from across the L.A. queer diaspora inside an Echo Park dungeon space, the video is a celebration of individuality and sexual fluidity."

Produced by gender queer trans woman Luka Fisher and Agender bassist Cristy Michel, the video proudly features real queer couples of Los Angeles allowing those who are often excluded from mainstream media a chance to be themselves and flaunt their own love authentically. Throughout the video, Agender is joined by an extensive list of Los Angeles-based queer figures from performance artists like Sheree Rose to producers like Jonathan Andre Culliton, to activists like Rudy Bleu to actors like Byron Adams, dancers like Alucard Mendoza, to writers like Miss Misty Page, directors like Masha Ko and more.

Sheree Rose, one of the video's prominent performers, is an 81-year-old performance artist, documentarian, and dominatrix known for both her collaboration with poet Bob Flanagan and for her documentation of queer and underground subcultures from the 1980s to present. She and Flanagan's work, which explored female domination, terminal illness, and masochism, blurred the boundaries between art, life and culture. Together they appeared in music videos for Nine Inch Nails, Danzig, and GodFlesh while exhibiting their works in major museums around the world.

Two singles from the sophomore album "Preach" and "Astro Tarot," have been released and have received praise from several leading tastemakers. Regarding “Astro Tarot,” A&R Factory said, “The gritty vocals slice a claw into your mind — as you sit back and imagine how electrifying they are live with such a buzz about them — with a vibe that sends your mind into a spin, as you remember that this is what real music is all about.” About "Preach," Lethal Amounts wrote, “The debut video for "Preach" is a commanding anthem from Los Angeles band Agender. It's an ascending explosion. The four minute single is an anthemic crescendo that mirrors the angst and frustration widely felt in these chaotic times.”

The band's most recent single, "No Nostalgia," depicts a post-apocalyptic world free of anxiety, an imaginary realm where all life has ceased to exist as those in the peaceful, post-human world yearn for amnesia. Grimy Goods wrote the "heavy but healing" track "barrels into you with force and gravity, striking hard musically, visually and philosophically."

The punk-heavy 14-track album, No Nostalgia, sees the four-piece satirically examine their place in today's fast-evolving world. They poke fun at modernity and postmodernity, while swinging between deep nostalgia for the past and amnesia. It's both existential and celebratory, yet introspective and humorous all at once. Hoffman, describing the main themes of the album, says, “The album reads as a newspaper or a collage. It’s a political, spiritual, philosophical look at modern society- the information age. It’s an anthropological look at the absurd current state of affairs. It’s focused yet unhinged, self reflective, observant, brash, tongue in cheek, serious yet playful. Excavations and observations of the mind of an anxiously attached, overthinking, spiritual human."

David Scott Stone (LCD Soundsystem, Unwound) produced, Sean Cook (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen) mixed, and Bob Weston (Shellac) mastered the record. The three engineers combined with Hoffman's gritty lyrics set the stage for an intricate storyline of existentialism.

While a slight departure from their signature punk sound, Agender swiftly bends space and time to bring the queer disco club scene into the forefront with "Top Bottom Top," out everywhere now. The band's second, multi-faceted LP, No Nostalgia, is due out May 27th and can be pre-ordered now. Plus, don't miss Agender, JD Samson and Harvey Sutherland teaming up for a remix of the track along with a remix EP, coming this summer in celebration of Pride. Connect with Agender on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more from the rising stars.

LISTEN: "NO NOSTALGIA" | WATCH: "NO NOSTALGIA"

LISTEN: "ASTRO TAROT"

WATCH: "PREACH" | LISTEN: "PREACH"

Photo credit: Lindsey Byrnes | Download hi-res image

Agender Bio:

It’s hard to put Agender into any box: With Australian songwriter and musician Romy Hoffman at the helm, the quartet makes schizo, synthy, paranoid, post-punk with a dash of dysmorphic desire. And fans? They revel in their sweeping existential terror that comes with a fetish for femininity.

Initially formed in 2011 as a solo punk excursion for Hoffman, Agender was born when she decided to get sober. “It started as impulsive, a way to cope with all these new, raw feelings. I played every instrument myself on the first Agender record.” But as quickly as it started as a solitary endeavor, it evolved into a trio just two years later. By 2014, the band had become known for its intense punk shows and had released its debut album Fixations via Desire Records. Since then, the queer post-punk outfit has now become a full-fledged quartet with bassist Cristy Michel, drummer Christy Greenwood and synth player Sara Rivas rounding out the band. Still, Hoffman still remains its focal point as the primary writer in the group.

Agender, however, has taken its time with releasing a new record. It’s been seven years since the band released its debut LP Fixations. In that 7-year time span, Hoffman moved from Melbourne to Los Angeles, built a life for herself in a new city, released a solo record of dark, driving electronic music, starting running two of L.A’s biggest queer parties (‘Homoccult’ and ‘Lez Croix’), and situated herself as a respected DJ. The process of No Nostalgia, the band’s second album, has also been slow and steady: the songs were penned pre-pandemic and partially recorded then, but finished during COVID. No Nostalgia came from Hoffman reaching the crossroads of oscillating between bouts of extreme nostalgia and extreme amnesia. With the record, she wanted to strip it all away. “When we live in a world where everything is nostalgic, I’m trying to imagine a world with none of that, but it’s impossible. Even if I’m just commenting on society, it’s still referential to something, therefore relies on memory, therefore I’ve thought myself into a corner. It’s from this corner that I write,” she says. In spring 2022, fans of Agender will get to experience Hoffman’s reality.

While Agender’s last two records took themselves a bit more seriously, No Nostalgia is rooted in satire. “This record is poking fun at modernity and postmodernity,” says Hoffman. “It’s satirical. It’s a bird’s eye view of where we are and the absurdity of everything.” Inspired by everything from The French Situationist Movement to Wire and Buzzcocks, No Nostalgia is a canvas painted with singular post-punk.

Introducing No Nostalgia, Agender has shared two singles ahead of its release. Last Fall, they unveiled “Preach,” an eerie, synth-heavy single laced with guitar stabs that transforms God into Goddess energy. And last May, they shared “Astro Tarot,” an ode to divine intuition and the cosmic roadmap that intrigues the psyche. The title track is Agender’s third single, and is most emblematic of the record: “For me, it’s imagining a world of no memory.”

With No Nostalgia, Hoffman finds herself meditating on existentialism. On the urgent, self-referential “Avoid A Void,” she nods to her own journey of maintaining sobriety over the last decade. “Exist in a slippery dip/Spits you out into a big abyss,” she drones. Similarly, the heart-racing “Trouble And Desire” shows Hoffman ruminating over the push-and-pull of love addiction. Over spazzy guitar riffs, “Woah Life Wow” digs deeper into searching for answers in introspection: “She’s done enough of pray, this incarnation’s saved/Waiting in a waiting room, nothing to do but wait.” Songs like “Pastiche” and “Mother Simulacra'' tackle the death of originality — the former, a tongue-in-cheek parody on postmodernism, and the latter, a realization that Hoffman’s relationships are a copy of her relationship with her mother. Agender, however, takes a moment from life’s big questions to celebrate queer love with the disco-punk anthem “Top Bottom Top.” Politics don’t escape Hoffman’s focus on the record. With “Rusher,” a track penned at the height of “Russiagate” when Trump was in office, Hoffman interprets the absurdity of politics as theater: “Space race, space race seemed so fun/Dr. Strangelove press buttons.” Over bursts of guitar fuzz, “Fact Fuck Fiction” contemplates the insanity of political doublespeak: “Welcome to the news today/Don’t know if it’s true or fake.” By the album’s closer “Extinction of Handwriting,” Hoffman is yearning for simpler times over spacey synths — an analog future instead of a digital one.

While Agender is Hoffman’s current focus, her experience in music spans more than two decades: She began her career as a teen playing guitar in Ben Lee’s pop-punk band Noise Addict and later became the first hip hop artist (and second Australian) to sign to Kill Rock Stars, as Macromantics. Later, Hoffman began making dark electro pop and house music under ROMY.

No matter what project she’s working on, Hoffman believes she’s a medium for a message: “I’m delivering something that needs to be said.”