Tiny Ruins Announce NZ Album Release Shows + Share Single 'Holograms'

Tiny Ruins songwriter Hollie Fullbrook and her stellar band are celebrating the release of their hugely anticipated new album Olympic Girls this February with a pair of special headline launch events, taking place in Auckland and Wellington. Fullbrook has also revealed the collection's visionary latest single 'Holograms', complemented by a sci-fi-tinged clip directed by Martin Sagadin. The much-teased new record will be Tiny Ruins' first release since 2016's standalone single ‘Dream Wave’, recorded and produced by none other than Twin Peaks auteur David Lynch, and Fullbrook's first collection since 2015's collaborative EP with Hamish Kilgour Hurtling Through. Both shows are happening in mid-March, featuring the full Tiny Ruins band of Cass Basil on bass, Alex Freer on drums and Tom Healy on electric guitar, with special support acts to be announced. Fullbrook opened up about the ideas orbiting her latest song and video, take in the event details and read her words below...

Tiny Ruins (Full Band) - Olympic Girls Album Release Shows

Sunday 10th March - Te Auaha, Tapere Nui, Wellington
Saturday 16th March - Pt Chev RSA, Auckland

Tickets available HERE via UTR

“The song is a conversation in a way, where one person posits the idea that technology will increasingly connect us. That we will not just be emotionally or mentally connected, but that our bodies will transcend physical and mortal bounds via technology. That we can bring someone back.

For the video, I wanted a sense of longing for this sparkly, colourful other realm, where everyone is connected, in unity. The director Martin Sagadin & I both started out talking about how the song called for a sense of sci-fi, which led us to planets, which led to the idea that we would build planets out of lanterns. This storyline arose where my character is trying to communicate or reach out to another field of existence, via technology. But we felt that the technology could be a bit old and not quite ‘of this time’ - we were inspired by Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting video, or the TV series Maniac, in the sense that technology is kind of old and defunct, and there’s a timelessness or lack of specificity as to time.

The idea of the video, I guess, is that I have a vision of this place I am trying to reach…I gather up particular objects that I feel will connect me to this place. But in the end, it’s futile - I try to reach the planet that appears through the wall, with all my technology revved up, and….it collapses in front of me.”

'Olympic Girls' is out on Friday 1st February via Ursa Minor (NZ), Milk! Records (AU), Ba Da Bing (U.S.) and Marathon Artists (UK / EU).

Press release:

Tiny Ruins release their highly anticipated third full length album on February 1st. Join the band for an intimate unveiling of these eleven songs and more, before they set off to conquer hearts & minds in Australia & Europe.

Special guests to be announced.

What can I tell you? I've heard Olympic Girls, and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor afterwards. A dense tangle of acoustic and electric guitars came tumbling out of my speakers and made me feel quite peculiar. Exhilarated, disoriented, a wee bit out-of-it. I felt as though someone had spiked my morning muesli with LSD....[Fullbrook's] songs often seem gentle and unassuming on first encounter – an impression deepened by her calm, warm, weary voice – but clustered around more introspective passages typical of confessional singer-songwriters are gnarlier phrases that give her work its buzzy voltage: arresting visual images, weird associations, daisy-chains of telling detail. - Grant Smithies

Olympic Girls was produced by bandmate Tom Healy in the same space (Paquin Studios at The Lab, Auckland) as their 2014 album, 'Brightly Painted One'. Whereas 'Brightly Painted One' was recorded in three short weeks, Olympic Girls recordings took place over a year. It is the culmination of a flourish of spontaneity and experimentation and stridently reaches beyond Fullbrook's formerly minimalist domain.