Lunation Fall - NEAR (2021)

Lunation Fall, "sparkles and noise making band from Lyon, France", is a new thing on the dreamy music scene. But judging by the two labels they managed to interest in their material, it soon will be better known. And quite rightfully so, as NEAR shows some juicy and sweet music, perfect for the moody noisy pop they do.

As they point out, their music hovers somewhere between delicate dream pop and noisier genres, being "in a constant quest for the alliance between melancholic dream pop and unleashed noise rock". The vocals are beautifully airy but with this dose of pop-like catchiness that doesn't let them entirely melt within the guitar-based, thick backgrounds. In the artists' words, they seek "this fragile spot where the melodic sweetness is combined with the power of a wall of sound carried by a feverish and airy rhythmic". It seems to me that they found it, as the album ranges from lighter melodies with the elements of bedroom/indie pop to heavy guitar riffs and mesmerizing noise present in the backgrounds all over the release. This makes me think of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (especially in Reflections) combined with some more intimate and lo-fi indie pop project, good stuff.

NEAR costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Sweet Misery

Country: France

Genre: noisy dream pop

Label: Stellar Frequencies/Shore Dive Records

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Dronny Darko & Ajna - Radioactive Immersion (2021)

Dronny Darko a.k.a. Oleg Puzan is an artist from Ukraine (and the owner of one of the best musical nicknames out there) while Anja comes from New York. They both create very dark and kind of uncomfortable ambient music that can be admired on their album Radioactive Immersion.

The ambient here is called "dark and rusty", it certainly has very, very industrial vibes - with sounds that resemble those of an abandoned factory (or at least I would imagine they do). It is undoubtedly dark as well, creating this unnerving feeling of something lurking in the shadows, the feeling of constant danger. They put it together by creating a story told by the ambient sounds and by the description of the album: "Your headlamp sweeps the tunnel walls. Roots and moss stretch their tendrils out of the darkness in strange geometric patterns, mutated and fueled by water from the abandoned cooling chambers".

It sounds like something taken from Roadside Picnic or perhaps Annihilation. It is basically a chapter from a book or a quest from a video game if you will. But written with beautiful (and terrifying) ambient sounds.

Radioactive Immersion costs 7 USD.

Check: Uranium 235

Country: Ukraine/New York, US

Genre: industrial ambient

Label: Cryo Chamber

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Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

I'll be honest, chiptune is the music genre I appreciate the least to call it mildly. However, Gonemage is the first project ever that made me question this view. Garry Brents' works combine it with energetic and dark black metal and the result are great, available now for the audience on the project's debut album called Mystical Extraction.

Earlier this year I posted about Lorem Ipsum, the French neoclassical post-hardcore band, and I was pretty much shocked with that blend, Gonemage though is something even more peculiar. Brents is an artist who has an impressive resume of projects he's been involved in, this one is surely the weirdest (although it's just my assumption). The album is meant to be a concept album, the theme of which is, quite naturally, a story within a video game - more about it with some quite vivid details can be read on the album's Bandcamp Website.

The colourful midi sounds of chiptune here, after combining them with the metal pace and vocals, get a different vibe to them - rapid, dangerous and extremely engaging. Especially that the metal elements here are taken from its darkest and most violent subgenres and only the chiptune tones this down a bit. Still, this is the kind of music that gives the audience so much energy, it is impossible not to dance and/or pogo to it. And most certainly one that is very unique, a music born from a combination I would never even thought is possible.

Mystical Extraction costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: The Gullying and the Purple Hoax

Country: Texas, US

Genre: chiptune black metal

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Superdone - ▽ (2021)

It seems that a year on that blog is not complete without posting about the British band Superdrone. I did so about The Creation in 2019 and Solargaze last year and the artists get better and better so I can't really stop. 2021's mysteriously entitled ▽ brings the best from ethereal space rock out there.

The band's sound's specialty is the smooth, mesmerizing synths that make the audience go deeper and deeper this sonic world without even realizing. This is complimented with space rock attributes like the ethereal vocals and psychedelic vibes in their compositions, as well as, and that's not an obvious thing, being melodic and extremely catchy. There's a few songs here you can instantly catch up on, one being We Are One with its slightly retro form and dreamy atmosphere or the surprisingly synthpop-like Morning Light that really stands out within the atmosphere of the album.

The clue of the album, however, lies in its ability to create trance-worthy, mesmerizing compositions of the most psychedelic, even if toned down with the dreamy atmosphere, quality like Sperisphere for example or the ethereal blizzard of Eternala. And those craziness- and mood-rich storms are what you should reach for the album for.

▽ costs 7 GBP.

Superdrone - Solargaze (2020)

Superdrone - The Creation (2019)

Check: We Are One

Country: UK

Genre: ethereal space rock

Label: Sdrone Records

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Ambulance on Fire - Ambulance on Fire (2021)

Ambulance on Fire is a Lithuanian duo consisting of Jūra Elena Šedytė and Mėta Gabrielė Pelegrimaitė, musicians of jazzy and theatrical music backgrounds. They combine these artsy worlds with modern electronic music and it sounds extremely interesting on their debut EP simply called Ambulance on Fire.

The title of the first track says a lot about their work. The traditional music (represented here by a very folk-sounding flute) meets the modern music and world. The artists draw inspiration from a various music genres from IDM to synthpop and 90's electronica and those come to the stage with the heavy-bass-reach I Will Never in which the, again very much folk-inspired, vocals go together with coarse synths and soul-filling basses. This, often improvised and lyrics-lightweight, music talks about "anxiety, anger, or fear that can be felt even deeper in a specific musical atmosphere" and I would add the social aspects of those, perhaps it's because of the very vivid name of the project.

As well as the last track entitled in the same way. One that is filled with uncomfortable electronica, ethereal synths in the backgrounds and those unique, repetitive and mesmerizing chanting that closes the very promising debut.

Ambulance on Fire costs 4 EUR.

Check: Ambulance on Fire

Country: Lithuania

Genre: art synthpop

Label: Future Sound Scientists

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Knægt - Tragisk komedie (2021)

Led by the "anti-frontman" (and trumpeter) Malte Nordtorp Pedersen, Knægt is a project that sounds like something you know but adds some flavour to it. The new and, as it seems, debut album is an EP called Tragisk komedie with its heavily theatrical theme (and cover art).

When I first heard this album I was sure it was some new material from Efterklang, one of the best modern Danish music makers out there. And it has to be considered as a huge compliment. Perhaps it's the Danish language, something we are not very accustomed to in music. Perhaps it's Pedersen's distinct voice's colour that is somehow similar to what Casper Clausen sounds like. But most likely it's these art rock and slowcore vibes that bring a lot of intimacy and theatre-like approach to emotions and feelings, a unique sound that not many projects go with these days.

This atmosphere here goes very smoothly from the very beginning in the slow and beautiful Lysende Flammer, a song that sets the jazzy and artsy ballad-esque tone for the next couple of tracks with some mellower, dream pop-like fragments in my favourite track here Statistik. Something else starts to happen in Nu Går Det Godt Igen, in which the theatre sound gets even more noticeable with the quiet vocals sounding like a monolouge on stage while the finish in Regiones Rovfugl brings on a real orchestral crescendo. In every part of the album, the music sounds like a soundtrack for a play and it's super easy to imagine the artists on stage (with a prop motorcycle next to them).

Tragisk komedie costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Statistik

Country: Denmark

Genre: slowcore art rock

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Simon Goff - Vale (2021)

The English violinist and composer Simon Goff on his first solo album (the two previous ones were collaborative works of Goff, Aidan Baker and Thor Harris) shows us a neoclassical view of what his home region, Vale of York, looks like.

Goff is an experienced musician and sound engineer who worked also with such huge artists as Jóhann Jóhannsson or Hildur Guðnadóttir. His music "conjures dynamic sonic landscapes where acoustic and electronic sounds meet". While the live gigs "merge these worlds harmoniously and shift effortlessly between intimate fragility to expansive cinematic soundscapes" - and this last phrase is the key to Goff's music. Although it is mostly string-based neoclassicism (that's supposed to be very intimate), the sense of being part of something big (like a movie for instance) is very tangible here. Especially that the tracks are so different moodwise with the unnerving feeling of danger in Wooden Islands, the soothing ethereality in Murmur, the peacefulness in Now. And the one combining all of it, I Filled my Lungs with the Necessary Air, and Yelled!. This is the soundtrack, we need a movie now.

Vale costs 11 EUR.

Check: I Filled my Lungs with the Necessary Air, and Yelled! 

Country: UK

Genre: cinematic neoclassicism

Label: 7K!

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Presents for Sally - Look Skyward And Take It On (2021)

Presents for Sally is a British band that is inspired by "1980's/early 1990's guitar music but always manages to stay unique". The Exeter artists have already 4 long plays in their discography (including a great collaboration with one of my favourite shoegaze projects 93MillionMilesFromTheSun), the fourth one being this year's Look Skyward And Take It On.

There's absolutely no doubt about their inspirations. The album is filled with noisy but also lively and carefree-sounding songs of lower audio quality that could as well be taken from the first shoegaze/noise rock wave's albums, they remind me mostly of the early Ride but there surely is more in the inspirations jar here. There's everything that was back there - and it's a good thing. The dispersed and not very clear and loud vocals sing simple but melodic songs while the backgrounds present this oldschool, noisy psychedelic rock (in oppose to the modern, overwhelming noise that is very often the thing now) that feels light and genuinely joyful. And the lo-fi ambiance makes it all very authentic.

Sometimes, the British create also this exceptionally psychedelic noisy haze that goes and goes on (and should go on forever) that is so very mesmerizing. It's most noticeable in the album's longest track When We All Move Away and I must say, this is what I like here the most.

Look Skyward And Take It On costs 3.99 GBP.

Check: When We All Move Away

Country: UK

Genre: original noise rock

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Bolywool - Canada (2021)

I discovered the Swedish VÅRØ records recently but I'm already convinced this is a source of some quality noisy music from Scandinavia. The new thing that caught my attention is the comeback from the Calle Thoor and Oskar Karlström duo called Bolywool. Two years after their last release, they are showing a new EP called Canada.

This very short album is called "the perfect mix of stunning minimalism and magnificent experimentalism". In practice, it simply means noisy pop. But it's good and I really appreciate it: there's melodies that carry those mellow tracks and there's noisy ambiance that fills the backgrounds. There's also something exceptionally attractive about the vocals that are not only dreamy and suitably distorted but can also show this indie rock's bittersweet colours that make me think of The Autumns or maybe Hard-Fi from their best times. That's why Inertia is THE song for me on this album. But it is surrounded with moody, noise-friendly but also Scandinavia-like artful tracks (Jónsi vibes alert, especially in the closing For S No 1) that work with or without lyrics as well. 

Those warm and relaxing vibes I get throughout the quarter-long album are no coincidence as that was its point, as the label states it: "in times of uncertainty they groped for something safely and wanted to make songs about that kind of security you felt as a child". And it works.

Canada costs 4 EUR.

Check: Inertia

Country: Sweden

Genre: noise pop

Label: VÅRØ

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MØAA - Euphoric Recall (2021)

Jancy Rae Buffington is MØAA, an artist who creates a very dreamy and moody music, which is kind of strange when you know that the moniker came from the name of a MAO-A gene, one that is connected to aggressive behaviour. She just released her debut album called Euphorics Recall on We Were Never Boring Collective label.

The music here is no punk, that's for sure. And although Rae created her music persona to write about frustrations and her "troubled past", she chose to do that in the form of very dark but also melodic, synth-rich dream pop. What's more, the album was created both in the rainy Washington state and the sunny Italy where the American met Andrea Volpato who is the second part of the project, the one responsible for co-writing the music as well as producing and mastering. This geographical factors may have influenced the way the music here combines the gloomy atmosphere with lively melodies that can be hummed from the very first listening (with the fantastic X Marks as the best example).

O2, on the other hand, combines the very ethereal ambiance and backing vocals with quite noisy form while Lam shows the more post-punk face of the project's synthpop with quite ominous vibes. And the further into the album, the more guitar-based and wavey the songs get, not losing anything from the atmosphere of the dark and moody, trip-hopish beginning.

Euphoric Recall costs 8 EUR.

Check: X Marks

Country: Washington, US; Italy

Genre: ethereal synthpop

Label: We Were Never Being Boring Collective

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Nordsind - Lys (2021)

The Copenhagen-based project Nordsind blew my mind three years ago with their overpowered debut album called Efterår. Now (finally!) the duo of artists known as Ole and Asger showed the follow-up in the form of an excellent post-metal/blackgaze-filled Lys.

The artists admit to create cinematic music in the sense that it is supposed to evoke particular images, just like a word-based story would. On this album, they focus on light in a very broad sense and its multiple aspects: "We touch on a lot of subjects, stuff like the science behind light, coming out of depression and the spiritual journey that staring into the sky can take you on". It is also no surprise that their particularly energetic take on very heavy guitar music, that also includes this blackgaze-like smooth flow of the compositions, goes exceptionally well with the luminous theme.

The music is overwhelming and very loud but it's not the stoner-esque crude and coarse noise. It can crush the audience but at the same time gives the uplifting feeling of euphoria and if goes a bit darker and slower, it's only to underline the energetic comeback that is soon to come (so great in Drømmefanger). As one of the most important topics the artists took on is dealing with depression, the music here really well depicts the process of slow recovery, or to stay in the theme, coming out to the light.

Lys costs 7 EUR.

Nordsind - Efterår (2017) EN

Check: Midnatssol

Country: Denmark

Genre: heavy post-rock

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Christine Ott - Time to Die (2021)

The French multi-instrumentalist known for her work on the soundtrack for Naonook of the North, Christine Ott comes back to the Gizeh Records label with a new album, filled with complex electronic sounds, Time to Die.

It is meant to be "a musical fresco in eight chapters, a sensory journey between the world of the living and the dead, for which the musician weaves a unique dramaturgy between contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music". And indeed, the combination of acoustic and electronic sounds carries the album making it an engaging and mesmerizing playlist. It is open with more dark electronics-focused Time to Die with the Blade Runner's immortal monologue sown within it. But it is quick to transform into beautifully neoclassical compositions made with some more exotic instruments like vibraphone, timpani drums and most importantly, a harp. This, with some very ethereal backing vocals bring everything that is so beautiful and captivating in the neoclassicism.

Time to Die costs 5 GBP.

Check: Time to Die

Country: France

Genre: ethereal neoclassicism

Label: Gizeh Records

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Where Mermaids Drown - And the Raging Winds Do Blow (2021)

The French post-rock band Where Mermaids Drown certainly has some attention from their very beginning. This is their debut EP and, as far as I know, it's covered by Where Post-Rock Dwells and released by POST. Recordings - so not just random people. And this is very much earned as And the Raging Winds Do Blow brings a lot of good, instrumental music.

This is this kind of post-rock that is played on Dunk!Festival and, I dare say, will be in not so distant future. It's clear that the French know how to write compositions in this genre so that they are captivating and diverse - so we have some spoken word samples, a lot of picturesque guitar soundscapes and the feeling of monumentality just within the reach of your hand. The EP consists only of three pieces but this is a) still a lot of music, b) quality material and this beats quantity every time. What's surprising, although the music of Where Mermaids Drown is filled with guitar noise, it is not built as archetype crescendo-finished compositions. Except for the last one, fantastically satisfying Brine Pool that makes me think that the whole half-an-hour-long EP is basically one single, epic track.

And the Raging Winds Do Blow costs 5 EUR.

Check: Brine Pool

Country: France

Genre: guitar post-rock

Label: POST. Recordings

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KAUAN - Ice Fleet (2021)

Led by Anton Belov, KAUAN, a post-metal/post-rock band from the East, have made music for well over a decade now, having debuted back in 2007, and made some serious stirr with an album Sorni Nai six years ago. They are back now with another phenomenal release, based on a true and eerie story, Ice Fleet. 

I was so sure this is a Finnish/Estonian band, after all, those languages are so difficult to master and the music's atmosphere is appropriate, but no, "KAUAN are from Russia, sing in Finnish, and are based in Ukraine, but their music is universally stirring". Which is helpful as the album is meant to tell the real story of ghost ships found in the Arctic and it's "based on real letters, articles and events. The album is separated into seven narrative chapters carefully described with an included libretto". If you want to get more into it, the band offers a series of FB posts that shed some light on this mystery, as well as, and it's not a joke, "a 40-page tabletop RPG adventure" that "will be available in print together with limited LP and CD versions of the album". Cool.

But coming back to music, the album offers the most frozen post-metal-in-spirit post-rock experience you can imagine. The heavy and overwhelming composition are at the same time blackgaze-like smooth and captivating to reflect the Arctic conditions, the temperature, the blizzards. Every sound here has its weight, not only the heavy guitars but also piano keys that resound in the blank spaces of Maanpako like sharp stars that announce disasters (or overwhelming post-metal screams in this case).

Ice Fleet costs 8 USD.

Check: Taistelu

Country: Russia/Ukraine

Genre: dark post-rock

Label: Artoffact Records

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Submotile - Sonic Day Codas (2021)

Submotile is an Italian-Irish band of musician inspired by noisy and psychedelic face of pop-rock music. There's tons of guitar loudness and background noise with light melodies on the foreground. This sums up their second (?), released in April album called Sonic Day Codas.

And as it is the way with this kind of music, the psychedelic is what drives it throughout the whole album. Soothing and ethereal vocals singing out graceful melodies are one thing but what is most attention-worthy is what happens in the background. And it's usually a real storm of distorted and overdrive-full guitars raging their way to be heard. The band surely knows how to use their energy not to overwhelm the compositions and to sound like My Bloody Valentine in the backgrounds (so good in Microdose!) but a neat dream pop band in the foregrounds.

What strikes me the most while listening to this albums is the quality of the noise sound, it is not easy to deliver such a dirty-sounding material without sounding super lo-fi but Submotile did it. There are also some parts that stand out in this fairly homogeneous blend of psychedelia this albums is. Most certainly the whole song Cyanotic with raging guitars, fun melody and such an impressive finish making me think of Rev Rev Rev's Blame. Another thing is that they can also create captivating ballad-like pieces (like Anhedonia for example) for which the level of psychedelic fun is the same although the pace changes to slower one that makes it only more mesmerizing.

Sonic Day Codas costs 6 EUR.

Check: Cyanotic 

Country: Ireland/Italy 

Genre: noisy psychedelic pop

Label: Shore Dive Records

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Olhava - Frozen Bloom (2021)

Olhava is a Russian band that is always somewhere there when I think of blackgaze/metal music from the East, I remember listening to Ladoga last year and how close it was to be posted about on this blog. Finally, with their fourth album Frozen Bloom, I have an occasion to mention them and their fantastically overwhelming music here.

The band admits to changing their modus operandi a bit, having two of the four massive tracks here "traditionally storm-like blackgaze passages" while the other two "are leaning towards more meditative drone experience". It is opened definitely with the former as The Queen of Fields makes a beautiful, in a rapid and heavy way, stream of post-metal music in an ethereal and sacral-like form. The feeling it gives is similar to visiting huge cathedrals the sheer scale of which brings the sense of fearful awe. This is what blackgaze should sound like and the Russians nailed it. The same is true for Frozen Bloom I, a shorter track but not milder one in the slightest.

They are separated by guitar ambient/drone-rich Adrift that gives not only a break from the hurricane of loudness but also, as was meant to be, a way to use the music for meditatative self-reflection. This all is inspired by the sudden changes that happen between winter and spring when early flowers can be surprised by the reappearing cold and "a sudden shift in temperature can leave them petrified and frozen back again like being punished by the Queen of Fields". And everyone can draw a reflection about their lives from this as well.

Frozen Bloom costs 8.99 USD.

Check: The Queen of Fields

Country: Russia

Genre: massive blackgaze

  

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Secrets of the Third Planet - The Space Voyage (2021)

The Russian Secrets of the Third Planet already appeared on this blog with an interesting but short EP last year. Now they are proving that there's little they can't do, with a new, space ambient (in a way) album called The Space Voyage.

The origins of this album reach the Moscow Music Week in 2019 when the Moscow-based band presented their own live music for a Soviet sci-fi movie The Space Voyage from 1936. And as you could guess, the now-released new soundtrack is as old-school sci-fi as possible. There's not much of the modern, bass-saturated space ambient here, it is more about tangible, synth and old technology-like sounds. This is a concept album so everything is set in a similar tone, but Don't Worry Mom! may be just the most fitting music to this concept, making me think of the romantic and kind of naive old sci-fi texts by Lem or Asimov.

This retro approach is what clearly makes this album something unique. And tracks like Sleepy Boy, Signal or the noisier ones at the end of the release can easily function outside of the movie-soundtrack frame.

The Space Voyage costs 10 USD.

Secrets of the Third Planet - Only Love Will Save (2020) EN

Check: Signal 

Country: Russia

Genre: old-school space electronica

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Tape Deck Mountain - True Deceiver (2021)

I discovered Tape Deck Mountain after they released their third album and so it happened that Echo Chamber Blues was one of the highest praised albums of 2018 on this blog. Now the shoegaze/post-punk Californians are back with another great album called True Deceiver.

It's not always easy to write shoegaze-like noisy and psychedelically chaotic songs that at the same time are catchy enough to instantly draw attention to themselves. It is for Tape Deck Mountain though. From the very first track, Screen Savior, the choruses stay with the audience being extremely difficult to get rid of from head. But the peak of the catchiness is reached with the single track Apocrypha, one that is bound to be one of the audio symbols of this year for me. It's also the closest the album gets to Echo Chamber Blues' sound (unlike this noisier and heavier persona we are getting to know now) and I can't fight my love for this release. 

But probably more important thing is that this is a very noisy and psychedelic music. I would not say it's shoegaze, even the artists say that in quotation marks as it's the safest way of describing a noisy music with delicate vocals. But it's closer to psychedelic noise rock than shoegaze, that's for sure. And the noisy part is not just a decoration either, for most of the songs, like for example Nomo, the guitar noisy and beautifully satisfying experiments build the music's core.

True Deceiver costs 8 USD.

Tape Deck Mountain - Echo Chamber Blues (2018) EN

Check: Apocrypha

Country: California, US

Genre: shoegazey psychedelic rock

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Saccades - Flowing Fades (2021)

For those not focused on the artists' names, let me say that Nicholas Wood, the man behind Saccades, is not a random person. For over a decade, Wood has been a half of the KVB duo, a project that has been one of the facade names of the nugaze movement. What's more, his solo project is not a new thing either, as the debut album under this moniker was released back in 2017. Now it is followed by Flowing Fades.

On the released by Fuzz Club Records album, Wood combines his signature dreamy vocals with rather melodic and light-weight synthpop. The synths and bass lines push the compositions forward, although, the pace is more relaxing and chilling than anything else. This correspond well with the dreaminess, making it a pop music as seen by very ethereal and very moody glasses. The tunes here are meant to be more easy-listening than extremely catchy, although that said, there's a couple that stays in one's mind for longer, like Like Everyday, very tropical Heat and dreamy Older Than Tomorrow.

As a great music duo should do, the KVB's Kat Day also helped her friend on the solo album, adding to its atmosphere with her backing vocals on several tracks. This ethereality and overall slowcore-like pace makes the whole thing an extremely relaxing piece of dream pop.

Flowing Fades costs 7 GBP.

Check: Like Everyday

Country: UK

Genre: dreamy synthpop

Label: Fuzz Club

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Orellana - 52 (Remastered) (2021)

At the end of 2017, Martyn Jackson, better known as Orellana, released what appears now as his second album, called 52. Now, the material has been remastered by James Trevascus at Bakewell Audio and it sounds so good I couldn't disregard it (as I usually do with remasters here), especially that I hadn't heard Orellana's music before.

Jackson admits to admire artists such as MONO, Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai, and everyone can recognize those inspirations from the very beginning and its MONO-like slow but massive, dark and dangerous vibes in Water Birth. Otherwise, the compositions on the album are livelier and more energetic. There's still a great deal of massive guitar sounds and tons of mood, but their significance is reduced by faster pace and the omnipresent piano keys that can be both a beautiful ornament of the heavier music or its core elements (as in Still Waters Run Deep).

The second half of the album is opened by its only track with vocals (provided by Mahesh Ragunandan). I See You opens as a sad ballad with piano-based arrangements and ends with a post-rock-like crescendo with heavily ethereal vibes. Most of the time though, the album is about how good the piano works with the post-rock which is perfectly summarized in the finishing track Is That... You? and its mesmerizing finish.

52 (Remastered) costs 4.99 EUR.

Check: Is That... You?

Country: UK

Genre: piano-based post-rock

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