The early 90’s was a period in rock journalism where every hack seemed anxious to invent a genre, “Shoegaze” being the biggest contradiction of them all, covering the dream-pop resonance of Chapterhouse to the conventional pop-jangle of Revolver. Some shared a sound (Ride, Swervedriver, Curve) due to sharing a producer, Alan Moulder practically a staffer at Creation Records. Others were lumped in because they just looked the part – Catherine Wheel, Pale Saints, even Adorable. Whilst the ethos was naïve (the moody videos, the gloriously over the top “our middle class lives are hell” lyrics), the music was mostly wonderfully noisy and hugely exciting. Ride’s first two LP’s in particular contain enough good songs to make one incredible album, and all these bands had their moments, from Chapterhouse’s “Pearl” to Lush’s “Sweetness and Light”.

For some reason, towards the close of the first quarter of the decade the whole movement became something of an embarrassment and the subject of much ridicule, from snippy comments in the NME to ‘hilarious’ sketches from the likes of Rob Newman. One band though became the whipping boy for the movement, receiving far more than their fair share of abuse. Slowdive, declared Manic Street Preachers, was a band they hated more than Hitler, a frankly ludicrous statement that should cause even insanely stupid people to goggle in disbelief.

Lets remember that the band being insulted here consisted at the time of a bunch of people barely into their twenties, who unless I missed it (I was pretty young and naïve myself at the time) had not invaded any countries, formed a fascist army or committed any mass genocides. They just made great records, but for some reason it became fashionable to deny this. Even as I thunder headlong into my late thirties my thin skin causes me to lumber into a slough of depression if someone leaves a sarky comment on a review I’ve written (so please be gentle on me). I have huge admiration then that not only did Slowdive manage to brush off all this abuse, but continued in the midst of it to write such fantastic songs, as evidenced here on this two disc collection.

This anthology cobbles together tracks from a variety of sources, from the three albums they released on Creation and also a number of EP’s. After forming in Reading in 1989, their first EP was in fact their original demos, and two of those songs are here, opening track ‘Slowdive’ lesson one in shoegaze with its noisy cascades of guitar and ‘Avalyn 1’ lesson two, in its dreamy, shimmering landscapes. Most of these early songs were collected together for the 1992 compilation Blue Day, but it is nice to see the inclusion of the Syd Barrett cover ‘Golden Hair’ which was omitted from that release.

The strongest tracks from their debut are also here, particularly the gorgeous ‘Erik’s Song’. It is a calming, mournful instrumental, every bit the equal of Kid A’s ‘Treefingers’, soft swathes of guitar with an inner ear rumble of water and nature. The stately ‘Celia’s Dream’ is sadly missing, but thankfully they have included ‘Primal’, the album closer. The years have stripped it of some of its power, and it sounds rather primitive now, but the extended outro remains a magical blend of cello, layered guitars and Rachel Goswell’s reverbed vocals.

Just For A Day’s biggest problem was another album released at a similar time, Loveless receiving all the press and adoration. The latter clearly is the better album, but there is still much to explore in Slowdive’s debut. However, it was on album number two that they really found their feet, despite the abuse thrown their way. Souvlaki starts very much like its predecessor, opening tracks ‘Alison’ and ‘Machine Gun’ very much in the shoegaze style. However, the collaboration with admirer Brian Eno takes their music to a new place, ‘Sing’ burbling with electronics and distant drums. The real treat though is ‘Souvlaki Space Station’, echoing guitars and a trippy, dublike bass building upwards and upwards to a backdrop of incomprehensible yet utterly captivating lyrics.

For some baffling reason though, the best song from Souvlaki, and in my mind the best song of their career, has been omitted. ‘When The Sun Hits’ is nearly five minutes of pure heaven, a nearly perfect song elevated to greatness by chiming choral guitars and a deep, soothing rhythmic mix of bass and drum. It ends so quickly, on Goswell and Halstead’s shared vocal, your mind wishing it to continue as it slowly fades. Its absence makes this release a poorer collection, particularly with the overrated ‘Dagger’ ending this part of their story.

For their third and final album, Slowdive changed tack. There were tensions within the band and with Creation, and few can blame them for wishing to move away from all they were criticized for being. Pygmalion was mostly ignored on its release, but is a fine collection of textural, sometimes electronic songs, often with minimal lyrics. The highlight is ‘Blue Skied An’ Clear’, smooth and haunting with the little instrumentation adding to its dreamlike quality.

Slowdive were dropped within weeks of the release of their final album. Halstead and Goswell went on to found the equally excellent Mojave 3, signing to 4AD, Halstead releasing a solo album Oh! Mighty Engine in 2008. Both in interviews seem content with their lot, and show no grudges for what they had to deal with at the time. Slowdive, in my mind, are worthy of reappraisal. Whilst the sound does now sound a little dated these are songs of innocence and power, full of emotion, and for many reasons deserve to be remembered.

Far from simply cashing in on their recent success, Philadelphia’s A Sunny Day In Glasgow keep the party that started with last year’s sublime Ashes Grammar going on their equally dynamic new EP Nitetime Rainbows. Featuring an updated mix of ‘Nitetime Rainbows’ as well as three new songs and a plethora of diverse remixes of the title track, this ebullient short-player is a brief burst of springtime and uplifting ambiance that not only will tide listeners over until the bands next release, but hopefully will cause people to rediscover the genius of Ashes Grammar. ASDIG have had a relatively tumultuous past, with many different incarnations of the ever-evolving lineup passing through over the years while always being guided by the steady influence of mastermind Ben Daniels, and Rainbows seems to be a celebration of the natural camaraderie of their current roster. The songs reflect that synergy as well, maintaining a diaphanous, danceable essence while also remaining sonically adventurous and captivating.

‘Nitetime Rainbows’ was clearly a standout on Grammar, and the fresh mix found at the start of the EP brings a clearer focus to the hypnotic churn of the track, parting the clouds as it were and allowing the modern palette of sonic colours to reveal themselves. It’s a relentlessly sanguine song that bursts with vivacity, and is well served by getting its own album along with the remix treatment, for there are plenty of layers to either add to or peel away, unveiling rosier depths that grow more vivid the deeper their explored. ‘Daytime Rainbows,’ the first of the new songs, is a perfect compliment to the animated title track, building on that song’s cheerfulness by adding richer vocals and a dense wall of sound that echoes the Spector girl-groups of the Sixties while also modernizing those ideals. It’s a gloriously brief track that flows seamlessly into the propulsive ‘So Bloody, So Tight,’ the best of the new tracks, which features spiraling keyboards and cascading vocals over an entrancingly bold beat.

‘Piano Lessons’ plays off Daniels’ simple plunks at the keys, and builds that into a enthralling six-minute sprawl that winds up sounding more like a sketch than a completed song, but still has enough inventive flourishes to maintain interest throughout. The following remixes build on the positive nature of the title track, with Athens, Georgia’s the Buddy System, Benoît Pioulard and Anticipate label-head Ezekiel Honig all casting different tones and atmosphere over the same ‘Rainbow.’ The Buddy System remix is the most effective of the bunch, really stretching the melody out and giving the transfixing, looped vocals plenty of room to breathe, while also maintaining the shimmering nature of the original. Pioulard deconstructs the song immensely in his ‘acid wash edit,’ bringing some discord and abrasiveness to a song that didn’t need any to begin with, while Honig’s mix closes out the brief EP in a dreamy, sparse fashion that doesn’t really shed any new light on the original, just makes you appreciate how great it sounds when all of these elements come together.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow are clearly doing a lot of things right with their sound these days, crafting refreshing, rousing material that never gets dragged down by convention or convenience. Their songs float effortlessly but still have a pulsing soul, somehow managing to keep their songs breezy while still being deeply affecting. There is a colorful, dynamic atmosphere in all of ASDIG’s music, and this EP shows that we are all in for a long stretch of bright days as long as the band keeps churning out magnetically auspicious material like this.

Listening to a Sennen album is a bit like discovering an item of clothing in your wardrobe that you used to wear a lot in the early 1990’s. Sure, you don’t mind throwing it on to sit around the house, but you wouldn’t particularly want to be seen out in public in it. There is something “out of context” about them, like Marty McFly’s puffer vest in a 1950’s diner, or discovering that you can still buy Loaded magazine.

They firmly belong to a bygone age, with track ‘A Little High’ undulating like a forgotten Ride b-side, ‘SOS’ The Family Cat with far less interesting vocals. It’s Ok, but all it really makes you want to do is drag out your record collection and actually listen to Ride b-sides and Family Cat albums.

Title track ‘Age of Denial’ is a good case in point, chipping in with a feedback and acoustic combo marching along to deadened drums, rising and falling with a gloopy, thick production. There is a distinct lack of clarity to the music, which sometimes gets lost with a thickness like treacle, a soupy clag of noise sticking to your speakers.

There is some good stuff here, in particular the final three songs, ‘Sennen’s Day Out’ leading the way with a subtle instrumental. ‘Broken Promise’ builds to a meaty crescendo before the jaunty ‘Out of Our Depth’. Tracks like ‘Sleep Heavy Tonight’ though are just tedious at times, it’s elongated ending slow and drawn out. Its also all very similar to their last album, Where The Lights Get In, showing that this band is obviously more than happy to stay stuck firmly in a 20 year timewarp.

Liars’ latest full-length opens somewhat portentously. ‘Scissor’ is a simmering opener, broiling with visceral inevitability; a fitting announcement of their return to the fray. But, does the rest of Sisterworld continue Liars proud tradition of innovation within their own parameters?

The answer, predictably isn’t simple. Liars’ latest is less pointedly abrasive in many ways than their previous efforts, but still manages to differentiate itself. Stylistically it’s closest to 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead but feels sparser, more languorous, more knowing.

By the time you have recovered from ‘Scissor’, you’ll be pretty much dropped straight into third track ‘Here Comes All The People’. It begins with a single, surf-gone-bad guitar line before breaking into whispers, a haunting melody and ponderous, menacing beats. ‘Drip’ continues this theme but it’s not until the following ‘Scarecrows On A Killer Slant’ that we see the true payoff – a belligerent, crazed, compelling slab of distorted noise.

These dynamics may not surprise Liars familiars but it’s a tight formula, and one overlaid this time around with a new sense of focus. Also novel is the direction latter tracks such as ‘Goodnight, Everything’, ‘Too Much, Too Much’ take, as though Liars are trying their hand at shoegaze. The former opens with melodic strings and refrains from introducing the beats for a good minute fifty, and then softly. The latter track especially shores up Angus’ ambling chants with an almost twinkling guitar line, a cello motif and a gentle swirl of synths to close out the album. In the context of the album it’s a totally effective tonal shift.

Liars succeed in once again bridging the gap between their previous sound and a subtle new direction, this time perhaps with more of a gleam in their eye than a wry smile. It’s not the consummate Liars record, but then Liars have always thrived on being underrated and on the periphery, free to grinding along new tracks without ever jumping the shark. This is one of those records that seems especially important in the context of the band’s history, but nevertheless stands up to scrutiny on its own merits.

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/liars/id39695625?uo=4" title="Liars" text="iTunes"]

Depending on whom you ask and/or where you are in the world, shoegaze is either in a semi-comatose holding pattern or simply dead. Even with the recent reunions of torch-bearers My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver, the scene just isn’t as lively as it was twenty years ago. This reality, it seems, hasn’t stopped Danish quartet Dorias Baracca from putting out Handsome Melting Point EP, one of the most stunning shoegaze releases in the genre’s short history.

These four teenagers (!) essentially do one thing throughout Point but, like any worthwhile group of shoegazers, they do it exceptionally well. The shimmering guitar tone, the hallmark of shoegaze, is painted all over the songwriting here. That said, the band doesn’t try to be a clone of MBV, Slowdive or Swervedriver. Instead, DB smartly takes elements from the ‘big three’ and mashes them together into one, giant cacophony of (beautiful) noise. The band borrows the cynical nature of Swervedriver, the modern brit-pop-meets-indie-rock flavor of Slowdive and the lush, wall-of-guitar sonics of MBV.

Whether intentional or not, the eleven-minute ‘Birthday’ is a microcosm of the EP, as well as its centerpiece. As the focus of Point, the sprawling character of the song represents all three aforementioned components of the band: One guitar swirls the melody around vocalist/guitarist Buster (judging by the band’s MySpace page, the members are on a first name-only basis, like Cher and Madonna) in an apparent attempt to consume his haunting voice as he concludes, “Happy birthday?/ Not for me,” while the other blankets the entire song with multi-tracked white wash. Sure, the song doesn’t have to be eleven minutes. Hell, none of the four songs here have to be as long as they are. But that’s not the point. ‘Birthday’ sounds the way it does and lasts as long as it does because the music is an extension of the emotions being conveyed. The song drones on and on because DB wants you to feel the sadness and angst experienced when the band wrote and recorded it.

As anxiety-ridden and deliberately protracted the songwriting is, Dorias Baracca’s Handsome Melting Point EP is one of the most promising releases in years. Considering the fact that this foursome consists of minors, it’s odd to realize the scene these guys so worship was already past its prime before they were born. Weighing this fact, though, one must also realize that DB has what could be a long-lasting and perhaps even an influential career in ‘nu-gaze’ ahead of it. Let’s just hope these guys don’t end up making an album that (nearly) bankrupts their label and then completely lose their shit.

Buy the EP on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-only-touch/id344210648?uo=4" title="Dorias_Baracca-Handsome_Melting_Point_-_EP_(Album)" text="iTunes"] | Rhythm Online

So they may not be everyone’s favourite knob twizzlers, but Tempelhof are a relatively undiscovered gem of musical talent. They have not yet hit the mainstream and given the nature of their music they are unlikely to be heard on the Top 40; yet their experimental electronica is fused with just the right amount of shoegaze to make their music all the more accessible. The edge is taken off the concise computer generated percussion of Aphex Twin that they weave through their tracks by the inclusion of a myriad of instruments, some faraway vocals and the intensity reverberating guitars.

Their new release boasts a title that A Silver Mt. Zion would be proud of, and sets the precedent for the entire piece; if you call your album We Were Not There For The Beginning, We Won’t Be There For The End, you’re going to have to make it pretty epic. They manage to combine the intensity of Sigur Ros, the lulling rhythms The Jesus and the Mary Chain and some Editor-esque vocals.

Though the album starts a little weakly, it soon picks up the pace and gathers an almost oppressive momentum as it snowballs towards the ambitious last song which bears the same name as the album. Their music is layered with a myriad of influences and instruments that create an essentially seamless album that engulfs you in a conflicting clash of noise that somehow works together.

Whilst each song on the album has a right to praise, those of note are; the beautiful ‘Song For Lily’, which incorporates much needed faraway vocals to ground the music; ‘Alice’, which laces sparse piano melodies over the gentle lyrics reminiscent of The Smiths ‘Asleep’; and ‘Enjoy Neukölln’, an uplifting mesh of sounds that demands your attention with vigour.

But, good as they are, it seems that all of these songs are merely a prelude to the epic ‘We Were Not There From The Beginning, We Won’t Be There For The End’, which begins with a loaded mesh of guitar and piano interspersed with an electronic melody that is not unlike the more emotional Cure singles, and slowly builds to an excruciating crescendo of noise and layered instruments.

Whilst Tempelhof may not be the obvious choice for those who are adverse to a bit of ambient electronica, their hazy shoegaze/experimental hybridity means that they are well worth the effort of a listen. The habitual sporadic glitches that often make electronica a little oppressive are muted by guitars and faraway vocals, making it less intrusive. In short, Tempelhof have created a hazy mess of sound to immerse yourself in completely, and have done it rather well.

Buy the album on Amazon | Rhythm Online

Norwich band Sennen, currently in the studio recording their third album, offer this six track EP presumably as a stopgap until the full length’s release.  And, indeed, there is a bit of a sense of “will this do?” pervading the enterprise.

In the EP’s 50:50 split between instrumental and vocal tracks, the former, on the whole, come off better than the latter.  Opening track ‘In’ in particular – twinkly, repetitive, interspersed with a solemn strain of violin – evokes the softer, warmer end of the shoegaze/post-rock spectrum, and leads nicely into the first (and best) vocal track ‘Destroy Us’ which, too, is fairly amiable.  A sense of anti-climax, though, is already emerging, perhaps due to the, frankly, ordinary (lacklustre, nondescript) vocal which fails to elevate those tracks on which it appears.  A so-so take on New Order’s ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ just about does enough to merit its inclusion, with a more euphoric yet organic feel than the original, while ‘Figurine’ is merely wishy-washy.

‘The Distance from A – B’, meanwhile, is one of those instrumental tracks that risks being filed under “background music”. Slow-paced and mellow, it doesn’t really build or develop in the way that one would expect (and hope) of this kind of track, a slight speeding-up and getting-louder towards the end not really compensating for the lack of any other marked light and shade.  The last track ‘Out’ is better, with a loud shimmer and chime and a lively rhythm section propelling things along. It is a shame that the crescendo, all dissonance and shredding, arrives quite so late in the day – almost at the track’s (and the EP’s) very end.

Overall then a bit of a disappointment.  After the rave reviews for their previous album Where The Light Gets In one would have expected something that made more of an impression. This, though, whilst admittedly pretty, and gentle on the ears, is nonetheless a fairly insipid overall kind of a listen.

Buy the EP on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/destroy-us/id338350779?uo=4" title="Sennen-Destroy_Us_(Album)" text="iTunes"]

I’m a sucker for shoegaze, no matter how basic, it can be I never fail to be impressed by it, or like it arbitrarily. There’s an element of wizardry, and wonder to it that causes me to lose my normally rational, and discerning tastes and fall into a pile, sighing “ooo, nice sounds!”. On his first album Maps, aka James Chapman, proved he could make those nice sounds, while managing to at least moderately deviate from the rudimentary shoegaze template. It was druggy, ethereal and dream like; all words usually associated with the description of good shoe-gaze.

On Turning the Mind, Chapman seems to have decided to take a slightly different direction. Taking more influence from the dance floor, effects laden guitars have been replaced by synthesisers, and there’s a brief cameo for clubland-esque shouting. During the opening song and title track, ‘Turning the Mind’, the future seems bright for James. Synthesisers swirl over a basic drum machine beat, while James’s voice lightly floats over the top. Single, and dancey statement ‘I Dream Of Crystal’ is a strong enough demonstration of Maps’s new direction. Lyrics about drugs and stuff, a big drum sound and a strong synthesiser line combine to make a perfectly acceptable song. Then for the next 7 or so songs Turning the Mind becomes boring and average. There’s the odd good idea, but Turning the Mind on the whole lacks the kind of inspiration that good music of it’s type requires. It does very little special or different to the norm, and when it tries to it fails. ‘Love will Come’ with its shouts of “Ko-ko-ko” is genuinely a bad song, and it’s disappointing to see stuff of it’s low, uninspiring quality contained within an occasionally good album.

There’s a brief resurgence of good material towards the end of the album, ‘Chameleon’ and ‘Die Happy, Die Smiling’ preventing the album from being genuinely bad. Despite James Chapmans ideas occasionally coming off and succeeding, the soggy middle of Turning the Mind is testament to the fact that Maps’s new direction is not working as well as their first.

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Epic stuff this. Wolvves, the debut long-ish player from eaststrikewest, kicks off with a shoegazey instrumental (‘God Can’t Take His Eyes Off Me’) that builds into a dramatic wall of sound reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky, or 65 Days of Static: three minutes of massive building guitar and string noise.

The first minute of second track ‘Stumble’ seems to be going the same way, until one minute in the vocals arrive. Singer Tom Clark has a soaring voice that manages to climb higher than the musical crescendos it does battle with, which is quite a feat. Again layers of guitars, keys and strings ebb and flow: it’s like Thom Yorke at full welly singing over an orchestra battling Mogwai.

‘Welcoming The Ghost’ tones down the mayhem but ramps up the gothy shoegazing. It drips with chiller atmosphere, like the classic slowies from early Depeche Mode albums such as ‘A Broken Frame’. It builds and teases for more than five minutes to a crashing crescendo before filler ‘Chu!’ lightens the mood and gives your emotions a mental interlude.

Another six-minute epic (‘The Architect’) follows the same vein as earlier, before ‘Every Word’ and ‘Whisper’ does, well, more of the same. ‘Electricity’ starts out slow and does top quality shoegazing by numbers (that’s no insult) for another five minutes plus. It may well be the pick of the bunch though.

‘From Here You Can See Everything’ is short, empty, atmospheric and very probably a song or two too late, as things had become a little stodgy for me by then. Wolvves is compelling debut, with some outstanding tracks, but for me the best moments are just a little too samey to make this a classic.

eaststrikewest on Myspace

I should put my hands up early on and admit that I was a big fan of the whole shoegazing thing first time around. I remembering seeing Ride in a Camden pub back room so packed that sweat was dripping from the ceiling. That was bedroom indie at its finest.

But Slowdive were a favourite of mine back in the early/mid-nineties too, and its fair to say A Sunny Day in Glasgow have probably got a few of their albums in their collection too. Despite the fact bands have been sounding like this ever since, the current mini revival in popularity of shoegazey stuff has seen a few of these pretenders to the old throne gaining a bit of media attention; and in the case of Philadelphia’s A Sunny Day in Glasgow, rightly so.

Ashes Grammar is the band’s second album, following 2007’s critically acclaimed Scribble Mural Comic Journal. Describing themselves as “dreamy pop music”, the album consists of 22 tracks ranging from 10-second skits to six minute epics, but the whole thing flows beautifully – playing it on any digital medium that puts its own little breaks between tracks will soon drive you nuts.

Otherworldly and playful yet sometimes surprisingly intense, Ashes Grammar moves seamlessly from jangly and joyous celebrations to busy instrumentals or quiet interludes. The female vocal harmonies are beautifully ethereal, the musical arrangements slick and imaginative. Soundscapes give way to processed beats, which in turn lead to a slowly building wall of sound, which all echoes with a suitably gothic resonance.

Apparently this album started out as a smaller amount of longer songs and I can’t help wishing it had stayed that way. As each twee indie pop moment ebbs and flows with varying degrees of electronic jiggery pokery embellishing it in the background, it just becomes something that’s on in the background rather than a collection of fully realised songs. Not much of a criticism, but I’d have loved this more as, say, 8 fully realised and independent pieces of music.

I really like Ashes Grammar, and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone liking their shoegaze dream pop lavishly embellished with sweetly sung vocals and layered electronica. But condensed to a comprehendible amount of tracks and with a couple of much bigger, more powerful moments for variety (Slowdive’s ‘Catch The Breeze’ or ‘Primal’ would be a good place to start), this could’ve been a classic.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow on MySpace

The name Engineers conjures up a fair few images. A scattering of muscle bound, oil splattered workers in dungarees eating a pies on top of a partly constructed skyscraper would be one. Fred Dibnah eating a pie would be another.

Such pie eating imagery couldn’t be further from your mind the minute you hit play. Girders, spanners and huge pistons be damned, this is an album that picks you up gently and soon has you moving through the clouds like some kind of sonically powered yogic flyer. From the first few bars of the Harmonium sampling ‘Clean Coloured Wine’ this is an exercise in naturally powered exploration of the ether. This mix of Krautrock and Shoegaze is about as perfect as it gets, and within seconds you’re drifting in a cloud of ambience that doesn’t let up until the album comes to an end.

To separate this album into songs is frankly a fruitless task. There may be lyrical themes that run throughout, but you’ll be too tied up in Simon Phipp’s voice to care what he’s actually singing about. His apathetic drone is similar to that of Kevin Shields’ dreamy delivery in that no matter how much he sounds like he doesn’t care; everything is simply dripping in emotion. The cleverly layered vocals drift across every track providing yet another level of instrumentation, and to get lost in the whirl of drone and elation is a wondrous experience. Engineers create songs that you’d expect to hear from angels puffing away on their fag break.

The album kicks off with a glorious double punch and doesn’t let up from there. ‘Sometimes I Realise’ chugs brilliantly; an insurgent bass line propels Phipps towards a meaty chorus that’s a cross between the rock world and the hymnal. Glorious is almost an adequate adjective to describe it although it doesn’t quite do it justice.

A slight dip follows with ‘International Dirge’, which inexplicably cribs a vocal melody from an old Foo Fighters ballad. From here on though Engineers really can’t be faulted.

Title track ‘Three Fact Fader’ is a beautiful mix of seething synths, electro bass lines and shimmering guitars. Like the moment the sun hits the sea at the end of the day, it’s impossible not to be taken in by the sheer scale of the spectacle before you.

‘Emergency Room’ is initially far more erratic than much of Three Fact Fader, but soon settles down into a frantic Velvet Underground type drone. The guitars are basic but steeped with an uncomfortable treble sound that gives away the worry and uncertainty that lies at the heart of the song. The string quartet that cuts through towards the end of the song serves to heighten the drama of a song that was written around the emotions experienced when a loved one is rushed to hospital.

Just when you think Engineers have reached the peak of their talents they go and push the envelope even further. If your knees don’t go weak when ‘The Fear Has Gone’ finally explodes in a haze of guitars and guttural string cascades then you clearly have no soul. If Wagner was playing stadiums, he’d undoubtedly have a better lightshow than Bon Jovi, and he’d probably encore with this – it is simply astounding.

Three Fact Fader is a massively assured record from a band who clearly know exactly what they want and how to achieve it. This could be one of the best records you’ll hear this year.
85%

Engineers on MySpace

Quite an interval seems to have passed between this and The Longcut’s terrific debut – 2006’s A Call And Response: three years more or less to the month, in fact.  The traditional writer’s resorts of Wikipedia and the band’s own web site offer no particular clues as to why there was such a gap (lineup changes? artistic differences? label disputes?), but hey, who cares.  Ultimately the only thing at issue here is the music: have they produced an album on a par with the last one, or have the ensuing years been less than kind to the band’s dynamic and creativity?

I am pleased to report that The Longcut of 2009 doesn’t disappoint.  Still present and correct is the fascinatingly, sometimes eerily, detached and alienated vocal, particularly prevalent on ‘Out At The Roots’, ‘Something Inside’ and ‘Evil Dance’, which combines with taut delivery and a harsh line in lyrical put-down particularly on ‘Tell You So’, featuring enjoyably devastating declarations like “I’m not making it up to you / So stop laying your guilt on me / If I loved you I’d tell you so”.  An undertone of menace or threat is also palpable in places, such as the brilliant, driving ‘Evil Dance’, all fear of being lost and feeling “scared as hell”, like finding yourself at an insalubrious club, on the wrong night, in the wrong town, on the wrong drugs.

What feels new, though, is the emphasis on sentiment and emotion – often touching and sounding like it is based on authentic events and relationships.  A softer side of the band peeks through the dystopian angst on tracks like ‘Open Hearts’ (“I won’t forget that look you gave me / When you held me in your arms / And told me that you wanted more”), ‘Mary Bloody Sunshine’, ‘Repeated’ (“Hey beautiful, take my hand”), and stand-out track and album closer ‘The Last Ones Here’.  This is reflected in a much softer vocal quality too, with the band occasionally morphing from PiL to Teenage Fanclub, say within a single track (‘Tell You So’, or ‘The Last Ones Here’).

Musically the band flit between a motorik kind of kraut-electro as exhibited best on ‘Something Inside’ and ‘Evil Dance’, taut post-punk (manifested in the sense of danger and guitar sounds on tracks like ‘Out At The Roots’) and moments of shimmering shoegaze (‘At Any Time’, ‘Mary Bloody Sunshine’) and post-rock (‘You Can Always Have More’, ‘Boom’).  By failing to place themselves totally in any one camp, genre-wise, they neatly sidestep predictability and endow each track with pleasing twists and turns that nevertheless sound organic and non-contrived.

The best tracks here, I think, are the aforementioned ‘The Last Ones Here’, which wins points for combining most of the best qualities to be found on the album; ‘Something Inside’, for its speedy Krautrock feel, and the excellent lyric “I don’t feel your caffeine rush / And my nicotine high is gone”; and ‘Evil Dance’ for just being, well, evil, yet danceable.  The album in its entirety, though, is undoubtedly a success, and will perhaps prove even more of a success – because of its more likeable and emotional content that the listener is able to relate to – than its predecessor.
81%

The Longcut on Myspace

Bands stealing older bands styles doesn’t matter when the stealing is done so well. Poseurs copy, the real deal steals. Sad Day For Puppets blah blah blah. Blah. Which is to say they steal a bunch of older styles mash ‘em together and come up with Unknown Colors, except, as I’ve just been saying, these colours are known. They are catchy pop couched in distorted guitar and thick bass, Dinosaur Jr., The Posies, bands that the Labrador label’s bands love, dream pop, C86. They juggle all those balls, and then let them drop. Because, look there, they make pretty patterns and colours when they are all bouncing together in a group like that. This 5 piece are from Sweden. Sweden. Sweden. Sweden. I mean, where else? Sweden.

Anna Ekland manages to sing with both dusky seductiveness and childish happiness. I’m not quite sure how that’s possible, and to be honest it makes me feel a little uncomfortable when I think about it too hard. But anyway, her and the rest of the band (guitarists Martin Källholm and Marcus Sandgren, bassist Alex Svenson-Metes and drummer Micael Back) imbue this bag of swag with their own distinct mark. There’s an roominess to the way Ekland’s vocals are recorded, there’s a white-hot searing when a guitar is let loose for a solo (check out ‘Marble Gods’), and a giddiness to the way the bass is played (‘Little Light’ sounds like some baggy-era thing, Mock Turtles like). So, there’s a bunch of stolen styles, an edge of their own identity too, and the last thing to note is the high quality of the songs. Sweden.

‘Little Light’ is a good example as any of the coherent melodies to be found here. After a brief bit of twinkly guitar it kicks off with a tasty drum fill and the bass and guitars come in with a happy-time kick to the groin. There’s a swing and surprising languor in the melody and Ekland’s vocal, but always propelled by an awesomely simple riff and bouncy bassline. Touches like chimes and keyboard around the edges only serve to make that grin plastered to your face ache all the harder. This form of song can be slightly rockier (‘Marble Gods’), or slightly poppier (‘Shiny Teeth And Sharpened Claws’), but always at the same level of quality. Sweden.

And Odin it’s not the only type of song on the album, because as good and great as those songs are, if you wang ‘em in next to similar ones then it can drag an album down. ‘Blue Skies’, ‘Mother’s Tears’ and ‘My Twin Star’ are atmospheric and melancholy, ‘Lay Your Burden On Me’, ‘All The Songs’ and ‘When The Morning Comes’ are slower sentimental songs. These six serve to keep your interest, offering up pleasing variations and detours, while there’s always ‘Last Night’ and ‘Romans’ to shivvy it along. Then one final change with ‘Withering Petals And Dust’, which is what I imagine The Cowboy Junkies sound like, though I might be way off there. Sweden.

It’s a fun album, I mean what do you want from me here? I’ve explained how it sounds. Weak points? Hmmm… if you’re not actively listening to it, it can be easy to think there are some duds in there, the slower songs might feel like they are in the way if you’re just looking for some power pop. But that’s not the album’s fault, that’s yours you arsehole. Sweden.
75%

Sad Day For Puppets on MySpace

Deerhunter

As the rain comes down on the last of the Bank Holiday stragglers on Brighton seafront, in an old ballroom under the cliffs a transformation is going on on the stage. On one side a victorian lamppost shines, while the amplifier on the other side sports a rather fetching owl. As smoke billows and blue lights flood the stage, it feels like the audience is being transported to some far flung corner of Narnia. Somewhere in that corner lie Esben and the Witch. If School of Seven Bells can be said to be ‘dream-pop’, then Esben and The Witch inhabit the opposite realm-‘nightmare pop’ if you will. Sinister and brooding, they harness dark electronics, shoegaze guitars, military drums and haunting vocals that Beth Gibbons would be proud of. For an unsigned band to sound this accomplished is quite some achievement, and they have already built up quite a following in their hometown, particularly those who remember the earliest Bat for Lashes shows. Pick up a copy of their self released 33 EP while you can.

Esben and The Witch

Sian Alice Group have a tough act to follow and although they take up the gauntlet bravely they don’t quite manage to surpass what has gone before. Working on repetitive grooves and with a clear debt to early shoegaze and, specifically Jason Peirce, their blissed out sounds begin to wash over the audience rather than engage them. Top marks for frontwoman, er, Sian Alice Ahern’s triangle work though.

Sian Alice Group

Deerhunter have somewhat of a rawkus live reputation, with frontman Bradford Cox frequently appearing on stage in sundresses or with his face covered in fake blood. Then there’s the legend that during a particularly out there New York state show he received ‘oral pleasure’ mid show. Tonight marks the end of their UK tour, so pretty much anything could happen. As the smoke machines go into overdrive the tension in the packed room is palpable-the crowd have waited a long time for this (this show is re-arranged after a cancelation earlier in the year.) A huge cheer erupts as Cox and his cohorts take the stage and begin their noise-pop onslaught. Reverb builds upon reverb, volume upon volume, guitars swoon and dive over the propulsive rhythm section, driving ever forward. Cox’s vocals sway in and out of the mix, barely there. But then that’s not the point. This is a headlong rush in to a hazy wall of sound. To the fans, this is the dawning of a weird era. Strobes flash, lights change colour and the band plow ever onwards. After a while however, it all begins to merge in to one long tripped out lightshow, like a fireworks show with free tinnitus for every viewer. Returning for an encore Cox apologizes for not talking to the audience more during the show, clearly having been lost ‘in the moment’. He then announces that, as this is the last date of the tour Sian Alice Group will join them onstage to jam. This doesn’t bode well. What follows is a 15 minute improv version of “I Wanna be Your Dog”….replete with squawking trumpets, triangle and white noise bursts. It’s self indulgence of the worst kind, and it seems to spark a mass movement towards the exit before the three chord trick gets bashed out for the final time. As I head for the exit a lone voice shouts “Way to ruin the show, Bradford”.

Deerhunter

Deerhunter

Sian Alice Group

Sian Alice Group

Esben And The Witch

Trust this reviewer when you’re told that coming from Oxford makes you more aware of post-rock than an average citizen. Technically challenging, prone to self-indulgence and a certain po-faced following the best examples of the genre always manage to throw aside such tags – think Radiohead or Sigur Ros, even Elbow have their roots in the moody ambience and complex rhythms that are to be found on the second full length release by Jeniferever – Spring Tides. However unlike their fellow Scandinavians who find themselves packing out vast spaces such as Alexandra Palace, the Swedish quartet find themselves still very much a cult concern although this record certainly shows signs that they’re more than capable of shrugging off the negative connotations and reaching a wider audience.

The recent reappraisal of shoe-gaze should also do Jeniferever no harm as the whole of Spring Tides is dominated by echoing layers of introspective guitar, one moment spartan, the next toppling over Kristofer Jönson’s voice like icy waves.

This is obviously music that takes itself very seriously and has every right to, but things thankfully never get too “mathy” – here guitars are used to twist, turn and delight rather than to impress or baffle. There is only the odd slip into slightly dodgy terrain; the vocals on the opening ‘Green Meadow Island’ (wasn’t that a level in some Mega Drive game?) toe a thin line between emotive and over-wrought but there is an empathy in the strings that close the track that re-affirm the passion of the vocals and bookend the track perfectly.

‘Concrete and Glass’ is another rhythmically awkward number but the semi-militaristic snare work is eased by an astonishingly pretty sweep of strings and rousing chorus that manage to rise out of the swamp of guitar noise to a rousing group sing-along of “Can’t go back/take a different turn”. Despite every new band since Arcade Fire feeling obliged to all join in vocally at some point in their live show when it’s done well there’s something about hearing large numbers of people singing together than still manages to resonate and really hit a place that not much else can. The half spoken vocals of ‘Ox-Eye’ are also in danger of drifting into the realms of cheese but are again rescued by the power of the music.

Much better is ‘St.Gallen’ but then again it’s much better than most songs. After a mournful piano intro a recurring guitar motif is introduced, dropped and then slotted back in like the final revelatory piece of a jigsaw. As if on cue Jönson’ raises his game accordingly, there is simultaneous menace and resignation in the delivery of simple lines such as “if you bring words/ I’ll bring pen and paper” and the resultant mood is reminiscent of ‘Rainbow’ from Talk Talk’s outstanding Spirit Of Eden.

It may be called Spring Tides but this is epic, widescreen and wintery music that is not to be dipped in and out of, there are some fantastic moments; ‘Nanjigala’ is a nine minutes and fully warrants it, but the overriding feeling is that after a slight dip in quality in the latter half of the album the best is yet to come.
76%

Jeniferever on MySpace

Five years ago on the 22nd of April 2004 Club AC30 emerged. A club night which commemorates a style of music that had its first high peak in the early 90s: shoegaze.

Tonight, the celebrate their 5th birthday with their 120th show at Wilmington Arms in Clerkenwell, London. Headlining will be AC30 regulars Exit Calm, supported by I Concur.

Accompanying this event is the release of the third and final volume of the Club AC30
compilations: Never Lose That Feeling. Released on Monday it features the following tracks:

01. Popface – Dreams Burn Down (Ride)
02. The Daysleepers – She Calls (Slowdive)
03. LKWRM – Throwing Back The Apple (Pale Saints)
04. Cosmicdust – To Here Knows When (MBV)
05. Pia Fraus – Strawberry Wine (MBV)
06. Heaviness – For Ex-Lovers (BlackTambourine)
07. The Voices – Violence (Telescopes)
08. Wry – Some Candy Talking (JAMC)
09. Spotlight Kid – Sometimes Always (JAMC)
10. The Flowers Of Hell – Darklands (JAMC)
11. Highspire – Dagger (Slowdive)
12. Rumskib – Shine (Slowdive)
13. Mole Harness, Chipper and S J Esau – In A Different Place (Ride)
14. Ulrich Schnauss – Love Forever (Chapterhouse)
15. Hearts Of Black Science – 40 Days (Slowdive)
16. Jatun – Never Lose That Feeling (Swervedriver)

Mr Sonic Cathedral - Nat Cramp

As a companion piece to our recent review of the new compilation from Sonic Cathedral records Cathedral Classics Vol. 1 we asked label boss Nat Cramp to create a mix exclusively for TLOBF. Obviously, a man with as much love for music as Nat jumped at the chance and a week later he delivered a single mp3, all flawlessly mixed with some of the most serene, ambient shoegaze you are ever likely to hear.

Think of the 80 minute mix as an added bonus to the Cathedral Classics album currently available to buy here from our favourite record store Pure Groove for a bargain price of £8.

We’ll hand you over to Nat, as he takes you on a brief history of the label and guides you track by track through the mix.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

When I started Sonic Cathedral as a club night to celebrate shoegaze back in 2004, there were lots of records from the ‘classic’ era (roughly 1988-1992) that I was keen to play in public. I also realised that there wasn’t an endless supply of these, as many of the bands were not exactly prolific: My Bloody Valentine famously released just two proper albums and Ride a mere four (and two of them you can pretty much forget about). So, to get around a possible lack of material I added the premise that we would also be celebrating the “influences and inspirations” of the scene, which allowed a lot more flexibility on the decks and, over the four and a half years since, has led to quite an idiosyncratic selection of music being played, taking in everything from bluegrass to dub reggae. This approach has also influenced the releases on the label, which are not just pale retreads of what’s gone before, but more forward facing.

This non-stop mix (hey, I’m not Soulwax, but I’ve tried) is an attempt to reflect of the broad church that is Sonic Cathedral.

mp3:> Sonic Cathedral: ‘Art of Noise Mixtape’
PC: right click and choose “save as…”
MAC: CTRL + click and choose “save link as”

To start we have the instrumental version of Syd Barrett‘s ‘Golden Hair’ (as covered by Slowdive on their 1991 EP Holding Our Breath, more of which later). Obviously, Syd wasn’t a shoegazer, but his whimsical psychedelia and very English qualities were clearly a big influence on the scene (and judging by his liking of stripy T-shirts, not just for his music). Following his death in 2006 Sonic Cathedral hosted a memorable tribute night featuring rare films and bands covering Syd songs.

Seefeel‘s ‘Climactic Phase #3′ is the opening track from their 1993 debut album, Quique. It’s one of the most perfect blends of shoegaze atmospherics and dance dynamics you’ll ever hear. You really should own this record.

Mark Clifford from Seefeel’s remix of the Cocteau Twins‘ ‘Feet Like Fins’ comes next and, despite only taking snippets from the original, it retains all of its oddness and otherwordliness.

Next up is Ulrich Schnauss‘ ‘Gone Forever’, the opening track from the German electronica genius’ landmark album A Strangely Isolated Place. Ulrich is definitely in the ‘inspirations’ category I mentioned above and, as a result of Sonic Cathedral, we have become friends; he did wonderful mixes of the Mark Gardener and Daniel Land & The Modern Painters singles and has played and DJd at Sonic Cathedral more times than I care to remember.

Sandy Denny‘s beautiful ‘Listen, Listen’ clearly isn’t a shoegaze song (despite the added reverb), but like a lot of folk and country music it has a similar melancholic, minor key quality. I know that Ulrich is a big fan of this kind of thing and surely it’s no coincidence that Moose ended up roping in the pedal steel and Slowdive morphed into Mojave 3?

There’s an Ulrich connection to Faith Over Reason‘s beautiful ‘Lullaby (Mother Love)’ too – he bought me the album it’s taken from, Eyes Wide Smile, from a record shop in Norwich when we did the Sonic Cathedral tour together last year. It’s a collection of demos, but they’re very accomplished and there’s a lovely cover of Nick Drake’s ‘Northern Sky’ on there too. Interesting fact: singer Moira Lambert provided the vocals on Saint Etienne’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’.

Next up two Boards Of Canada tracks for the price of one: ‘A Moment Of Clarity’ and ‘Peacock Tail’, both taken from the duo’s last album The Campfire Headphase. Such is their influence and elusiveness they’re almost like an electronica version of My Bloody Valentine, not least because surely a new album’s due by now?

The ambient beauty of Stars Of The Lid‘s ‘The Daughters Of Quiet Minds’ is almost classical in its scope. Just one of many amazing records released by Kranky (Bowery Electric, Labradford, Deerhunter) over the years.

Japancakes‘ version of ‘Sometimes’ comes from their song-for-song cover of Loveless. A lot of people violently hated that record, but I don’t know why; if anything it brought the beauty and simplicity of the My Bloody Valentine original to the surface and made you appreciate it even more. I’m a sucker for pedal steel anyway, but I loved it so much I got two remixes (of ‘Soon’ and ‘Touched’) done and put them out as a single to coincide with the MBV dates last summer.

Along with Hope Sandoval, MBV’s Colm O’Ciosoig features on the Bert Jansch (yes, more folk) track ‘All This Remains’, which would sit nicely on the wonderful Warm Inventions record, Bavarian Fruit Bread, that the two released a few years ago.

The picture and fonts on the cover of Rafael Toral‘s ‘Wave Field’ pays homage to Loveless, but the music is much more minimal – just amp drones that ebb and flow.

‘Ponce De Leon Blues’ is from Beachwood Sparks‘ final EP, Make The Cowboy Robots Cry. They reformed for the Sub Pop anniversary last summer, so hopefully they’ll get around to making a new album soon. I’d say they’re my perfect band, like a shoegazey Flying Burrito Brothers…

…speaking of which, Acetone‘s cover of the Burritos’ ‘Juanita’ is so beautiful it doesn’t even need the words. If you can find a copy of I Guess I Would, the mini-LP this is taken from, do yourself a favour and buy it.

I fell for Miranda Lee Richards‘ original version of ‘Life Boat’ because of the pedal steel again. When I put it out as a single I thought that Neil Halstead would be the perfect person to remix it, but I didn’t anticipate him setting the song adrift on an ocean of feedback and distortion. I’m glad he did though.

Mark Van Hoen was a member of Locust in the early-’90s. He, Mark Clifford from Seefeel and Neil Halstead apparently used to live together – surely a key influence on the sparse, electronic sound of Slowdive’s final album Pygmalion. ‘You And Me Inside’ is from Hoen’s 1998 album Playing With Time.

Engineers were one of the new bands who inspired me to start Sonic Cathedral in the first place. Their second album is – finally! – coming out this July, but ‘Said And Done’ is from their debut, which is one of those albums that will still be talked about as a landmark in 20 years’ time.

More folk next in the form of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott covering Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were A Carpenter’ (also tackled by Engineers on their Folly EP, another essential purchase). Is it just me who thinks that the keyboard drones and tablas on this aren’t a million miles away from the likes of Spacemen 3?

Eat your heart out Bobby Gillespie and Kate Moss – Slowdive did the best ever cover of Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra‘s ‘Some Velvet Morning’. The original’s pretty good too and inspired another Sonic Cathedral tribute night, featuring Dot Allison, The Tamborines and more, following Hazlewood’s death in 2007.

Finally, we end where we began. Syd Barrett‘s original ‘Golden Hair’ mixed into the coda from Slowdive‘s Peel Session cover version recorded in March 1991. The perfect ending…

Tracklisting in full:
Syd Barrett – Golden Hair (Instrumental)
Seefeel – Climactic Phase #3
Cocteau Twins – Feet Like Fins (Mark Clifford Remix)
Ulrich Schnauss – Gone Forever
Sandy Denny – Listen, Listen
Faith Over Reason – Lullaby (Mother Love)
Boards Of Canada – A Moment Of Clarity
Boards Of Canada – Peacock Tail
Stars Of The Lid – The Daughters Of Quiet Minds
Japancakes – Sometimes
Bert Jansch featuring Hope Sandoval – All This Remains
Rafael Torel – Wave Field (Radio Edit)
Beachwood Sparks – Ponce De Leon Blues
Acetone – Juanita
Miranda Lee Richards – Life Boat (Neil Halstead mix)
Mark Van Hoen – You and Me Inside
Engineers – Said and Done
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – If I Were A Carpenter
Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra – Some Velvet Morning
Syd Barrett – Golden Hair
Slowdive – Golden Hair (peel session)

mp3:> Sonic Cathedral: ‘Art of Noise Mixtape’
PC: right click and choose “save as…”
MAC: CTRL + click and choose “save link as”

A Balloon Called Moaning is the debut album from Welsh three-piece The Joy Formidable, recent (and riotous) TLOBF gig headliners, and hotly tipped new young band-on-the-rise.

Lots of elements can very quickly be identified that signpost this as taking the listener into shoegaze territory.  Witness the ear-shredding high guitar scree that features on previous single ‘Cradle’ and – most prominently – the intro to ‘While The Flies’; or the way that the sounds are layered up resulting in a lovely haze of noise on most tracks (acoustic ‘Austere’ being a partial exception).  Production is expertly managed so that individual sounds, instruments and vocals can still be distinguished though: this is a haze, as opposed to a “mush” of sound (these *are* technical terms, reader – I do hope you’re taking notes…).

The principal vocal sitting atop this lovely musical confection is, for the main part, that of the fabulously-named Ritzy Bryan, with backing duties fulfilled by her real-life boyfriend, bassist Rhydian Dafydd (yup: Welsh).  Their voices add a significant dollop of sweetness to the mix, nicely offsetting the other noises, and Bryan’s made me think, in places, of Kim Deal (in particular in ‘The Last Drop’) or Tanya Donnelly.  On a couple of tracks they do a nice shared, or call-and-response type vocal (’9669′, ‘While The Flies’), and these rank amongst the album’s highlights.

Much use is made of “oohs” and “aah”, on nearly every track bar ‘Whirring’, ‘The Last Drop’ and ‘Ostrich’ – hence the “Moaning” in the album title, perhaps? – which leads me, in the absence of very many clearly audible lyrics, to hazard a guess that this is a sexylove themed album.  Certainly ‘While The Flies’ and ’9669′ sounds like romantic ballads, while the breathy fluttery vocals on tracks like ‘Ostrich’ and ‘Austere’ would seem to indicate more erotic intentions.

The band’s playfulness comes through in the interesting ways in which they choose to end tracks.  These endings are either strikingly abrupt (‘Cradle’, While The Flies’, ‘The Last Drop’); or they merge into the beginning of the next track (‘Austere’ to ‘While The Flies’) or they fade out, as if reluctant to end (‘Whirring’, the solemn drum beat at the album’s close for the ending of ‘Ostrich’).

This is, then, a lovely album, that may indeed be short (only eight tracks), but is certainly sweet in a lot of the right places.
78%

The Joy Formidable on Myspace

Shoegaze has been going through something of a renaissance of late. With the return of My Bloody Valentine, and the genre-reinventing success of bands like Deerhunter, M83 and Maps, suddenly the reverb-with-everything sound is rife once more. Stylized bone-pickers like Ariel Pink and John Maus are creating amazing echo drenched alternate universe retro-futurist pop, and Bradford Cox is certainly pushing the envelope with his “nu-gaze” (I know, I know) solo project Atlas Sound. It doesn’t add up to a genuine musical movement, but Crystal Stilts are part of a periodic realignment in the zeitgeist, resulting in a new exploration of a familiar landscape.

But despite all the elaborations and broadening out of their counterparts, Crystal Stilts stick firmly to the straight and narrow. Their backward looking debut album, Alight Of Night, sounds like music beamed directly out of the past.

The vocals are unapologetically doleful, and the sound is full to the point of clutter and enveloping to the point of smothering. Sometimes they sound like The Jesus & Mary Chain with the buzzsaw edge taken away, sometimes like Suicide without the thread of teetering psychosis, sometimes like a high school prom band in a drunk dream, via Joe Meek. Sometimes they sound like Joy Division on a television with a bad signal, white noise overlaid and vocals distant.

Which doesn’t sound all bad, right? And that’s because it’s not. It’s alternately engrossing and alienating – a stylistic win wrapped in a musical fail. Live, they shake off the malaise that chokes Alight Of Night, delivering the songs with laconic effortlessness. But here, on record, it’s turgid, and while it might sound like the past, it sure won’t go down in the history books.
60%

Crystal Stilts on MySpace

Identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza first met Benjamin Curtis when their respective bands (On!Air!Library! and Secret Machines) supported Interpol in New York in 2004. A series of collaborations followed until 2007, when Curtis left his other band to concentrate on School of Seven Bells. The Deheza sisters did the same and all three moved in together to build a home studio and start work on what became Alpinisms.Apparently named after a mythical South American school for pickpockets, the band has certainly been light fingered with its influences. Taking in everything from Harold Budd, My Bloody Valentine and Fuck Buttons to the Cocteau Twins, whose Robin Guthrie provided a remix for early single ‘My Cabal’, the album closer. Yet Alpinisms is really far more than the sum of it’s parts. Vocal and instrumental layer and intertwine, electronics burble and sweep, occasionally pulsing into life before flickering out again before another takes it’s place. There’s even an almost madrigal quality to the blissed out krautpop centrepiece of ‘Sempiternal/ Amaranth’. ‘For Karlaja Mari’ is a dream-pop lullaby, introduced with electro flickers and synths before echoing guitar shreds in the background before repeating the phrase ‘there’s no need for anxiousness’.

While it could easily come across as dry or detached, the Deheza Twins joint vocals provide a warmth which, when coupled with a pop sensibility, moves School of Seven Bells to the next level in the current crop of shoegaze influenced acts. Nowhere is this pop sensibility more ably demonstrated than on ‘Wired For Light’. The Deheza’s harmonizing together over a churning beat and eastern influences which turn in the kind of record Madonna would be making if she still really had her fingers on the pulse of today’s music scene – rather than on an underwear model half her age.

Whilst their oh-so 2009 sound is immediately likeable, Alpinism matures with further listens, and while it occasionally misses the mark (the likes of ‘Prince Charming’ veers slightly too close to Deep Forest territory in places), it isn’t to wild a stretch of the imagination to suggest that it may become one of the sleeper hits of 2009.
78%

School Of Seven Bells on MySpace

Reviewing this album has been one of the more frustrating recent listening / writing experiences.  Each time I have listened to it (and, having had it for review purposes since last year, that adds up to a lot of listens), I was left with a strange feeling that it wasn’t actually the album I was hoping and expecting it to be.

In my mind, as I approach this, the band’s third album (after 2004′s self-titled debut and 2006′s Crush), I hear a glorious mash-up where The Cocteau Twins meet Sonic Youth.  And whilst it would be rather unfair to hold them to account for not living up to my own imaginings, there are elements of both bands that teasingly, fleetingly suggest themselves here.

My problem with the reality of the music found here is twofold.  Firstly, any agreeably mysterious and shoegazey floatiness is marred by the lack of anything approaching grit, or dark edge.  It is all just so damned sugary that you begin to suffer overload by about three tracks in.  So, opener ‘Layers’ starts off, with its yearny-sweet vocal and chiming backing and you find yourself strangely unengaged.  ‘Familiar Light’ further piles on the sweet wispiness (although the nice percussive rolls give it slightly more bite), but by the time you reach ‘Sing Tomorrow’s Praise’, even the minor key and slightly colder sound to the vocal can’t really encourage you to keep caring.

Bringing me, neatly, to second problem that I found, namely the weird fact that (for me, at least) nothing much on this album really seemed to stick, or resonate.  There are pretty-enough melodies in abundance (‘Layers’, ‘Sunshower’, single ‘Me and Mary’), pleasing, tuneful singing and nice sounds made by means electronic and non-electronic; but it all just seemed to willfully refuse to lodge in my mind for a second longer than necessary, by which I mean for any longer than it took to listen to.  It is probably quite telling that even now, having lived with these songs for at least two months now, I could not tell you what one of them is actually about, nor quote any lyrics, nor, in all probability, hum any snippets of tune.  This has to be a failing not just on my part, surely?

And yet, as I said at the top of the page, I am left with more of a feeling of frustration than indifference.  The good things here include a lovely melodious female vocal, some great guitary, occasionally sub-MBV bits (see ‘Glacially’), an ethereal and quite distinct atmosphere.  Is the problem perhaps in the glossy over-homogenised production?  Is it in the lack of light and shade, or any whiff of danger / darkness?  Or is it simply, as can sometimes happen, that the “chemistry” between this reviewer and this band just isn’t there.  I still, after all this time, genuinely don’t know.

60%

Asobi Seksu on Myspace

Your Ear Knows Future is the sophomore effort from Baikonour – aka Brighton’s French-born Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger – a veritable one-man band whose debut For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was a heady blend of space rock and electronica. Where that first record was indebted to prog and Krautrock, Your Ear Knows Future’s only noticeable change in direction is the additional demployment of 80s indie textures. After a rumbling, would-be ominous ‘Intro’, the opener ‘Shikarettes & Khukuris’ bursts into life with a reverbed guitar strum that recalls prototype shoegazers A.R. Kane (the band for whom the term ‘Oceanic’ was coined) quickly subsumed by Baikonour’s familiar take on psychedelia. Most of the tracks are underpinned by this New Order/Jesus & Mary Chain jangle but all revert to a default prog vacuity: all Celestial Synths (TM), steady crescendos and other cod-mystical devices.‘Chiru’ oscillates between cock-rocking riffs and instrumental passages that suggest 12-inch versions of Cure songs circa ‘Disintegration’ or Mary Chain derivatives like The Cranes. Bridging the expanse between these two styles are some New Age atmospherics, and while the transitions are made with a fluidity and dynamism the track still strikes me as rather unsubtle in its showy eclecticism. While the quickie ‘Double Happiness Wholesale’ vaguely resembles M83’s synthesized shoegaze, ‘Ye Ama Piaooo!’ meanders through several passages of meaningful moodiness – warped chimes, more ominous bass - before introducing some thundering Hawkwind-esque one-chord guitars and Krautrock percussion courtesy of Lee Adams from Fujiya & Miyagi. Things peak and dip, swirl and chug like this for a good five minutes – and it’s very nice but totally unsurprising. The beginning of ‘Summer Grass/Winter Warm’ is almost redolent of Boards of Canada’s cassette warped nostalgic dissonance, but glossier, texturally facile, and quickly drowned in sub-Vangelis synths. I have no problem listening to an album entirely comprising instrumentals but it says a lot to me that some of the tracks feel as if they are missing vocals. The very fact that the word ‘instrumental’ comes to my head when listening to Baikonour – as opposed to, say, ‘track’ – seems to suggest an absence or incompleteness.

Baikonour is certainly not the first electronica act to dabble with post-rock, prog, Krautrock or 80s indie – and while he may one of few to try them all at once – Your Ear Knows Future never feels like more than a sum of its constituent parts. While he renders his influences with obvious skill he employs the textures with a one-dimensional predictability. The layering of atmospherics is entirely underwhelming, chugging along with an unfulfilled sense of purposefulness; without enough rough edges to counter the consummate smoothness of the production. I can imagine some of this being knocked up in a BBC workshop under the remit: “make something really cosmic and dramatic sounding by Friday, please”. It’s all very professional sounding, but there are no new ideas here – just the conviction that disparate music styles from the past  automatically sound fresh when blended together. They may have done when For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was released, but they don’t anymore. If Your Ear Knows Future – it isn’t Baikonour.
62%

Baikonour on MySpace

We love the Vivian Girls. Tom Whyman, always one to get enthusastic about great music, suggested that EVERYONE should own a copy of their self-titled debut, and who are we to argue? So, what better time with their UK tour occuring RIGHT NOW, to catch up with the girls and find out a bit about what makes ‘em tick.

For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
I’m not sure. I guess if they like girl groups or garage rock or shoegaze, they should hear of us.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
When I was maybe 7 years old and I went to my friend’s house. Her dad had a guitar and I would always try to play it and fail.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
They definitely come from the heart. All our songs are about real life experiences that made an effect on us.

Name your Top 5 records.
Wipers – Youth of America
Burt Bacharach – Make It Easy on Yourself
Nirvana – Nevermind
Jay Reatard – Blood Visions
Weezer – the Blue Album

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
It was in our friends’ living room at a punk house in Brooklyn. It was really great. A lot of people came and we all had a good time.

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
Project Runway. We all love that show. We’d even watch it at houses we played at on tour if it was on.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
I’d be making art, Katy would be a high school physics teacher and Ali would be hanging out at her parents’ house drinking watermelon martinis.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Being a waitress at a New Jersey diner. I only had that job for a night but it was terrible. So boring and everyone just ordered the grossest food.

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Ok the theme is: creepy songs
Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
Patience and Prudence – Tonight You Belong To Me
Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime
Romantics – Talking in your Sleep
Weezer – Across the Sea

With a new album just the other side of Christmas, we caught up with Asobi Seksu for one of our last ever 20 Questions (quick, someone pass me a tissue). Will they make it a memorable one? Read on…

1. Describe your sound in 3 words.
Psychedelic trance pop.

2. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
Embarrassingly enough i think it might have been a Rick Springfield tape, the one with ‘Jessie’s Girl’ on it.

3. What’s the best cure for a hangover?
There are no cures for hangovers that’s why i don’t drink, not worth it.

4. What’s on your rider?
Nothing to fancy, diet coke hummus and pita, vegetables fruits. I think we need to add more candy.

5. How do you get ready for a live show?
Drink some coffee or soda if I’m tired, do some vocal warm ups and go out there.

6. What’s your favourite song to play live?
I am  really excited to play stuff from the new record it really refreshing and challenging to figure out the best way to present s Im ongs you have never performed before live.

7. What’s your guilty pleasure?
[No answer - Ed]

8. Who would win in a fight, a stoat or a goat and why?
A goat because I’m not sure what a stoat is, plus a goat will eat anything which is pretty impressive.

9. Who’s your favourite new band at the moment? Tell us a bit about them.
KIIIIIIIII they are a performance art and musical duo from Tokyo who have an 80s rap, hyper color neurosis vibe that’s so awesome, everything they do makes me smile.

10. Who would play you in a film based upon your life?
I’m not sure i don’t get a lot of “you look like so and so”  so ill just be safe and say Tom Petty

11. Dead or alive, what 5 acts would you have play with you at a festival?
My Bloody Valentine, Tom Waits, The Smiths, Sonic Youth and The Velvet Underground

12. If push comes to shove, what is your all-time favourite album?
Uggh I suppose Loveless

13. What’s your most memorable on the road story?
Oh too many to count, lets just say Huntsville, Alabama

14. If your life flashed before your eyes, what would be the highlights?
Writing music and playing good shows, and my cat.

15. What’s the best piece of advice someone has ever given you and did you take notice?
Life is short, filled with stuff. I did take notice because its true!

16. If you had to leave a body part to science, what would it be?
My forehead.

17. What’s the best book you’ve read and film you’ve seen in the last 6 months?
Just finished reading “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco its pretty great. After the last tour i watched Starship Troopers and the Karate Kid in a row in bed, that was awesome.

18. What three things could you not live without?
Cigarettes, Coffee and clean socks.

19. Tell us a fact about yourself we probably don’t already know.
Mariah Carey went to my High School

20. And finally, we’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Self Pity
1. Asleep by The Smiths
2. Spread Your Wings by Spiritualized
3. Funeral Party by The Cure
4. A Little Rain by Tom Waits
5. I’m So Tired by The Beatles

Asobi Seksu on Myspace

What is it with American bands and their love of early 90′s British music. Last month All The Saints breezed into town, sounding melodiously similar to the likes of Loop and Thee Hypnotics, so much so that I had to check I hadn’t fallen asleep with an old copy of Lime Lizard over my face. Not that I’m complaining for a second, as at that period in musical history I was very happily part of that crowd, moodily swaying my head from side to side like a polar bear in a French zoo.
The Asteroid No 4 come from Philadelphia, and have been recording and touring since the late 90′s. They claim to have dabbled in everything from Anglo-induced pop (very much in evidence on this album) to the sound of vintage LA country rock outfits. And so they are frighteningly similar to the glut of experimental and noisy musicians who hailed from the home counties when Noel’s House Party was a must-see, lurking on the edge of shoegaze when the rest of the nation were going baggy, waving glo-sticks in their sweaty fists.

Here we have an album that if sliced up into a pie chart would come out as 40% Ride, 40% Spiritualized and 20% Sounds of the Sixties, with a raw, retro recording style relying heavily (and I mean very heavily) on the reverb. Sometimes the music is a little bit swamped in this drenching echo, penultimate track ‘All Fall Down’ a literal soaking of mushy drums and guitar. But as a period piece, you have to admire their attention to detail, and their ability to craft reasonably good songs.

‘Let It Go’ is a belter, all spattering drums and shining cymbals cut with a spacious guitar hum. ‘I Look Around’ is also a treat, a glorious slice of indie pop that leads nicely into ‘She’s All I Need’, an epic song that builds into relaxed effortless spurts. Some songs are overly ponderous, ‘Hold On’ taking an age to get going, as does ‘War’ which drags at a painfully slow pace. But on the whole this is a reasonable collection, that owes a huge debt to the little shiny island I am currently sitting on.
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The Asteroid No 4 on MySpace

As soothing as dipping your feet into a warm bath on a cold summers day, ‘If Children’’s opening track ‘Please Concrete’ sets the scene for what is to follow during the following 45 minutes. A metronome steady beat, gently fingerpicked chords and delicate, warm keyboards augment the porcelain clear vocals. Then two minutes in Wye Oak explode like a firework into a squall of noise, bells and feedback before dipping back to it’s humble starts. ‘Warning’ follows up in a fuzzy vein, using noise as a melodic tool rather than ever letting it spill out without a purpose, rocking drums paying perfect accompaniment to the slowcore guitars swooning in and out- there is more than a little of Yo La Tengo at their peppiest at play here. That such a swell of noise can be created by just two people is impressive in itself.

While vocalist/guitarist Jenn Wasner provides the icy clean female vocal, it falls to vocalist/drummer Andy Stack to provide the warmer more folky side of things, as evidenced on the pretty fingerpicked ’Regret’, all harmonica and swooshing cymbals. ‘Archaic Smile’ is a Floyd-esque daydream that sees Stack and Wasner duet, while ‘Family Glue’ adds ferocious strings to the mix, and a weary vocal. ‘I Don’t Feel Young’ follows the same delicate route that ‘Please Concrete’ had started down earlier in the record, the guitars and warm rush building at the halfway point, Wasner and Stack combining their vocals with a tambourine, an insistent chug on the guitar and a Phil Spector drum beat for good measure. A wall of sound indeed.

Although fully embracing the warm fuzz and swooning noise of shoegaze, Wye Oak have succeeded where so many bands have failed due to their inherent sense of melody. While many acts have been tempted to wrap their music in ever increasing layers of noise untilall signs of vocals and tunefullness have been obliterated, Wasner and Stack have kept the song structure and tunefulness to the fore, and it has shown them to have a certain degree of subtly that is to their credit. It also allows their more folksy element to shine through, as it does on ‘A Lawn to Mow’.

While not all the songs here can match the immediate quality of ‘Warning’ or ‘Please Concrete’ the only real mis-step here is the piano led ‘Keeping Company’, which has a theatricality that feels at odds with the humble approach elsewhere on the record. The likes of Efterklang and Lavender Diamond have had greater success with similar ideas. That this should be the only minor mistep from a debut album from an act that are still so young (neither Stack nor Wasner have yet to hit the wrong side of 23) is impressive. Hopefully the fact that this is a reissue (the album was originally self released in 2007 when the band were still going by the name ‘Monarch’) means that we will be hearing more material from the band in the very near future.
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You’ve heard of people with split personalities, yeah? Normally it manifests itself as two separate people, personalities that tend to be polar opposites. Well, I think David Holmes has something of the split personality about him. Except it’s more complicated than just two different sides. This particular Irishman has the ability to turn himself to just about anything and make a success out of it. From his much admired DJ mixes and nights to his very successful career as creator of film scores. Then there’s his much more straight forward solo adventures, crafting albums that fuse all these different activities into one piece. The Holy Pictures is said to be his most personal record to date, an album he’s been wanting to make for 14 years, since the death of his mother. And it might be his best effort yet.
Ditching most of the complex cut and splice techniques he usually uses to create music, this feels like an album that’s been made by a band. Sure, there’s plenty of clever studio trickery and electronica going on, but it feels much more organic and “real”. The entire album is shrouded in the feel of late 90′s shoegaze. The influence of My Bloody Valentine and Ride hang heavy here along with Primal Scream circa Vanishing Point. Holmes has created some kind of dreamy, alternative location for this album. It has the ability to transport you away from the here and now to somewhere altogether more ethereal and spiritual. But then, given the name and theme of the album, that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The album is pretty evenly split between vocal heavy pieces and instrumentals. It’s the latter that give the album it’s dreamy quality. ‘Theme / I.M.C’ floats over gentle drums before more skittish beats kick in over Holmes’ trademark keyboards. ‘Story of the Ink’ is much more sinister with its tropical beats and dirty guitar that feels as though it’s drenched in heartache. ‘Kill Her with Kindness’ also has some a bit more considered about it, a heavy rumbling of discontent maybe, but features some ghostly vocals of it which make it sounds like a song from a long lost horror movies.

It’s on these more lyrical driven pieces where Holmes falls down slightly. Lyrics, I don’t think, are his particular strong point. They feel a little forced and are pretty forgettable, it’s really only the music that sticks in your mind once the album has finished. There’s also a feeling that the second half of the album fails to live up to the initial creative onslaught. It’s almost as though Holmes falls back on more tried and tested formulas. ‘Melanie’ sounds like something that would have turned up on his previous “band” effort Bow Down to the Exit Sign, whilst the closing track feels very cinematic, and almost carbon copy of something he used to close Ocean’s 11.

A bit of a mixed bag then, but this is a collection of songs that actually DO feel very personal and, at times, spiritual. It’s always hard opening up something like this for the whole world to see and hear. But, as with everything else David Holmes turns his hand to, this is an entertaining, and sometimes surprising, listen.
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David Holmes on Myspace