Ultra Q

Ultra Q Drop Video For “Rocket”

Ultra Q
Photo by Athena Merry

Ultra Q share new single ‘Rocket’, taken from debut album My Guardian Angel out 9th June 2023 via Royal Mountain Records. Pre-order here.

On the track, frontman Jakob Armstrong says, “This was a tricky one. Originally there were two demos for the song. The first titled Rocket, and the second titled Bon Iver is a Greasy Weeb (I was doing some fun vocoder stuff). It’s probably good we ended up going with the first. This track feels like a melting point for the album. It finds its place in between the electronic blaze of ‘I Watched Them Go’ and the emo sheen of ‘VR Sex’. It bridges the gap. Lyrically I found the contrast between city nightlife and insomnia to be familiar. It feels comforting and warm even though those two things separately describe quite the opposite.”

Ultra Q’s debut album My Guardian Angel was produced by Chris Coady ( TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House) and it offers a deep sonic palette to match Armstrong’s artistic ambition. Wildly vacillating between widescreen pop-punk (‘Klepto’, the impeccably titled ‘VR Sex’), romantic new-wave (‘Rocket’, ‘I Wanna Lose’), and shimmering synth-pop (‘I Watched Them Go’), the album displays Armstrong’s songwriting talents—along with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina—conceived and recorded for maximum impact.

Emotional growing pains, sleepless nights, the ethereal allure of romance, and the notion of sound being so closely attached to memory are all wrapped up in clever guitar interplay reminiscent of the band’s formative influences, but delivered in an identity all their own. The words are attached to feelings we think are going to slip away from us in the fading and tarnished pallor of adulthood; truth be told, those feelings emerge just as freshly the older we get.

And that is the gift of My Guardian Angel, the implicit understanding that growth is merely a tool we use to better process the past slipping away from us.

My Guardian Angel out 9th June via Royal Mountain Records

Pre-order HERE

Tour Dates

06/08 – The Fine Line – Minneapolis, MN*
06/09 – Metro – Chicago, IL*
06/10 – El Club – Detroit, Mi*
06/11 – Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH*
06/13 – Rec Room – Buffalo, NY*
06/14 – The Phoenix – Toronto, ON*
06/16 – Paradise – Boston, MA*
06/17 – Le Poisson Rouge – New York, NY*
06/18 – The Foundry – Philadelphia, PA*
06/20 – Union Stage – Washington D.C, DC*
06/21 – The Broadberry – Richmond, VA*
06/23 – Masquerade (Heaven – Atlanta, GA*
06/24 – Eastside Bowl – Nashville, TN*
06/26 – Mohawk – Austin, TX*
06/27 – Tulips – Ft. Worth, TX*
06/29 – Sister – Albuquerque, NM*
06/30 – The Crescent – Phoenix, AZ*
07/01 – Observatory North Park – San Diego, CA*
07/02 – Observatory Orange County – Santa Ana, CA*
07/03 – The Regent – Los Angeles, CA*
07/05 – The Independent – San Francisco, CA*
07/06 – Harlow’s – Sacramento, CA*

(*Supporting Wavves / Cloud Nothing)

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