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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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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