dream pop, shoegaze, ambient

Here is Aidan Baker again, by now probably to most frequently occurring artist on this website. Not that I mind, Baker's works are pretty much always welcome in my inbox,, whether it's Nadja, Caudal, Hypnodrone Ensemble, his solo musical endeavors or his cooperations with people like Karen Willems or Tomas Järmyr. In that, this release is no different. but in some other aspects, this is a completely new direction for Aidan.

That new direction is mainly guided by his interest in coldwave, shoegaze and dream pop, but also by the distinct voice of Shield Patterns' vocalist Claire Brentnall. Together, Baker and Brentnall have created something amazing, something that almost made me replace the genres on top of this review with the word 'magic'. Away from the usual drones and soundscapes we are used to by now, this cooperation beautifully pierces itself into the dream pop scene.

With that, I do indeed recommend this album to every fan of acts like Cocteau Twins,  This Mortal Coil and here and there even early Dead Can Dance. Apart from two interludes, this album is filled with atmospheric, dreamy songs. Brentnall's vocals fit in perfectly with the soundscapes and often appearing mild drums. Opener 'Delirious Things' and the breathtaking 'Wingless' are jewels, and they are far from the only ones on this album.

So yes, this is an awe-inspiring album, one that will undoubtedly become a favorite for many fans of Aidan Baker. I don't think I am the only one who wants to experience this magic live and I hope that I will have that opportunity one day. But for now, this album is going straight into my day-to-day playlist, perhaps even twice so the songs appear more often. I suggest you do the same. This is pure magic...


Serge

dream pop 

Apparently, somewhere in Portugal, someone is incredibly sad and melancholic. At least, that's what I think after listening to some of the songs on this gloomy and emotional album. Sweet Nico is a dream-pop duo consisting of vocalist and lyricist Marisa da Anunciação and guitarist and producer David Francisco of post-rockers When The Angels Breathe. Together, they wrote and recorded nine songs that will undoubtedly weigh on your soul, and they top it off with a cover of Mazzy Star's 'Fade Into You'. You can indeed say that Mazzy Star has been a major influence for Sweet Nico, along maybe with acts like Slowdive and Radiohead. Yet, in a way, the songs on 'R Evival' gnaw deeper, probably because of the edgy, lo-fi sound of the whole thing. 

When I close my eyes and let my imagination wander, I can see images of an abandoned village, soon to be completely demolished. Yet, somewhere on the edge, in an old, gloomy café, sad music is playing, slowly lingering over the empty streets and into the moonlight. The music feels like ancient blues, driving on soundscapes and percussion which are just as sad and nostalgic as the voice the accompany. Sometimes, the tempo goes up, caused only by the percussion and drums. All else remains slow, dreary and mirthless. Colors seem to fade away, nature seems to retreat. For now, there is only that old café and that murky music.

So no, this is not a happy album, not at all. This is something for shoegazers, dream pop addicts and sombre minds. Fans of Mazzy Star, Slowdive and The Jesus and Mary Chain will definitely appreciate songs like 'Honeymoon', 'Love Caravan' and 'Rain'. The latter is my personal favorite here, a heavily emotional ballad, so minimal it almost hurts your heart. So if you're in for a decent crying session, or you just want to wander in the darker regions of your innerself, you might want to give this album a shot. In that case, this comes highly recommended. 


​Serge

shoegaze / dreampop

stoner rock

electronic / ambient

Avian

post rock

black metal / hardcore

heavy jazz / noise rock

alternative rock

doom metal

heavy metal

power metal / heavy metal

hardcore / progressive

symphonic meal / gothic meal

techno

alternative / singer-songwriter

death metal / thrash metal

Serge

dream pop

jazz / krautrock / post rock

electronic / idm

techno

rock / experimental

stoner / doom

psychedelic doom

black metal / doom / thrash

thrash metal

metalcore

drone / ambient / psychedelic

folk / rock

thrash metal

punk / hardcore

post rock / psychedelic / progressive

alternative / rock / shoegaze

A captivating and amazing album by an emerging alternative rock band from Brazil, You Never Cared, by Killing Surfers, is a six tracks album – Pillow Face, Another Horizon, I Wanna Sleep, She's Like Heaven, Sunrise and Medications – with beautiful and delicate escalating harmonies, poetically uplifting and surprisingly wonderful. Being somewhat a weird, but functional mixture of an indie rock apparently influenced by The Smiths, with a puncture of The Verve, The Velvet Revolver and New Order, this is one of the most surprising gifts I have heard from my own country in a while! With a refreshing degree of originality, and an intriguing ability to surprise, their strong melodies speak as wonderfully as an eternal horizon could fulfill an everlasting sense of beauty into your eyes. With gracefully amazing lines of guitar, striking vocals, powerfully fulfilling, but soft at the same time, You Never Cared is a major underground achievement, and Killing Surfers – I strongly hope, for sure they have talent to do this – it’s the future, and the only future we need in the underground Brazilian scene.

With a fulfilling sense of poetic joy, the second song, Another Horizon, not just reminded me the amazing grace of The Smiths, but overwhelmingly surpassed a marvelous sense of transcendental sensibility. With a compassed strengthened rhythm, a fine sense of security, and a magically divine output, characterized by refined harmonies, You Never Cared is a straight and dynamic shot, direct to the point. Poetic, enthusiastically emotive, spirited and free, this is a groundbreaking achievement not just for the band itself, but for the entire underground Brazilian scene!

A great, great album, that made me really happy while listening to it, this is a state of the art work! Coming from a region from Brazil – the northeast – mostly known as a stronghold of popular regional genres of music, few people, possibly including myself until I have listened to them, knew that such an astounding, cool and carefree alternative rock band could arise from this corner of the country, that is mostly hostile to this genre.

Certainly the future of the underground – if they manage to undertake all the difficulties that being in a rock band means in a country like Brazil – in the national scene (and why not internationally also? they certainly have talent for it), Killing Surfers is an amazing alternative rock band, and You Never Cared is the best alternative rock album that I have heard in a while. And certainly, musically, restores my faith in my own country, for a long time!            


​Wagner

dream pop / trip hop

Although people usually see me as a metalhead, I've always been a fan of electronic music. From Kraftwerk over Front 242 to the whole new beat scene and later variants in drums & bass, trip hop and IDM, I've constantly been following the odd world of electronics. Yet, I have to admit that many of today's electronic acts are quite stale and soulless. Many of the acts I've seen live lately, sounded exactly the same, a light version of dubstep perhaps.

But here we're dealing with something very different, something very good indeed. Obviously, the fact that this is gloomy dance music is a massive plus but regardless of darkness, this album is energetic, full of soul, dreamy and immersive. But what would you expect from seasoned musicians Dean Garcia (Curve, SPC ECO) and Preston Maddox (Bloody Knives). Their experience in the alternative underground certainly did them some good.

What you get on this album is dance music, sometimes eighties industrial loaded songs like 'Do It Now' or 'Secret', sometimes eerie and trippy dubstep-induced pieces like 'Dead Right', and on other occasions dreamy trip hop tunes, like the title track 'What We Want', reminding me of Massive Attack or Tricky. All of these songs are layered with dream pop arrangements, shoegaze soundscapes and gentle, subdued vocals, making this album stand-out in today's electronics scene.

In fact, the whole thing reminds me more of 4AD bands (like Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Slowdive) than the DJ-driven manure of the electronic dance music world, even though 'Deeper' could be a massive club hit, part Eurythmics, part Daan, part Terence Fixmer. I also really dig the ambienty 'Slow' and the deep 'Trickery'. Hell, I like all the songs here, but my favorite has to be the haunting 'A Thousand Cuts'.

Now comes the hard part of this review. Who do I recommend this album to? Shoegazers? EDM fans? Dream-poppers? Trip-hoppers? Well, let's simply go with all of the above. I doubt that there will be anything more hypnotic and immersive being released this year. You can bet your ass that this album is going into my "sweet electronics" playlist where it gets the company from fine people like Massive Attack, Bonobo, Plaid, Tricky, Subheim and Miwon. I suggest you do the same thing...


​Serge

electronic / dream pop / shoegaze

Well, that's a fairly decent way to start a conversation, "hello, we're not enemies". I think it's a suggestion every single person on this planet needs to stick to. After all, hasn't it been enough with all the hate, fear, abuse and aggression? Isn't it time we need to put the humanity back into the human race? Wouldn't a little love, empathy and respect make this world a better place for everyone and everything living here?

Italian one-man act Novanta surely seems to agree with me. This project, formed by Manfredi Lamartina, dwells in the gentle but gloomy area of shoegaze and post-punk, using dreamy electronics as a basis to explore his sound. Guitars and an often equally dreaming voice make up the rest of the music, highlighting in songs like 'Tell A Story', which comes close to trip-hop or the heavy shoegaze 'Goðafoss'.

That being said, this album is pretty varied to begin with. While listening to 'Mike', I can't help but think of Smashing Pumpkins for some reason. '​Akureyri' delves into the sound of acts like Boards Of Canada or Bonobo. 'Blue Lagoon' hints towards Slowdive while 'Melted Eyes' combines eerie drones and soundscapes with almost distresses vocals. That's plenty of variation, without losing grip on his own style, and that certainly deserves a compliment. Recommended stuff? Absolutely!


Serge

shoegaze / dream pop

About a week ago I posted a list of stuff I was looking forward to in 2016 (read). I also wrote, and I quote (‘quote’ being a fancy word for CTRL-C, CTRL-V) “This is just a handful of stuff, no doubt there will be countless of amazing releases”. And what do you know: completely out of the blue (for me) there is this, the second full-length of Russian shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast.

With their debut album ‘Everything Else Matters’ it was apparantly sort of a big deal they were Russian. “What? Russian shoegaze?” Pffftt, as if the place you come from necessarily defines what sort of music you can or can’t make. As if great music can’t come from anywhere on this wretched ball of dirt.  I mean, it’s 2016, there are no boundaries when it comes to genres and nations. So, I’m not going to make a fuss about their heritage, I’m just going to focus on what’s important. This amazing album.

Amazing it is. I’m not going to say it never happens, but it is very rarely that I get instant goosebumps and I’m instantly smitten with music. No Joy, for instance, is such a band where I had that instant magical feeling of discovering something very special. That ‘this is what I want, this is what I need’ feeling. But here it is again, with Pinkshinyultrablast.

This 5-piece pushes so much of my buttons it’s hard to begin describing this. It’s not quite shoegaze because there’s a lot of indie electronica in it. It’s not quite indierock, because it’s far too noisy for that. It’s not quite dreampop because there’s a lot of math-rock in it. It’s not quite postpunk because of the huge distorted wall of sound.. It is a glorious concontion of all of those things. What works exceptionally well are the transitions between the softer, dreamier parts and the loud, noisy eruptions. At times it sounds almost angelic and at times it feels that there are jumbo-jets flying just a couple of metres above your head. That, and the fact that it has bucketloads of reverb and echo thrown over it. And I love reverb and echo.

A lot of shoegaze is basically just hazy, dreamy blurred guitars (nothing wrong with that, mind you) but Pinkshinyultrablast have layered ‘Grandfeathered’ to the max and there’s just a ton of things going on in every song. Great guitar hooks, a brilliant rhythm section and loads and loads of synths and effects. The dynamic range of everything in general is just spot-on. It is quite remarkable that with all the noise going on that everything stays quite clear at the same time. I know that’s a bit of a contradiction, blurred and noisy and clear at the same time but Pinkshinyultrablast are just unique in that aspect I guess. The cherry on the proverbial icecream is Lyubov’s lovely angelic voice. She’s been compared to Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser and I can sort of hear that but I feel she is unique enough by herself and doesn’t really need those comparisons. Sometimes the vocals are barely there, sometimes buried underneath the big wall of sound, sometimes drifting and soaring above it almost like a synthesizer melody. But always lovely, just lovely.

So there we have it, yet again a highlight for 2016 and yes, it’s still only February. I’m very curious to see if they can live up to my high expectations live so here’s hoping that ‘Grandfeathered’ will be followed by a big tour with sold-out venues. Because they sure deserve it..


Bjorn

dream pop / ambient pop

Today's electronic scene, especially the radio-friendly version, is filled with cold, soulless copies of the bands that had a huge hit a few weeks earlier.  Sometimes those copycats make it to the big festivals and receive mixed reactions. Luckily, sometimes one of those acts add some decent songwriting, storytelling and real talent into the electronic mix. Judging from the calm, soothing sounds I'm listening to right now, Dream Koala is one of the latter.

This three-track e.p. is quite a nice piece of work, not that different from most of today's electronic scene but seemingly rooted in a richer history than the usual autotune artists.  While others drive on dubstep tempos and deep basslines, Dream Koala adds a sense of new wave, something between Kraftwerk and Eurythmics, to the earlier mentioned elements.  That combination makes this ep warm and very listenable.

My favorite track is opener 'Dimension Sleeper', which strangely is the most friendly one as well.  'Synthetic' is a bit darker and closer 'Threnody To Earth' even comes up with a little bit of soft rock.  All of course, firmly enhanced by electronics and the gentle voice of this French-Brazilian singer/songwriter.  If you're into deep basslines and slow tempos, check it out.  Perhaps you will like it as much as I do now...


Serge

dreampop / shoegaze / synthpop

​One thing I can't resist in music, how strange this might sound for someone who usually reviews quite heavy stuff, is fragility.  Since founding this website, I discovered several acts and artists creating dreamy electronic shoegaze with female vocals and I'm almost always sold immediately.  Today, I'd like to add Ummagma to that list.  Floating somewhere between synthpop, ambient pop and electronic post-rock, this Canadian-Ukranian duo sounds extremely promising.

This ep contains five new songs plus three remixes for the beautufil and highly danceable 'Lama' (somewhere betwxeen Joy Division and The Human League).  The names of the remixers are quite interesting:  Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), Malcolm Holmes (OMD) and Lights That Change.  Those names prove that Ummagma already has made some impact in the world of electronic music and with good reason too.  I really like all the versions of 'Lama' but let's go into the other tracks as well.

'Orion' is a fragile, electronic piece of work, gently and dreamy.  It's sounds a bit like a dreampop lullaby, beautifully sung by Shauna.  In fact, that song inspired me to do the 'fragility' intro of this review.  'Winter Tale' sounds a bit like Massive Attack meets Boards Of Canada meets Austra, which is a stunning combination to be honest.  'Galacticon' delves a bit deeper into ancient synth history and somehow reminds me of the very early days of Kraftwerk or Klaus Schulze.  'Ocean Girl' is an odd, folky tune and a decent closer for this ep.

So yes, Ummagma bight become one of the acts to keep an eye out for in the near future.  I can defintitely see them touring with big acts, from the trip-hop giant Massive Attack to shoegaze deities Slowdive.  I can also see Ummagma gain many followers everytime they play.  I wouldn't even be surprised if 'Lama' becomes a huge hit, both in the alterative as in the popular scenes.  


Serge

indie rock / post rock / dream pop

​'Dream noise', a term given by the band themselves, seems to be quite a good description for what you get on this album.  On the other hand, I'm used to quite a bit of noise and this is far from noisy.  It is dreamy, that I'll admit but still very far from the harsh sounds that often find the way to my speakers.  I'll also admit that I really like this album, beautifully blending shoegaze, post-rock and pop rock and that way creating some stunning songs.

Ewian is a duo from Köln, Germany.  In 2013 they started working on these songs, carefully composing, writing and recording their songs.  'We Need Monsters' is the second full length, after 'Good Old Underground', which was released last year, a single and an ep.  Slowly, Ewian seems to be growing, evolving and getting more and more followers.  At least, that's what I hope.  They actually deserve it, especially with great songs like opener 'Ticket From Kingdom Come' and 'Star'.

What Ewian does, isn't really new but that's quite impossible these days.  Yet, they seem to be experienced and skilled musicians, borrowing influences from acts like Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse, Sigur Ros and many more alternative rock acts.  I also recognize some Belgian bands like Zornik, Gorki and (especially in 'Song For The Psychonauts') even Noordkaap/Monza/Meuris*.  I'm not sure if Ewian are familiar with these bands but they should definitely take that as a compliment.

Soft, gentle piano passages often alternate with fuzzy guitars.  So, there also seem to be elements from ambient, grunge and even a little hint of jazz, meticulously interwoven in the fabric of the songs.  Just like the previously mentioned bands, Ewian has a tremendous feel for songwriting, mostly taking on a very emotional approach.  Most of the songs are atmospheric ballads, hence the post-rock reference. 'Fragile Ghost' is one of my favorites.  

In all, 'We Need Monsters' is an excellent album, certainly one that has the potential to score. Maybe the whole gets a bit too emotional and dreamy by the end, especially for the rockers among us but here too, that problem is easily solved by creating amazing songs.  I'm quite curious about what Ewian will do with this material and I hope they will soon tour Europe.  I'm sure they will do great on stage and gain a lot of followers that way.


Serge  

*These are three bands, fronted by vocalist/songwriter Stijn Meuris and some of the most popular rock bands with Dutch lyrics

shoegaze / dream pop

I mentioned earlier that today is quite a miserable day but luckily there are some things that can always cheer me up.  One of them is a bunch of steaming hot pancakes.  So I went to the kitchen to bake me some.  Right before that however, I loaded this debut into my media player.  I was curious about this band since the email arrived a few days ago and I wanted to listen to something that would fit perfectly with this drizzling weather.  

Malka is a dream pop and shoegaze band from New York, founded in 2013.  Their goal is to create a reflection of the 'triumph and tragedy of the world, compelling us to look deeper into the realms of our consciousness'.  They do so with beautiful, somewhat mysterious sounding music and dreamy vocals (both in English and Spanish) by three different lead vocalists.  This of course placed perfectly in a highly atmospheric setting, ranging from shoegaze to post-rock and incorporating elements of krautrock and psychedelic rock.

The album opens with 'A Flock Of Crows' and immediately references from Jesus and the Mary Chains, Slowdive and Lush come to mind.  It takes me right back to the nineties when several alternative rockband took on a slow and emotional approach.  'Corazon Sin Sangre' continues in that direction and becomes a first shoegazing highlight on this album.

In fact, this deeply emotional atmosphere is present throughout the entire album.  It breathes the same air as bands like The Cure (in their 'Disintegration'-era) and My Bloody Valentine.  'Diamond Girl' even enhances that level and 'For Now We Live' brings it to an astonishing early grand-finale by including a brilliant post-rock passage.  This rising level of quality music makes the album grow upon the listener, increasingly convincing him of the abilities of this American quartet.

In all, I really dig this album, which by the way reaches another huge highlight at the end where 'Wolves And Sheep' turns into my favorite track.  It looks like there's currently a shoegaze and dream pop revival and if that's true, I believe Malka could be one of those bands on the forefront of the present day scene.  I sure hope they cross the channel one day and play in venues allover Europe.  This could make up for one magical evening.


Serge