AGRICULTURE ANNOUNCE THE SPIRITUAL SOUND
TO BE RELEASED VIA THE FLENSER ON 3RD OCTOBER
“BODHIDHARMA” SHARED TODAY
There’s a kind of quiet violence in how music is consumed today—flattened into background noise, sonic perfume fed into algorithms, sold as lifestyle. It’s entertainment as anesthesia. Sound without the weight.
The Spiritual Sound, announced today, is the new full-length from Los Angeles–based band Agriculture, and stands as a pointed refusal of this condition. This is not a playlist. This is not a vibe. It is a demand. The Spiritual Sound will be released via The Flenser on 3rd October.
About the first single, “Bodhidharma”, Dan says;
“Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was an Indian monk who famously stared at the wall of a cave for nine years. He even cut off his eyelids in order to prevent himself from falling asleep. At one time, another monk approached him in his cave and pleaded ‘master, my head is on fire with anxiety, can you pacify my mind?’ Bodhidharma just kept staring at the wall and Huike waited outside of the cave all night until he was buried in snow up to his waist. Finally, as a gesture of desperation he cut off his arm and offered it to the great master. Huike later became Bodhidharma’s successor.” – Dan Meyer
WATCH THE VISUALISER FOR “BODHIDHARMA” BELOW:
Across its runtime, The Spiritual Sound traces a narrative arc through extremes: searing, sky-cracking catharsis on side A; a slow-burning, devotional undercurrent on side B. The album is largely a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters, Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson: distinct voices, deeply complementary.
Dan writes like someone clawing toward the divine through noise, channeling Zen Buddhism, historical collapse, ecstatic grief. Leah’s songs move differently: grounded in queer history and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the present, they carry the weight of survival as daily ritual. Her writing asks how to honor queer community and collective struggle without turning it into identity branding or personal mythmaking—how to stay honest, how to stay present. Though distinct, their voices converge in a singular spiritual grammar—one that defines the totality of The Spiritual Sound, not as separate parts, but as one unified expression.
Agriculture’s formation mirrors this duality. Whspirat began as a loose collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer in the Los Angeles noise scene evolved into a shared pursuit of the sublime through heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the project solidified into the band’s current form. The ecstatic black metal foundation was laid on 2022’s The Circle Chant, expanded into something more precise and far-reaching on their 2023 self-titled full-length, and deepened further with 2024’s Living Is Easy: a record that embraced devotional intensity and radiant heaviness in equal measure.
Agriculture’s writing process is built on dismantling and revision of self. Dan and Leah bring songs to the band and then allow them to be pulled apart and rebuilt communally: reshaped through conflict, repetition, and deep trust. Richard adds guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms which are sometimes familiar but often unconventional. Finally, with Richard producing, the final form of each song is realized through intense collaborative work in the studio. Although a time consuming and ego-frustrating process, this allows the band to find the spirit of the songs not through inspiration, but through persistence.
Yet, even in its most ambitious moments, The Spiritual Sound remains rooted in the ordinary and in the day-to-day relationships between the people who made it. Gas station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on floors. Playing shows in rooms that smell like mildew. The spirit here isn’t abstract, it’s live. This is spiritual music that starts with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van.
Agriculture doesn’t offer salvation. The Spiritual Sound isn’t a map out of the fire. What it offers instead is presence: a confrontation with the moment, however unbearable, however divine. It insists that meaning is still possible, even in a world hell-bent on reducing everything to content, and where suffering itself can be conducive to recovery. As the Buddhist saying goes “the only way out is in.”
When the founder of Chinese Zen, Bodhidharma, was asked by the emperor of China “What is the true meaning of the holy truth?” He replied, “Vast emptiness. Nothing holy.” This is not background music. This is not for vibe. The Spiritual Sound is music that asks.
The Spiritual Sound album cover
THE SPIRITUAL SOUND TRACK LISTING:
1 – MY GARDEN
2 – FLEA
3 – MICAH (5.15AM)
4 – THE WEIGHT
5 – SERENITY
6 – THE SPIRITUAL SOUND
7 – DAN’S LOVE SONG
8 – BODHIDHARMA [visualiser]
9 – HALLELUJAH
10 – THE REPLY
AGRICULTURE LIVE DATES 2025:
Sep. 3 – Bristol, UK @ Exchange
Sep. 4 – Brighton, UK @ DUST
Sep. 5 – London, UK @ Oslo Hackney
Sep. 6 – Salford, UK @ The White Hotel
Sep. 7 – Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK @ Cluny 2
Sep. 9 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Sep. 11 – Dublin, Ireland @ The Workmans Club
Sep. 12 – Glasgow, UK @ Multiple Venues
Sep. 13 – Belfast, UK @ Voodoo
Sep. 14 – Glasgow, UK @ Multiple Venues
Sep. 16 – Paris, FR @ Point Éphémère
Sep. 18 – Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat
Oct. 27 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
Oct. 30 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
Nov. 1 – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
Nov 4 – Louisville, KY: Zanzabar
Nov. 4 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop Bar
Nov. 6 – Oklahoma City, OK @ 89th Street
Nov. 8 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
Nov. 9 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
Nov. 11 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
Nov. 13 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room
Nov. 14 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux
Nov. 16 – Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s
Nov. 18 – Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret
Nov. 19 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
Nov. 21 – Sacramento, CA @ Cafe Colonial
Nov. 22 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel
Dec. 4 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
Dec. 5 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
“This is an album about the really fundamental human experiences of suffering, joy, and love. We find a lot of the profound in these basic experiences. To us they are by definition spiritual and worth singing and screaming about. With this record, we wanted to make music that connects the intensity of daily life with the intensity of an encounter with Spirit.” – Agriculture