Fragile Thoughts - Broken Strings & Empty Hearts (2021)

Last year, Polish band Give Up to Failure released one of the best album's of the year, one filled with genuinely dark and heavy shoegaze. At the beginning of 2021, Krzysztof Mlynczak, the guitarist of the band, showed that he really digs this atmosphere with an EP/single called Broken Strings & Empty Hearts.

The very short album is filled with dark neoclassicism. The piano and violins sounds create an unsettling, though beautiful, atmosphere of sadness and melancholy. It's not a loud music but there's a feeling that it can soon explode (and actually does in Pointless). The super subtle electronica and guitar noises in the backgrounds add up to the music's multidimensional nature but what matters most is the unbelievable dense atmosphere packed in those 10 minutes. The further you go, the more post-rock the music becomes and it's such a good forecast for Mlynczak next works. Hopefully soon.

Broken Strings & Empty Hearts costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Pointless

Country: Poland

Genre: neoclassical post-rock.

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Zetra - The Wanderer (2020)

Zatra is a post-punk/gazy duo from London who lately released some intriguing stuff. I liked their EP from 2020 but what really caught my attention was... an EP from 2020. Towards the end of the year, they released a themed EP called The Wanderer.

This album was, naturally, written in isolation during the lockdowns, however, its focus is not on this experience but on something quite different: the nature of Christian holidays and their beginnings "when native European gods and traditions were assimilated and appropriated into a festival now celebrated across the world". So we have something about Odin, something about Sol Invictus here and all this sort of jazz. Quite special for this kind of music (sounds like a metal theme to me) - a blend of delicate, pop-like melodic and dreamy at the same time vocals with shoegazy coldwave and noise rock in the backgrounds.

In Hanged God, we can hear fitting long and desolated passages of guitar sounds as well as wavy electronic devices and it's blends into the cold noise rock of the rest of the album. The balance in the form of the angelic vocals (especially in the ballad-like Before I Dissolve) is like light to the music's shadow and fits perfectly the visual side of the project.

The Wanderer costs 2 GBP.

Check: Hanged God

Country: UK

Genre: dreamy noise rock

Label: Death Waltz Recording Company

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Tapes and Topographies - Inoculations (2020)

I almost missed this, but Tapes and Topographies is a moniker of Todd Gautreau a.k.a. Sonogram who for me is better known as the leader of Crushed Stars, a duo responsible for the brilliant album Go Dark, Canaveral from two years ago. Here, within his solo project, he's busy with casting spells with ambient music and he does it very regularly as Inoculations is already his second album in 2020.

It's unbelievable how beautiful Gautreau's music is. The way the subtle, extremely delicate noise goes together with the elements of neoclassicism and soundscape'y vibes is something one can hardly find anywhere but also longs for all the time. It's very, very sad but also quite constant in this sadness as if it was morning about something that happened a long time ago. No bursts of depression but long, peaceful melancholia. I absolutely love it.

Inoculations costs 7 EUR.

Check: The Leaving Feels the Same

Country: Texas, US

Genre: melancholic ambient

Label: DRONARIVM

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Weal - Calm (2021)

"Noise rock noir" from Scandinavia, the Copenhagen-based Weal are debuting with their long-play album now, at the beginning of 2021. The quartet's music balances between indie rock, shoegaze and several other noisy genres and can be admired on Calm.

The base of their material is indie rock but it's not an ordinary one, that's for sure. There's a lot of dirt and noise all over the place with coarse guitars taking the main role from time to time too. But the way the vocals are constructed (also with a guest female artist I assume) makes me think that the main objective was to be melodic and catchy and then to cover it with a thick layer of psychedelic noise. This is well visible in the great single track Night Drive.

I especially like it when the tracks gain momentum and become very noisy, as it is the case in the cleverly entitled (and very metal-like) In Sickness and Hell, in the angelically ethereal Babylon and very post-rocky Silent King. Also, an interesting fact for Polish readers, the band includes two artists called Niedziella Nørgaard so I'm sensing some Polish roots there. Not that it matters but it's a fun fact.

Calm costs 13 USD.

Check: Night Drive

Country: Denmark

Genre: noise rock

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Seasurfer - Zombies (2020)

Seasurfer are a German duo made of Dirk Knight responsible for the music and Apolonia, the lyricist and vocalist. Together they create their own take at the ethereal and synthy dream pop music that makes the filling of their new album Zombies.

As the project's name suggests, their music is very wavy. The coldwave and post-punk influences here cannot be denied with the dreamy and the cold cooperating (or fighting each other) in every second of the release. No wonder they call it "dream punk". Actually, the dreaminess of their sound is solely the result of the extremely dispersed and very densely projected vocals that create a real sea of ethereality. And even in faster songs, as in Tears & Happiness, there's no doubt it's still dream-oriented. Even in the very much darkwave compositions like Drifting.

If for someone it's not enough of the band's music, the album actually contains a bonus EP or an appendix if you will, a mini album called The Dreampop Days with songs created in cooperation with Elena Alice Fossi, an Italian vocalist. Together, Zombies stands for almost 2 hours of cold and dreamy feast.

Zombies costs 13 EUR.

Check: Zombies 

Country: Germany

Genre: dream punk

Label: Reptile Music

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Magic Wands - Illuminate (2020)

The Californian Magic Wands released their debut album almost a decade ago, now it's time for a new release with Illuminate's catchy, dreamy and somewhat cold tunes showed to the world at the end of the last year.

Their blend of the indie pop's liveliness, the post-punk's vibes in the backgrounds and the dreampopish atmosphere appeared already on my blog three years ago with their third album Abrakadabra. With the new album, the artists keep digging into the very catchy and ethereal way of creating music, basing them on synth-minimal and coldwave-like flat backgrounds. It makes it sooo easy to be attracted towards this atmosphere of the futuristically magical dance trances from the 80's (hey, no wonder they wear those space-like glasses). 

Some of the songs here stay with the listener longer, I'm mostly thinking about Honeymoon and my favourite Queen of the Gypsies with its heavy ethereal mood combined with the magical, or perhaps even mythological, theme of the Roma people. Illuminate makes a light and catchy work for sad people who want to dance.

Illuminate costs 11.11 USD.

Magic Wands - Abrakadabra (2018)

Check: Queen of the Gypsies

Country: California, US

Genre: dreamy synthpop

Label: Majestic 7

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SPOOL - cyan / amber (2020)

I've always been reluctant to say there's something like Japanese dream pop/shoegaze subgenre, but in fact, the bands playing ethereal pop from Japan and the Orient tend to have their unique sound. The Japanese SPOOL are great example here and as the all-female band released their second album called cyan / amber, I am more and more convinced.

It is sung in Japanese and maybe it's part of the unique vibes, together with the rather high-pitched, Anime-like (sorry for narrow cultural perspective) vocals provided by Ayumi Kobayashi, that, at the beginning at least, are more lively and carefree than moody and atmospheric. But that's not a problem with the tweepop, lo-fi dream pop guitar arrangements that, together with the omnipresent ethereal backing vocals, take care of the dreamy part of the project. When also vocals get to this level of ethereality, as in Suicide Girl or in my favourite ghost, the dream pop-ish ecstatic state is way closer and it feels so great. 

ghost is actually special as, being the longest one, shows how well the musicians handle the mesmerizing, psychedelic passages if they give themselves a bit more time and space in a track. The whole album makes an almost-40-minutes-long dreamy trip lead by the beautiful and chic vocals, cute and catchy.

cyan / amber costs ¥2,100 (17 EUR).

Check: ghost

Country: Japan

Genre: Asian dream pop

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