The Vacant Lots

Interzone (2020) is the third full-length from Brooklyn, NYC post-punk duo The Vacant Lots. Following its release last summer and quick sell-out, the LP is now getting a second pressing via Fuzz Club Records. Picking up high praise from the likes of Iggy Pop, BBC 6Music, Henry Rollins, Loud & Quiet, Uncut, Brooklyn Vegan, Line of Best Fit, and countless others, Interzone is a genre-blending synthesis of dance and psych that’s made for secluded listeners and all-night partygoers.

Uninhibited by the limitations of two people and continuing their mission of “minimal means maximum effect,” The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen create an industrial amalgam of icy electronics and cold beats with detached vocals and hard-hitting guitars. Interzone's trance-like opener ‘Endless Rain’ and the kinetic Krautrock stomper ‘Into The Depths’ are followed by scintillating dark disco anthems 'Rescue' and 'Exit’. Side 2 kicks off with '80s synth-pop track ‘Fracture’ and haunting after-hours minimal wave ‘Payoff,’ while ‘Station’ and album closer 'Party's Over' deal with disillusionment and conquering one’s indifference to make real change.

The album creates order from chaos and delves into escapism, isolation, relationship conflicts, and decay. With nods to William S. Burroughs and Joy Division’s song of the same name, “Interzone is like existing between two zones,” Jared says. “Interzone doesn't mean one thing. It can mean different things to different people depending on their interpretation. Working on this album was a constant struggle reconciling internal conflicts with all that’s going on externally in the world. Interzone, in one word, is duality.” The album was engineered by Ted Young (Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile), mixed by Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Merchandise, Boy Harsher), mastered by Gianni Peri, and is housed in striking artwork by long-term collaborator Ivan Leichti.

The Vacant Lots have released singles with Mexican Summer and Reverberation Appreciation Society, collaborated on their debut album Departure with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, their second album Endless Night with Alan Vega, and most recently on their two EPs, Berlin and Exit, with Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe at his studio in Berlin. The group has toured with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Suicide, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500), The Dandy Warhols, and Spectrum.