CYNIC Announce Ascending Europe Tour: 2024

Ascending Europe:
CYNIC’s
Monumental Journey Continues in 2024
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Cynic | Audiotree From Nothing
As the cataclysms of the past emerge as profound metamorphoses, CYNIC return to Europe, igniting stages with their spectral presence and unquenchable fire, propelling themselves into an era of unparalleled spiritual musicianship. The Ascending Europe Tour 2024 beckons you to a pilgrimage through an aural tapestry, artfully woven with threads of the band’s storied legacy and forward-reaching visionary compositions.

In 2024, CYNIC‘s journey ascends to new heights, harmoniously melding echoes of past tribulations with the bold aspirations of their future. Reuniting Paul Masvidal’s transcendental vision with a timeless narrative, the tour not only immortalizes the band’s endeavors but also dives into the depths of their expansive discography. With the resounding echos of their seminal reissues, Uroboric Forms and Traced in Air, ringing through the cosmos, it’s a sanctified opportunity to witness these ethereal musings in the live realm.

These demos are like sketches of young, aspiring artists,” says Paul Masvidal. “Hearing these demos is akin to looking at old pictures of yourself or reading historical diary entries and realizing you’re a different person now.

Ascending Europe Tour Dates 2024:

Embodying the spirit of resurrection and progression, CYNIC invite you to share in their journey on these auspicious dates:

02 August: Brasov, RO @ Rockstadt Extreme Fest
06 August: Istanbul, TR @ Performance Hall Besiktas
07 August: Krakow, PL @ Kwadrat
08 August: Vienna, AT @ Replugged
09 August: Jaromer, CZ @ Brutal Assault
10 August: Warsaw, PL @ Hydrozagadka
11 August: Poznan, PL @ 2Progi
13 August: Den Bosch, NL @ W2
14 August: Cologne, DE @ Club Volta
15 August: Kassel, DE @ Goldgrube
17 August: Francavilla al Mare, IT @ Frantic Festival

 Tickets will be made available at: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/53688-cynic

➤ CYNIC merchandise is available here: https://cynic.travelling-merchant.com/

Colour Photos by Aint Tellin Photography
Black & White Photos by Stefan Raduta
As CYNIC traverse through Europe’s storied cities, they are offering fans more than just live transcendence. In collaboration with Season of Mist, CYNIC has reissued two seminal works that encapsulate the band’s philosophical and musical journey: Uroboric Forms and Traced in Air.
UROBORIC FORMS

Tracklist
1. Uroboric Forms (3:48)
2. The Eagle Nature (3:28)
3. Pleading For Preservation (5:03)
4. Lifeless Irony (4:08)
5. Thinking Being (4:53)
6. Cruel Gentility (4:32)
7. Denaturalizing Leaders (3:47)
8. Extremes (2:30)
9. A Life Astray (2:45)
10. Agitating Affliction (3:39)
11. Once Misguided (3:00)
12. Weak Reasoning (3:38)
13. Dwellers Of The Threshold (3:59)
14. Uroboric Forms (Alternative Version) (3:47)
15. The Eagle Nature (Alternative Version) (3:34)
Total runtime: 45:42

TRACED IN AIR

Tracklist
1. Nunc Fluens (2:56)
2. The Space For This (5:47)
3. Evolutionary Sleeper (3:36)
4. Integral Birth (3:53)
5. The Unknown Guest (4:14)
6. Adam’s Murmur (3:29)
7. King Of Those Who Know (6:09)
8. Nunc Stans (4:14)
Total runtime: 34:18

These reissues are spiritual artifacts, embodying the continuous evolution and boundless creativity of CYNIC. Each track is a brushstroke on the grand canvas of their legacy, now immortalized and available through Season of Mist.

➤ Order Uroboric Forms: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/CynicUroboricForms

➤ Order Traced in Air: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/CynicTracedReissue

Photo by Stephanie Cabral
Attainment

Cynic’s continual state of development has met its share of challenges over the years, hurdles that threatened to dismantle the entity’s forward surge. Yet through hurricanes, breakups, and assorted acrimony both personal and existential, it remains inspired to create.

Their name is synonymous with what it means to be truly progressive in music. Cynic’s top-tier performance acumen and cerebral/spiritual/yogic themes finds them inhabiting a corner of the musical spectrum all their own. Their Venn diagram shows intersections with death metal, prog rock, thrash metal, experimental, new age, jazz fusion, and a myriad of other sonic expressions.

Debut album, Focus (1993), is a certified classic. Although that era ended with transformation into the short-lived Portal, and then a further splinter toward Aeon Spoke, Cynic’s reunion-era has found them embraced in a way that proves how ahead of the times they were in the ‘90s. Through monuments such as the Traced in Air (2008) and Kindly Bent to Free Us (2014) albums, the Carbon-Based Anatomy and Re-Traced EPs, and a surprising rebirth with the “Humanoid” single of 2018, the Cynic legacy remains untarnished. Yet early in the creation cycle for their fourth full-length album, they experienced horrible events that tested the entity’s resolve.

Ascension

The year 2020 will go down in history as a tremendously difficult time for the global human population. For the Cynic family, the struggle was not restricted to a pandemic. It was two utterly senseless losses that threw the band’s immediate concerns into the background: the premature deaths of drummer Sean Reinert in January, at age 48, and bassist Sean Malone in December, at age 50, were shocking and unthinkable.

Reinert, a founding Cynic member since formation in 1988, was highly influential to a multitude of young drummers. His work on 1993’s Focus and Death’s watershed 1991 album, Human, found him sculpting extreme technical metal with a jazz fusion-inspired approach. Now taken for granted, that approach to the instrument and the genre was undoubtedly pioneered in large part by Reinert. Though parting with Cynic in 2015, his imprint on Cynic is inescapable.

The death of Sean Malone dealt another horrible layer of tragedy to Cynic’s 2020. In his many years with the band, Malone’s virtuoso playing meshed intuitively with Reinert’s. Together they formed a nucleus of kinetic, highly capable rhythmic dexterity that fueled Cynic’s celestial aims.

One of these deaths would have seemed unimaginable by itself. Both of them, in the same year, nearly broke surviving member Paul Masvidal. But the seeds of a fourth Cynic full- length existed long before the deaths, and the guitarist, through a haze of grief and disbelief, pushed forward. “I wanted to make this record right after Kindly Bent to Free Us,” says Masvidal. “I was raring to go, hyper-creative, in this total flow state. And then it all imploded.”

Parts of songs were in the gestation process as early as 2014. Masvidal says that Reinert and Malone heard elements of what ended up on the fourth album. Slowly, methodically, and with much careful deliberation, Masvidal eventually completed an album titled Ascension Codes, to honor the memory of his fallen band mates. And while the album honors the lives and contributions of Reinert and Malone, it also pushes Cynic forward for its own sake and through its own will to live. The album, paradoxically, acts as both swan song and rebirth. It is, throughout its 49 minutes, a vivid and highly cosmic journey into the very core of every impulse this band has ever explored.

Offering

As of 2021, the future of Cynic is unclear. Does Ascension Codes mark their final phase of growth? Surely the music finds them laying out a most ambitious trail of spiritual sonic travel, but to call any Cynic album “ambitious” is redundant. They are, by their very nature, an ambitious band. Yet Ascension Codes is a remarkably far-reaching work. Its nine main songs are infused with explosions of color and energy, and throughout these compositions are embedded the “codes”: “Mu-54*,” “A’-va432,” “Ha-144” and so on.

Though clearly an album best listened to in its entirety without distraction, for full impact, there are definitive Cynic songs here that stand strong on their own. “Mythical Serpents” is imbued with propellant adventure, exciting peaks and valleys that tug at the heart while its mathematical sequences challenge the head in a dizzying push/pull dynamic. It’s that quintessential Cynic approach of kaleidoscopic intensity and mannered discipline.

“Diamond Light Body” brings the album to a crashing close – heavy and celestial, with some melodic sequences that feel like new territory for Cynic. An incredibly dense song with inhuman patterns from Lynch, the song’s beautiful urgency and final moments push the album outward into the heavens: “I won’t feed the fear / I’ll choose a different timeline / Ascend / All is flux, nothing stands still / Ascend.”

The expanded Cynic collective maintains focus on Masvidal’s vision, each human element adding to the compelling overall result. Truly, if this is to be the final artistic stroke by Cynic, then they have landed in a place of mastery. The stories told by FocusTraced in Air, and Kindly Bent to Free Us are now completed with Ascension Codes.

Ascension Codes is perhaps the most ethereal sounding Cynic album to date, but also skews heavier than previous album Kindly Bent to Free Us. The expanded lineup is surely responsible for the album’s far-reaching scope.

After Sean Reinert’s exit from Cynic in 2015, Masvidal and Malone recruited drummer Matt Lynch. Found through a tip from Between the Buried and Me’s Dan Briggs, Lynch proved to be a perfect addition to the band. As Masvidal notes, Lynch’s “hybrid modern style is like a fusion of drum and bass electronic music influences combined with modern jazz/prog approaches. Lynch is a true original in that he’s a fully realized drummer constructing his parts as carefully as any other compositional element always is on a Cynic record. Every single accent and note coming from him is birthed from a precise and inspired place.” We hear this throughout Ascension Codes, pushing the music along with finesse, adding shape and texture in ways only the most sensitive drummers can do.

But how to replace Sean Malone on bass? Masvidal’s answer: don’t even try. The lines of bass notes heard throughout Ascension Codes are performed on bass synthesizer by keyboardist Dave Mackay. A British pianist, writer, producer and Moog/vintage synth enthusiast, Mackay has toured with everyone from Art Garfunkel to Plini (the latter providing the initial introduction between Mackay and Masvidal). Based in Los Angeles and London, Mackay’s work is sensitive to Malone’s touch, while also adding a throbbing intensity that offers Cynic new low-end possibilities. “He’s got a vast jazz harmonic vocabulary,” notes Masvidal, “which is what’s needed in the context of Cynic’s music, especially for bass lines. I knew that I could never replace Malone. Anyone I would find would be expected to play like him, and that’s not fair to another musician. And things were too fresh for me with the loss of Malone, so I had to go somewhere new. With Mackay, I heard his groovy left-hand approach, and how musical he was across the board having played with a variety of musicians and styles. I realized he would bring something fresh to the table, and he provided a space for me to start again with a completely different instrument and forgo any traditional ideas I had about what Cynic bass lines should sound like.

Ultimately Mackay delivered above and beyond, with a real awareness of a bass player’s role in a progressive trio context. First, by holding down the harmony and being “in the pocket,” while also creating an independent and dynamic voice within that space. Mackay has a rare combination of skills and the vibe he locked into with Lynch with sounds like a rhythm section from the future. Plus, his Moog synth tone offers a low-end depth that’s never been heard in our recordings.” On December 5, 2019, Dave Mackay shared the stage with Paul Masvidal for a performance of the guitarist’s solo material. On bass that evening was Sean Malone. After the gig, Malone told Masvidal, “We should bring Mackay in for the new record.”

Michael Berberian, president and founder of Season of Mist Records remained close to Masvidal throughout the 2020 losses of his bandmates. Michael states “I have, by now, released close to one thousand albums. None have been more dramatic, none have even been more difficult than this one. I can’t listen to Ascension Codes without goosebumps, a mixed feeling of pride – because it’s a musical milestone, but it also contains a lingering layer of sadness. I hear Paul’s pain on this record. I can feel it, I can touch it. But it’s transcended. ‘Art is to console those who are broken by life,’ said Van Gogh. Here is a demonstration of that.”

Ascension Codes was mixed and co-produced by Warren Riker, who worked with Aeon Spoke, Cynic in the Traced in Air era, and mixed Paul Masvidal’s solo acoustic trilogy. “Riker’s a wizard who gets inside the music and commits. He expands boundaries as a mixer, always finding new ways to push the sonic envelope,” says Masvidal.

Keeping things in the family, Martina Hoffmann’s original painting entitled ‘The Landing’ graces Cynic’s new album Ascension Codes with breathtaking scope and presence. The visionary work inspired by Martina’s time walking the beaches of Brittany, France after the death of her longtime partner, the artist Robert Venosa (whose artwork adorns all Cynic releases between 1993 and 2018) followed by the loss of her mother, the subject of the piece features the arrival of a great mothership made of light and flesh, not machine but an organic entity that has brought hope and infinite possibilities. Masvidal says of Hoffmann, “Martina’s art has always held a special place in my heart, and I’m deeply grateful for her love and support. When I first contacted Venosa as a teenager, it was Martina who encouraged him to lend his work to the band, because she heard something in our music. She is like the divine mother in this Cynic/ Venosa lineage,” Masvidal says. “Her spirit and multidimensional talents are truly a gift to this world. I feel that she is one of the great artistic voices of our age.”

The struggle to attain ascension is as important as ascension itself. And after much searching, Cynic have again achieved oneness with the numinous. At a time of possible exit for the entity, Ascension Codes is Cynic reaching a previously-unknown state of enlightenment.

Follow CYNIC:
https://www.facebook.com/CynicPaulMasvidal
https://www.instagram.com/cynic_official
https://cyniconline.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/CynicOnline
https://www.youtube.com/user/cynicdocumentary
https://cynic.travelling-merchant.com
https://www.indiemerch.com/cynic/

Live Lineup:
Paul Masvidal – Vocals and Guitars
Max Phelps (Exist, Death to All) – Guitars and Vocals
Brandon Giffin (The Faceless, The Zenith Passage) – Bass
Matt Lynch (Nova Collective, Intronaut) – Drums & Percussion
Zeke Kaplan – Keyboards

Biography: Jeff Wagner

Shop: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/Cynic