LA-based trio Touching Ice in the space between raw intensity and gentle vulnerability. At their core, textured guitar riffs and pounding drum machines create a powerful dissidence, while heartfelt, pop-inspired melodies pierce through the chaos, ultimately revealing beauty within the brutal. Their latest single, “nothing matters more than love,” traces the sharp edge of softness with delicate whispers of circuit-bent electronics and fading synths and follows the release of their three-part series, Jersey City / 2k14 Soft Grunge at the end of last year.

Ahead of their set at Los Angeles’ And Always Forever this November at The Echo/Echoplex, Touching Ice debuts a live performance of an upcoming track. The band shares, “This is us playing an unreleased song @ the echo (wow look at that) taken by our dear friend Patrick on June 1st, 2024. Davis threw up before because he was nervous.”

And Always Forever will also feature heavy hitters the Swirlies, Schwefelgelb, Marie Davidson, Loveliescrushing, Astrobrite, Croatian Amor, and more at the Echo/Echoplex on Saturday, November 9th. The first of its kind, AAF is a love letter to the LA music scene, wherein dense, turbulent, and exposed soundscapes of shoegaze will marry into the pummeling percussion and pervasive force of today’s experimental techno. 

You can find tickets at andalwaysforever.com.  

What do you hope listeners take home with them after AAF, and what are you looking forward to? 

Inspiration, love, light, etc. Smoking on stage feels good and we are truly looking forward to every single artist on the lineup, a lot of my favorite music under one roof + book fair. 

What can you say about music and its longevity? 

We bare witness to the longevity of music every day and we connect with music made decades before we were born constantly; in the age of the internet it's easier than ever to discover something from the past you probably wouldn't have stumbled across otherwise. If a piece of music connects with people emotionally or sonically I think it will live forever. Al Bowlly still makes us cry. (Music is awesome and lives forever.) 

What do you hope lasts forever? 

This moment and friendship and that tingly feeling when the music is really good and really loud and my dogs… and us.