Soaring - Soaring (2025)

The airiest blackgaze of the year may well be already released as Baptiste Belot's debut EP is both strikingly dreamy and wonderfully fast and heavy. The French artist makes his music as Soaring and the feeling of going through the skies with the engine built of euphoria is kind of what his self-titled album is all about.

This truly is "heavy reverb music for the heavy-hearted". Because while the music is filled with fast, synthy sounds that will always make me feel euphoric and hopeful, while the flow of the tracks has a power to take you in its hands and make you, almost literally, soar through the skies, the lyrics are bleak and gloomy. It's about the indifferent universe, being afraid of emotions, dying. This stark dissonance is where the album glows. Glowy, drowning with light dreams about the absurd of human existence, the ones we like the most.

Soaring costs 7 EUR.

Check: A Blurred Contour of Everything 

Country: France

Genre: euphoric blackgaze

Label: Stellar Frequencies

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Besna - Krásno (2025)

After three years since their debut, the Slovakian outfit Besna shows us their sophomore album called Krásno. The Black metal here is only marginally seasoned with the "post-" suffix and while usually it makes me throw a bit, in this case the band's music works really well. I think it's also darker than before, but maybe it's because the world grew darker as well.

The title of the album translates to "Beautiful", which is slightly surprising. There must a good deal of irony in that as the worldwide situation is far from being beautiful (the band supports the Ukrainian war effort for example, and this crisis is nowhere close to an end, but the point is that the artists are aware and focused on what's going on, politically speaking). The lyrics supports this thought as, among traditionally metal-kind of poetry, there's this sentence (taken from the title track): "Indifference feeds hopelessness, indifference only feeds hopelessness". Indeed.

Musically speaking, the message is conveyed in the blackest of the ways: angry screams, guitar noise and fast melodies. My favourite track is the most deceiving one as Oceán prachu sounds like a peaceful instrumental interludium for the most part, but suddenly develops into pure musical anger. Again, indeed.

Krásno costs 7 EUR.

Check: Oceán prachu

Country: Slovakia

Genre: (post-) black metal

Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

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memoryloop - being and nothingness (2024)

They started as "pedestrian", now they create their music as memoryloop; they look like your average nugaze band of the latest generation, but they make music that is a tasteful combination of slow shoegaze and post-rock; they are from California, but they music says "somewhere cold". This is the second debut of the band and it feels amazing.

They make music to "give [the artists'] silly little lives a little bit of meaning" and, in my books, it's just the best reason to do that. From the look and feel of their image, I wasn't expecting a long, classically post-rock track to open the album. It's this sort of surprises that catches your attention, definitely. And it really sets up the tone of the whole thing: it is particularly solemn and melancholic. Slow. Deep. It sounds like a narcoleptic ambient pop that is mashed up with guitar post-rock tracks from time to time. Makes me think of Midwife if she played with, say, Ranges. Amazing combo.

I love when an album takes different, sometimes very different elements and yet succeeds in making them sound like a whole. Especially when they are a real party for borderline melancholics. This is my vibe.

being and nothingness costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: earth exit

Country: California, US

Genre: dreamy slowcore/post-rock

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Flower and Pines - Unconditional Love (2025)

I remember when their magical EP Hnieŭ brought a sense of difficult to locate musical unorthodoxity. I can't say what genre the music belonged to, but it's usually a really positive thing for me. This year, the Belarusian duo from the Polish city of Wrocław are back in the game with their longest release to date and the magic is back.

I feel like the record is slightly less experimental than the previous one, but maybe it's due to the fact that they now create their music in English. And in English they somehow sound like the most famous Polish contemporary band, Trupa Trupa. This is an art rock world class level that should be out there, being appreciated by another Iggy Pop or whomnot. Especially that it is slower, less rocky and most artsy, in some moments closer to post-rock with vocals, sometimes it's tribal like folk liturgy combined with a demonstration anthem. How is it all of the things while still sounding like a coherent whole?

It's also a "reflection on [the band's] worries, anger, and grief" dressed in different forms, such as "a memorial service, a battle cry, or a manifesto of humility. It could be anything, depending on your perspective." This reinforces the impression of a strong diversification of the content and I like the idea that it was intentional to appeal o whoever is listening. After all, we have so much to worry about these days that it may be impossible to talk about it one musical language.

Unconditional Love costs 5 EUR (21 PLN).

Check: Dogs

Country: Belarus/Poland

Genre: art (post-)rock

Label: Requiem Records

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MIZU - 4 | 2 | 3 (2024)

Issei Herr, better know as MIZU, whom Pitchfork described as "frequently gorgeous, at times unsettling, and constantly in flux", showed her third solo album earlier in the autumn. It is decorated with a beautiful and dark cover art that matches exactly the vibes of the cellist's music. 

The artist is known for creating "expansive soundscapes through her singular cello playing", but it is the first album where she turned from the ethereal, mysterious electronica to darker, more industrial corners of the music world. The picturesque description of the album on the artist's Bandcamp includes words such as "oppressive", "sinister" and "horror" which is all true, but there is still tons of other feelings in MIZU's tasteful soundscapes. There's love in the oppressive, there is kind in the sinister and dream in horror. I feel like this music has so many layers that you can't help but slowly dig deeper and deeper to find yourself buried by the heavy, multidimensional cello notes.

4 | 2 | 3 costs 11 USD.

Check: Fallout

Country: New York, US

Genre: dark cello soundscapes

Label: Carousel Productions

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Mondaze - Linger (2024)

Slow melodies and heavy guitars that accompany the ethereal vocals. This is the recipe for a successful album from the Italian outfit Mondaze. The band released their sophomore album last November and equipped it with everything that modern shoegazer looks for.

The band calls their music as "heavy shoegaze" and there is no two ways about it. The slow flow of heavy guitar sounds and the sad, downbeat vocals feel extremely melancholic. In fact, the layer of melancholia covers everything here like an opaque veil, making the whole album so intriguing. Especially that the songs are not particularly melodic or catchy, it is more about creating the atmosphere and the heavy guitar chaos underneath the soothing sounds of vocals. 

And this heaviness is not without a message. As the label cites, "A message on the wall reads, >“We don’t want to return to normal because normal was the problem.<”, the artists aim at critique of today's world routine: consumerism, alienation, harmful habits. I can only repeat after them the call for a change.

Linger costs 8 EUR.

Check: Linger 

Country: Italy

Genre: heavy shoegaze

Label: Bronson Recordings

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FOG - fogesque II & III

I feel like recently, shoegaze from South Korea is defined by solo acts who are more into the bedroom pop-side of the noisy genre than the fully fleshed-out bands. FOG is the latter so I had to check them out (I remember their first album, but it was soo long ago! (I mean five years)). And the level of pure noisy guitars is just fantastic.

The band released two full-length albums pretty much at the same time, so I will post about both. fogesque II  and fogesque III have pretty much the same vibes and can be treated as one, long and loud whole. The first thing you notice is that it's not your hi-fi, high-brow, "let's make the tiniest notes audible" kind of music. It is extremely noisy with this lo-fi guitar noise that can easily overwhelm you if you listen loud enough. The notion of the garage music can probably be applied here.

But the noise is definitely the only appealing aspect of the releases. The band is very fluent at creating particularly airy segments (like the end of Facade, probably my favourite track here), but it probably shouldn't be surprising given the band's name. Overall, I'd say that the first album of the two is better, the songs are more compelling and involving. Still, both are worth trying, that's for sure.

fogesque II costs 7 USD, fogesque III costs 7 USD.

Check: Facade

Country: South Korea

Genre: garage shoegaze

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