GLÖDER - THE FALL (2022)

I have to say that I dig everything Dean Garcia is involved in. From SPC ECO to Blurred City Lights, his name is always a hint that something very interesting is brewing there. This time, together with his Inkraktare's friend Mark Wallbridge and Bloody Knives' Preston Maddox, he makes up the line-up of GLÖDER.

And, this is not surprising at all, he brings the good trip-hop vibes to the project. The music of GLÖDER is based on the smooth, electronica backgrounds and Maddox's vocals that feel like trip-hop filtered through post-punk aesthetics (in Can't Forget) and dream pop's beauty, and it works like a charm. While the songs are not very loud nor fast, they are catchy nevertheless with unique mood and tunes (Elysium Horrors being my favourite here) only to disappear in the noisy finish of Kill What You Love. This is the perfect balance of trip-hop's electronica and noisy genres' ambiance.

THE FALL costs 5 EUR (4 GBP).

Blurred City Lights - Micropolis (2022)

Blurred City Lights - Volker (2018)

SPC ECO - Calm (2017)

Check: Elysium Horrors

Country: UK

Genre: noisy trip-hop

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olim - Ursine (2022)

Olim, or Joe Caswell, creates his solo music to channel the complicated feelings that make up blackgaze and atmospheric black metal genres and produce the "soaring passages of epic post-black melodies that are simultaneously melancholy and uplifting". On his second album under this moniker, Ursine, those are particularly striking.

And it's absolutely obvious that Caswell knows what he does. The compositions here are atmospheric in every meaning of the world while still being pretty fast-paced. The music is overwhelming and monumental, taking no time to develop, but, instead, attacks the audience with the heavy and rhythmic sound from the very beginnings of the songs til the very ends. But, blackgaze-like, the music feels also extremely smooth and inviting. This makes it a perfect trance-like experience as it's really difficult to stop listening until the very end. Ultimately, this is an album that can be enjoyed by both black metal and shoegaze fans equally and I'm here for it.

Ursine costs 4.5 EUR (6 CAD).

Check: Light Crept in Where Once Was None

Country: Canada

Genre: atmospheric black metal

Label: Flowing Downward

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Nossiennes - Liminal (2022)

The shoegazey trio from Bristol, UK, is back with the first release since 2020's EP Vivere (although it seems there has been some line up changes). It appears that they really like this kind of shorter way of expression as Liminal is also a brief EP. Nevertheless, very worth mentioning here.

Their music surely fits the noise pop/rock genre very well. The extremely disperse vocals and psychedelically guitar-rich music generating an impressively noisy atmosphere are the main reasons, but also the lo-fi vibes contribute here. The very clear line of bass makes me think of some post-punk influences but the overwhelming storm of guitar noise leaves little to doubt: it is a noisy rock release.  The artists would probably agree as they states that they are "aiming to break away from pastiche of the 90s into a less obvious fusion". In truth, there are whole songs here that are only the said noise and they make a tasteful intermissions to the cold and withdrawn pop/rock songs that can easily transform into a perfect noisy blizzards like the album's finale in The Unfortunates does.

Liminal costs 3 USD.

Nossiennes - Vivere (2020)

Check: The Unfortunates

Country: UK

Genre: noise rock

Label: Shore Dive Records

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Steve Queralt & Michael Smith - Sun Moon Town (2022)

The RIDE's bassist Steve Queralt and the BBC writer Michael Smith decided to work together on a captivating record called Sun Moon Town. The results are mesmerizing and very much focused on the word which I appreciate a lot.

It gives me overall vibes of Oddfellow's Casino's The Cult of Water - not only due to the spoken word vocals but also thank to the slightly psychedelic, guitar and electronica-oriented moody music that fills the backgrounds (especially in In a Wonderland!). The responsibilities are clear: Queralt wrote and performed the music part, Smith the lyrics and vocals one with particularly attentive way of speaking, making the whole thing sound like an exciting take on an audio book. No wonder that even Queralt says: "Michael’s voice has so much depth and character and I love his eye-rolling, withering view of the world". 

This fantastically mesmerizing cooperation is all about the way the cities and the reality around us changed in recent years, very much in Future Conditional's style we tasted just some weeks ago. In particular, Smith wrote about his return to London, a place that changed a lot in short time. As he states in Glitches: "We’ve sleepwalked into the wrong England, so new it looks like the future, a future no one wants". The music changes throughout the album, from the post-rock like steadily going towards calmer, ambient like album's finale in In a Wonderland that features Smith's son reading Lewis Carroll's poem to make it even more special.

Sun Moon Town costs 5 EUR (4 GBP).

Check: Vespertina

Country: UK

Genre: spoken word electronica

Label: Bytes 

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Tony Anderson - Debris (2022)

A year ago, Tony Anderson appeared on my blog with Nuit, but this time, the Californian artist has something different to offer. Debris is a theme album about the 9/11 attacks and it's structured to feel like a "an experiential and audible documentary".

Apart from the dark and sadness-filled music, the album is filled with fields recordings and samples from news from over a decade ago. We all remember this day, but the album is designed for us to feel as if we were there. As Anderson puts it, "the music isn't supposed to be the focal point - I want you to feel like you're at street level hearing and experiencing these events the way that so many did. If anything, the music is supposed to simply support whatever it is that you need to feel" and it's an absolutely poignant experience. But in the artist's work, it's not only about the difficult topic, the music

that conveys the message is also extremely beautiful, very much thanks to the inclusion of the neoclassical instruments. All of this makes the album both beautiful and airy as well as unnerving and tear-jerking which makes a unique combination indeed.

Debris costs 7 USD.

Tony Anderson - Nuit (2021)

Check: Infinite

Country: California, US

Genre: documentary soundscape

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Flatwaves - Numbra (2022)

Flatwaves are a 4-piece band from Pennsylvania who are really into creating "an atmospheric swirl of contemporary psychedelia and retro shoegaze". With no doubt, they are influenced by the shoegaze icons of the 90s., but apparently also by the more modern artists like A Place Bury Strangers and Nothing. And those inspirations are well-audible on the band's debut EP called Numbra.

I'm loving the sound made by the Americans: it has its weight, its texture, it really does feel shoegaze-like. But the way the songs are composed in shorter forms and the way the vocals often feel, I sense a lot of rock'n'roll or maybe even punk influences here: the music is fast and it doesn't shy away from mesmerizing the audience with its flow, only to end sooner than the listener would want it to. It is also reflected in the lyrics: short and poetic phrases, designed to attract attention. And although with time, the album gets moodier and the tracks are getting longer, the overall impression is that Flatwaves make fast and attractive shoegaze-like music and I really dig it.

Numbra costs 10 USD.

Check: Salad Season

Country: Pennsylvania, US

Genre: noise pop-rock

Label: Abandon Everything Records

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ourhomeisthesky - Reflections (2022)

The Tasmanian artist, known only as ourhomeisthesky, released his first EP under this moniker with the Scottish label vaporgaze back in August. And I must say, although his music has not the highest quality of sound, the compositions here are fantastic and based on pretty interesting music ideas.

The first track gives more instrumental ambient vibes with the use of subtle drones and the beautiful piano keys, but it soon turns into more sinister way with the marching-like pace and metal guitars in the backgrounds. Those electronic guitar sounds transferred to the compositions' back rows are a theme on the album, but what is layered onto them, changes from track to track. Deserted introduces the melancholic vocals, early Crippled Black Phoenix-style, that eventually evolve into full-blown blackgaze distant screams. The further the album gets, the more metal-like the guitars become and it's clear that the Australian artist aims at creating the moodier but also quieter kind of (post-)metal music.

Reflections costs 2.5 EUR (4 AUD).

Check: breathe

Country: Australia

Genre: lo-fi blackgaze

Label: vaporgaze

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Pencey Sloe - Neglect (2022)

Pencey Sloe are based in Paris and they create particularly moody dream pop/rock music. Their second album is called Neglect and was released last summer; right in time to provide us with some of the oneiric tunes for this autumn.

The music here is right on the "path of cinematic soundscapes and beautiful psychedelic colours" as it's stated on the band's Bandcamp page. The focus is certainly put on creating the engaging and thick atmosphere of melancholy and mystery, and it's only the artists' skill that makes it possible to balance it with Diane Pellotieri's beautifully dreamy vocals. Especially tricky since she, as the song-writer, deals here with a heavy theme of self-consciousness and the most existential question of "who am I?" - not so easy to wear it with catchy melodies. There's also more nuance to the album than simply tagging it as dream pop as there are parts that are simply pieces of atmospheric post-rock/instrumental ambient (beautiful Sigh).

Probably the most surprising thing about this album, though, are the guest musicians from the highest world level of... metal music. That's right, two parts of The Run feature Alcest's Neige and Jesu's Justin Broadrick, but I must say that they don't add much to the album. I feel like Pelloteri's vocals and the band's heavier dream pop tunes are right where they should be on their own.

Neglect costs 6.99 USD.

Check: Inner

Country: France

Genre: atmospheric dream pop

Label: Prophecy Productions

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Pale Blue Eyes - Souvenirs (2022)

It's been a year and a half since I posted here about Pale Blue Eyes' single Motionless/Chelsea and it's finally the time when the Totnes-based trio showed their debut LP. The album called Souvenirs is filled with energetic and carefree dreamy indie pop.

"The richest Devon cream-pop" is what they themselves call their own music and it really makes sense. The dreamy indie pop the trio creates has an incredible flow and catchy melodies so it is both smooth and full of flavour. The single tracks like TV Flickers and Chelsea are something you can easily loop on your playlist without getting bored. The lightness of their music is a result of the oneiric but also lively vocals and the synth-rich backgrounds. This is the kind of music that makes you dance and forget about your life even if only for a minute, but still, the kind we all need from time to time.

And the band's music is already appreciated since they have been playing together with bands such as Public Service Broadcasting and Swim Deep and it makes me happy. Artists who can so easily create catchy melodies and enchant them into the easy-listening music deserve that.

Souvenirs costs 9.5 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: Chelsea

Country: UK

Genre: lively dream pop

Label: Full Time Hobby

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Clouds Are Learning - Where Dreams Fade Away (2022)

Leandro Liguori, who makes music as Clouds Are Learning, comes back to the blog with another ultra moody, though not very long, album called Where Dreams Fade Away. His project provides us with striking, beautiful and very calm music experience.

The soundscapes here are subtly noisy and drony in the backgrounds while filled with beautiful, rain-like piano keys in the centre of attention. The melancholia enchanted within this music is so overwhelming that the audience must try as hard as they can not to succumb to it. Because when they do, there's little chance for save. Especially when those particularly tear-jerking moments hit, like the hidden voice samples in The Descent. But the peak of the mood is reached in less "flashy" way, namely, in the slow finish of the title track that really feels like the death of a dream and I love the sadness it comes with.

Where Dreams Fade Away costs 4 USD.

Clouds Are Learning - Slow Cities and Fake Lights (2019)

Check: The Descent

Country: Argentina

Genre: neoclassical soundscape

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Weal - Undivided (2022)

The "Nordic noise noir" band from Denmark, Weal, appeared already on this blog last year with their debut LP called Calm. And it didn't take the artists long to follow it with another well-constructed post-rock album: Undivided. 

 

Although the album is mostly filled with instrumental post-rock music, it is opened by Junky, the only track with vocals here. And I should say, it really works in this song: the melodic psychedelia creeps here into the very guitar-heavy and very loud post-rock genre. And the album stays this way up til the end; I really appreciate the texture of the walls of noise here: they feel extremely overwhelming and crushingly loud. And it all means that the job is well done. But there are moments of more subtle sound, even then, however, the music is not without this kind of poignant nervousness that makes the album exciting (as it is the case with Past to Present). And the whole thing finds its release in the dangerous-sounding (though not that loud after all) finish in La Résistance. A coherent and dark kind of album.

Undivided costs 7 USD.

Weal - Calm (2021)

Check: Junky

Country: Denmark

Genre: heavy post-rock

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Future Conditional - Isotech (2022)

It was such a sad moment when the acclaimed ghost rockers of Piano Magic said their final good byes in a classy way by releasing their last album Closure in 2017. But luckily, the Glen Johnson and Cédric Pin duo makes for a real continuation of the band's legacy and they proved it again after 2018's dark The Burning Skull album.

The project is called Future Conditional, the album is called Isotech and it's clearly very different but also very familiar to any fan of the British band. While the music is definitely shifted towards minimalist electronica/synth kind of vibe, the vocals and, most importantly, the lyrics feel very ghost rock-like. The elephant in the room is most certainly Demolitions, the track that is filled with Piano Magic's urban-oriented melancholia and which, very literally, refers to The Last Engineer from PM's masterpiece Part Monster. I appreciate the musicians' urge to self-development and experimenting and as such, the album can be seen as a continuation of Piano Magic's discography with a sudden shift in style.

This style is seen as a futuristic (I'd say retro futuristic even) idea presented by Johnosn himsself when he said: “I had this idea….well, more of a hope, that, in the future, there might be clubs where androids go to dance and humans are banned". This coldwave-like take on club electronica surely can buy me too. Apart from the familiar faces, there's also a couple of guests on the album with Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha and Trembling Blue Stars' Bobby Wratten and Beth Arzy as the most prominent ones. And their melancholic vocals  match the tone of the album perfectly.

Isotech costs 9.5 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: Demolitions

Country: UK

Genre: ghost synthpop

Label: Second Language Music

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Plastic Mermaids - It's Not Comfortable to Grow (2022)

Since their 2019 album Suddenly Everyone Explodes and their Kraków gig this year, I love the Isle of Wight band and their improvisation-full, psychedelic style of music. After the gig, the artists mentioned that there's a new album coming and now it's official: It's Not Comfortable to Grow is a perfect continuation of this crazy discography.

There's no doubt that Plastic Mermaids love experimenting. With their style of being (think IDLES kind of weirdness) and their music. The latter involves the eclectic, pace-changing and colourful compositions with synthesizer heavy walls of sound that can as easy melt into minimalist electronic passages. There's so much going on this music and everything is simply flying on the back of catchy melodies (Girl Boy Girl, Disposable Love and many more on this album) and lyrics sung by the unique, a bit nervous but also very dream pop-like vocals by Douglas Richards. And it doesn't matter really if they make a faster and catchier tune or a ballad (like It's Pretty Bad), there's always multitude of things going on in the backgrounds and trying to decode it is a huge part of the fun.

But all of this chaotic music has a huge melancholic aftertaste all over (at least, Something Better gets way, way beyond that). The vocals and the music feel genuinely sad, as if a fun and outgoing person who tries to hide their emotional state, But on the album, the lyrics show everything; it is a "profound and emotional exploration of the many facets of heartbreak" as the band's Bandcamp account states. And it is built with very modern-feeling poetry that can be understood probably worldwide with references to environmentalism among others. 

It's Not Comfortable to Grow costs 9.5 EUR (8 GBP).

Check: Something Better

Country: UK

Genre: psychedelic pop

Label: Sunday Best Recordings

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