The Present returns with a new album that delves ever deeper into the human psyche. Like an audio equivalent of Apocalypse Now, and with artwork once again by the very talented Andrew Kuo, The Way We Are is by turns terrifying, enchanting, hallucinatory and sharply focused. Like a psychedelic power trio from a mythical dimension, The Present create a music that seems somehow familiar.

Touchstones include the music of La Monte Young, Dmitri Shostakovich, Wolfgang Voigt, Cluster, Black Dice, Claude Debussy, Aphex Twin, Can, Arthur Russell, Boredoms and Brian Eno and yet it sounds like none of these. What it is: a kaleidoscopic trip influenced by New York City, The Ocean, Mountains, The Sun and the Trees, Andy Warhol, Yukio Mishima, David Lynch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Buddhist Mantra, Mass Transit, Cats, Birds and life. Life in all its myriad complexity and confusions, in all it's transcendent beauty and it's horrendous brutality.

The Present's live show has been described as 'more of a sensory experience than a mere matter of listening' and it's the title track, a thirty five minute epic the like of which has not been heard since the glory days of Popul Vuh that best captures the bands extraordinary intensity.