Cicada - 凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White (2025)

Ah, yes, some high-brow entertainment! The Taiwanese small orchestra that features violin, cello, piano keys and an acoustic guitar, came back with another brillant release (there's too many for me to count, really) that transforms geography into music and feels as artistic as mysterious.

The band is around for over 15 years now. In this time, the band "has woven Taiwan’s mountains, seas, and landscapes into sound". This time, the geographical inspirations are broader as the artists draw inspiration from the wintery sceneries of Iceland, Greenland or New Zealand. The cold, the ice, the whiteness, it's all enchanted into classical music notes. However, it's not like we are served with droney white noise, quite the opposite, there is a lot going on. Perhaps not something I'd associate with the winter stillness, but maybe the inspirations were rather subtle.

"Through delicate sound and moments gathered on the road, Cicada turns the disappearance of eternal landscapes into intimate encounters between music and listener". And the music in questions is particularly magical.

凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White costs 15 USD.

Check: 凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White

Country: Taiwan

Genre: orchestral neoclassical

Label: WINDIE Music

Cicada - 走入有霧的森林 Hiking in the Mist (2019)

Cicada - 不在的你們都去了哪裡 White Forest (2017)

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chirrp. - Lurid (2025)

Following the trail of lo-fi shoegaze bands from Asia from last week, this time it's time for a new group from a country with solid shoegaze traditions. chirrp. are young and beautiful but already showing great skills at noising up melodic songs and making them as hazy as possible.

They say that they are "good at kneading broken sounds and space into a soft but solid wall of sound, and then hiding behind it" which is such a lovely way of saying that their music is filled with indie pop-rock melodies with a healthy dose of noise. Accordingly, the warm, twee vocals add to the extremely inviting an open atmosphere of the album. It's clear to me that the artists have fun doing their music and that it must be equally fun to see them performing live. 

Running to the Sun is a perfect example: a perfectly mesmerizing melody supported by suddenly raising guitar noise. No wonder that it's already visibly more popular than the rest of the songs here. The only thing I don't like is that Silhouette is clearly inspired by Slowdive's Dagger, a little too close to the original I feel. I think that the talented artists from Taiwan don't need to use hit melodies that already exist.    

Lurid costs 8 USD.

Check: Running to the Sun

Country: Taiwan

Genre: lo-fi hazy indie rock

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我夢見長頸鹿對我說 [The Giraffe Told Me In My Dream] - Velvet Distortion (2025)

The "overly noisy, overly sweet" band from Taiwan with probably the craziest name out there is back with a new release! Six years after their first EP, the noisy machine gives us another small taste of what they can do with shoegaze music.

And I really mean shoegaze. It's not noisy rock, it's not atmospheric dream pop. It's very loud, very noisy and very dreamy shoegaze, true to the genre's origins. Driven by vocals that are absolutely gorgeous and ephemeral to the limits, making the audience feel as if they were immediate transported to their deepest, most intimate dreams. The music is a perfect fit here: noisy where it should be, euphoric when needed, slow and moody in other parts. A match made in heaven.

The only downside is that, once again, it is only a taste of what the Taiwanese are capable of. Basically three songs (with a short introduction) already shows a lot, but one would like to experience more. And more frequently than once in six years.

Velvet Distortion costs 4 USD.

Check: Glimpse

Country: Taiwan

Genre: true shoegaze

我夢見長頸鹿對我說 [The Giraffe Told Me In My Dream] - Slowfall (2019)

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Green Horizon - The Place I Buried Memories (2021)

I discovered her already four year ago when she released her album 沉睡 , now the Taiwanese artist known as Green Horizon is back with this brilliant release called The Place I Buried Memories. And as always, she brings with her music tons of borderline ethereal and noisy ambient pop.

Her take on the genre is simple: very slow melodies with her beautiful, distorted voice and minimal arrangements in the backgrounds. Those can involve heavy basses and very, very noise guitar drones as it is in the opening track Once, but more characteristic for the artist is basing the compositions on piano keys that dance around very subtle noise in the backgrounds. The way the tracks here are made, makes the audience pay attention to every word the artist utters, every note the piano enchants and every bit of noise.

It's no surprise that her lyrics are filled with heavy and hopeless melancholia, "The rain has fallen all the day/Outside my room and inside me" is just an example, but such a beautiful one too - the songs are fairly simple and yet poetic enough to hide the pain within an artistic form. For me, it makes them only more poignant and telling a lot about the artist's melancholic soul.

The Place I Buried Memories costs whatever you want to pay.

Green Horizon - 沉睡 (2017)

Check: When the Pure Exploded (The Weight II)

Country: Taiwan

Genre: noisy ambient pop

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Watchcamp July-June'20 with Ausklang, Doce Fuegos, I Mean Us, Nevy, Post Park (2020) EN

Ausklang - Abschied

German band playing atmospheric instrumental music ranging from ambient to post-rock. This single, however, is all about dark, slow and super moody neoclassicism that is meant to be featured on the album called Chronos. The single costs whatever you want to pay.

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Doce Fuegos - Variación sobre Juan de Yepes

Solo project from Spain traversing the noise-drone regions with w touch of dark wave. This track was created from the Revista Rock ID magazine and makes a surprising reinterpretation of a song by Niño de Elche, flamenco singer, played with tear-jerking strings and unnerving electronics. Extremely interesting. The single costs whatever you are willing to pay. 

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I Mean Us - 24 Years Old of You

A five people band from Taiwan who play some light dream pop slash indie pop. It's a bit melancholic, a bit airy, a bit danceable. Here in a surprising, marching and pulsating composition. The single costs 2 USD.

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Nevy - Nothing to Be Remembered

Mysterious project from France. Sounding like rock drawing a lot from post-rock, neoclassicism and every ethereal kind of music. You can hear some production flaws but for one of the first tracks ever, it sounds very promising. The track costs whatever you want to pay.

  

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Post Park - Gemeinsam

The second single from the upcoming debut of the Russian project led by Artur Kulakov. Coldwave but one the guitars og which you can actually admire and with darkwave vocals that don't make you cringe. What's the most interesting is the piano version that brings some neoclassical beauty to the whole thing. The two versions of the single cost... as much as 7 USD though.

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Cicada - 走入有霧的森林 Hiking in the Mist (2019) EN

The Taiwanese artists of Cicada were posted about on the blog two years ago with their album called White Forest. They didn't go far from the nature inspirations as the new one entitled Hiking in the Mist is not far stylistically and is equally charming too.

The album was created as "a hiking journal Cicada wrote with music for the mountains in Taiwan", North Dawu Mountain to be precise. The unusual record of a trip because composed for beautifully sounding classical instruments. So we have violins, cello, piano and guitar here, everything is supposed to express the beauty and peace of the visited areas as well their influence on the spiritual and inspiration. The music is a bit meditative, a bit evening-listening-focused and absolutely beautiful.

走入有霧的森林 Hiking in the Mist costs a lot - 15 USD.

http://labandzi.blogspot.com/2017/12/cicada-white-forest-2017-en.html

Check: 降落在金黃色草坡 Sunlit Grassland

Country: Taiwan

Genre: neoclassicism

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我夢見長頸鹿對我說 [The Giraffe Told Me In My Dream] - Slowfall (2019) EN

Another shoegaze EP from the Orient this week. This time it's provided by the Taiwanese band with such a charming name: The Giraffe Told Me In My Dream. How would I overlook it? Especially that Snowfall is interesting also due to its content.

While Collapse showed certainly the heavier side of shoegaze, Giraffes present the airy-sweet one. They describe their music as "overly noisy, overly sweet, doing whatever we could do to tell you a love story", and it's a perfect description. Yes, it is loud but the wall of guitar sounds is here a homogeneous, though sometimes very raw (as in Where We Are Going) background on which the main role is reserved for the vocal - cute, sad and mesmerizing. But it's not everything, also the vocalless parts are worth mentioning as they are ruled by original but also very shoegaze-like at the same time melodies, not to mention the exceptionally impressive finish in Slow.

Slowfall  costs 3 USD.

Check: Slow

Country: Taiwan

genre: Asian shoegaze

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I Mean Us - OST (2018) EN

Both lively and energetic as well as dreamy and oneiric, this is the guitar shoegaze by I Mean Us from Taiwan. "OST" indeed is an official soundtrack made for the situation "between us", as the musicians state, and it overflows with guitar noise and emotional comments about being in relationship.

The artists fascinate with the dialogical vocals, the woman-man disputes always sound well presented like that, this time the soft and war male vocal sounds perfect together with high-pitched, very Far East-like female one. Their tracks also revolve around woman-man topics, the ones to weep to. No wonder they describe their work with some made up genres like "Cry-crycore", "Post-murmur Rock", or "Broken-Hearted". Apart from the laces-like, delicate vocal, they know how to make some loud guitar sounds and even grandeur-filled atmosphere, as in "EYヨ".

But the album offers some surprises too, as in very aggressive "Johnny The Hero", bedroom pop in the following "Dance!" and some trip-hop vibes later. Nevertheless, the album is not balanced, I especially like the beginning and the finishing "死宝貝", but it is still a wort-checking out release.

"OST" unfortunately costs quite a lot, 15 USD.

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WatchCamp: casa, Coma, Places, Stereo Julia, 昴宿 Pleiades (2017) EN

casa - Sad Girls

Acoustic shoegaze, very slow and moody dreampop from Spain. Weeping of a guitar, delicate vocal and extremely sensible artist - Juan Díez. Two tracks for pay-what-you-want.

Coma - Black Moon

Post-rock from Malaysia, everything that should be there: on one hand well-crafted guitar energy, on the other, a unique, local-sounds-inspired approach to the genre. Two long tracks for 7 USD.

Places - Goodbye to Me (Traveller)

Czech dreampop, softly mesmerizing vocal in a tension-developing post-rock. Promising. The single costs 20 CZK.

Stereo Julia - Departure

Electronic backgrounds and post-punk vocals from New York, especially "Parts Untruly" makes a lasting impression. Both songs cost whatever you want them to.



昴宿 Pleiades - 蓋亞 Gaia

Awesome, mystically tuned and very loud post-rock from Taiwan. Great music. Two tracks for pay-what-you-want.

Cicada - 不在的你們都去了哪裡 White Forest (2017) EN

Cicada is a five-piece and from Taiwan, that amazes the audience with their neoclassical music played on guitar cello, violins and piano. Their name as they claim, comes from the fact that cicadas are the kind of animal that is known more from how it sounds then how it looks. Isn't it a somewhat universal truth about any music band?

"White Forest" is a concept album that is supposed to be a tribute to animals, mostly the sea creatures like whales, dolphins, coral reefs and sea turtles but also to cats and mountain birds. Each track is devoted to one of the species, the uneven pace of "Dolphins Leap" imitates dolphins' movements (and is surely going to interest fans of the legendary soundtrack of "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain"),  "Used to be Home" is a story of the ways the coast environment changes and "Whale Family" of, of course, a family of humpbacks.

Musical diversity on the album is noticeable but it's about the pace and melodies that fascinate with the ways to tell stories of things that are both important and tear-jerking. But despite the pessimistic message, the music is more lively than nostalgic, more energetic than scared of grave fate coming. As if it was to say that "life will prevail".

"White Forest" costs 15 USD.

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cat in the case. - SUMMER (2017) EN

Delicate Asian vocals accompanied by loud guitars are my weakness, no wonder cat in the case. caught my attention.

This genuine popgaze from Taiwan is beautifully catchy and soft but also full of loud and surprisingly raw guitars, perfect for the summer as mentioned in the album's title. It is proved in "Summer" the song, in which brutally loud music contrasts with happy lyrics about love and jumping. Less cheerful but still played as a pop song is "Bog Down" - "I pretend to be calm but I'm drowning, I am lost in your eyes".

Just like September that ends summer, also "Something New" brings this nostalgic tone and taste of the incoming end. Worth listening till the last notes.

"SUMMER" costs 2.50 USD.

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Green Horizon - 沉睡 (2017) EN

Green Horizon is a nickname of Taiwanese Ku Fang Yu, who "even if tired of sleeping, can sleep". Sounds like definition of a dreampop artist. Even the title of the album means basically "Sleeping".

The album is an oneiric walk through sad dreams of a delicate girl. It's peaceful like an old, well-established feeling of hopelessness that makes every failure treated with just a shrug. First of all though, like always and everywhere, it's about broken love. "The sad dreams will last / The sunshine is fading / While you’re coming into my mind" sings Ku Fang Yu in "The Sad Dreams Will Last".  Sometimes even so hopeless statements can't be argued with.

Especially when they are sung with a delicate, quiet voice accompanied by peaceful keys and ambient backgrounds. Green Horizon is a great example of how to use ambient pop to make people fall in love with your sadness. Also the artist's Instagram is worth checking to dive into an exotic routine from the other half of the world.

"沉睡" is available for "pay-what-you-want".

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