Inwavves - This Summer (2021)

Formerly known as Adasteris (a name that still shows in many places and is now used as a moniker for a small label the artists established), Inwavves is a band from Dublin that "combines elements of alternative metal, shoegaze, post-rock and Boards of Canada-esque electronica into it's own sound" and their (what seems to be the third) album This Summer shows how gracefully they can do that.

The music here is clearly a combination of several music genres. The overall psychedelic rock atmosphere encompasses very dreamy vocals that appear concurrently with metal-like screams (slightly hidden in the backgrounds, so impressive in Siebenundsiebzig) in what can only be described as trip-hop-like dreamy compositions. They can, and usually do, easily get louder and strictly guitar-based (as is the case in This Summer, the title track) and turn into post-rock-like crescendos. Truly, almost every track here sounds as if taken from a different music world, while together they still seem to keep a coherent whole. So there's some neoclassicism in Forever, some dad-rock guitar riffs in Someday Soon or the already mentioned metal-like vocals. This complexity of genres, this eclectic style of the band is something that attracts towards this release.

This Summer costs 7 EUR.

Check: Siebenundsiebzig

Country: Ireland

Genre: eclectic psychedelic rock

Label: Ad Asteris

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Some Became Hollow Tubes - Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (2021)

The Canadian  duo Aidan Girt + Eric Quach (the latter better known as Thisquietarmy) creates some moody guitar-oriented post-rock music and decided to show a new album after two years since the LP debut Keep it in the Ground from 2019.

It may only be an album that contains the results of clearing out and moving along, as they suggest on the Bandcamp page, but it may be well my favourite one from the band. There are two compositions here, both fairly long and this makes it possible for the artists to give themselves some space and time to properly develop this music. In the best post-rock way, they start as subtle instrumental ambient pieces, go through the moody instrumental music phase to finish with good, old guitar crescendo (especially impressive and pretty long in My Eyes Are Itchy And I Can Barely Breathe). The atmosphere in those two is truly outstanding, pretty comparable to the best post-rock acts out there and this album makes me wait for the Quebec artists new music with a pleasant impatience.

Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups costs 7 USD.

Check: My Eyes Are Itchy And I Can Barely Breathe

Country: Quebec, Canada

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Sugar Horse - The Live Long After (2021)

They call themselves "decidedly average" and playing "monotonous rock" and it does sound a bit fishy for me as their sound is far from being average, that's for sure. The Bristol-based band, throughout several years, released three EPs while getting ready to showing their LP debut. This finally happened at the end of August and I must say, the new album The Live Long After struck me with its sound.

I adore how loud their music feels. Thanks to the dispersed quality of the vocals and screams, the guitars seem to be even louder, so that the audience feels the noise in the whole bodies, every bone vibrates each time the music goes up. And it does it a lot - there's quite a lot of quieter parts where the clean vocals or even basses are put in the spotlight, only to get consumed by the rabid guitars sooner than later. This comes from various inspirations the band admits to having: from shoegaze to doom metal to stoner music, every one of them seems to be audible on this album. The quality of the noise is particularly impressive in the first songs of the album (after I Am Not Now - "an anti-hymn based on an ancient Byzantine chant" serving as an intro) with Shouting Judas at Bob Dylan being my personal number one. 

There are also ballads here and I find them a bit less exciting. However, they represent the band's modus operandi, as the artists create things in slower pace, or, as they call it themselves, they "have a complete disregard for urgency", not to mention that even the slowest ballads here have to drown within the lovely ocean of noise eventually.

The Live Long After costs 7.5 EUR (12 AUD).

Check: Shouting Judas at Bob Dylan

Country: UK

Genre: noisy post-metal

Label: Small Pond Records/Art As Catharsis

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Janusz Jurga - IST (2021)

Janusz Jurga not only has released five albums under his own name, he is also a member of the Vysoké Čelo collective and a cofounder of the Opus Elefantum label, one of the best on Polish offstream music scene. His newest album is called IST and provides us with everything we love in his music since 2018 and his debut album Duchy Rogowca.

Jurga's deep electronica/dub/techno music is, as always, filled with "dark, dense and oneiric atmosphere", similar to what one can find in dark ambient and dark folk genres. This mysterious and a little bit unnerving ambiance is seamlessly combined with deep-bass electronica making me think of the Lithuanian Giriu Dvasios, who, just like Jurga does, also draws inspirations from folk music to a high degree. Just like on his best-known release Hypnowald, Jurga decorates the electronic passages with forest-originating field recordings and this is something that couldn't fit this music better. This makes the forest dance in a rather ominous way, dance around you and everyone who's lost within. Another thing is the spoken word vocals that appear in the opening and the finishing tracks, performed by Żebyr, the lyrics make the whole album even deeper and more mysterious. Especially the very last sentence of the release: "I guess it doesn't matter what place we ended up in, we're here".

IST costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Janusz Jurga - Hypnowald (2019) EN

Check: WALD

Country: Poland

Genre: dark folk dub

Label: Opus Elefantum

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Nate Wey - Lost Realities (2021)

Nate Wey's single appeared on this blog already back in September '18 and it's hard to believe that the solo debut LP of Souvenir Driver's vocalist is released only now, three years into the future. His signature dreamy atmosphere and warm vocals prove that it was worth waiting for.

His music is a blend of slow, almost acoustic-like indie pop-rock with ethereal atmosphere, making me think of Rey Villalobos and his House of Wolves in the more peaceful parts. The compositions here are driven by Way's soft, whispering-like vocals and subtly noisy guitars in the backgrounds. But the most impressive here is the artist's ability to write catchy and captivating melodies: songs like Suddenly Tamed, Dark Fountain and the beautiful ballad Ghost Station are what stays with you after the album finishes.

Given the moody but also emotional vibes present in his music, it's no wonder he sings about romance, break-ups but also apocalypse. The latter is very tangible in those rare moments when Wey's music gets louder and more rock-like, changes of pace like this are always surprising and slightly terrifying, however, it means there's no way to get bored with the artist's music. And talking about emotions, I have not heard in a long time a song as emotional as No Harm No Faul, this tragic break-up song is such a tear-jerking anthem someone like Paragraphs could sing. Beautiful.

Lost Realities costs 7 USD.

Souvenir Driver - Brace Yourself (2017) EN

Check: Ghost Station

Country: Oregon, US

Genre: emotional dream pop

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Spirit System - Whatevermind (2021)

The North Carolina-based Spirit System released their second album called Whatevermind, and it includes a very energetic and catchy take on the noisy, dreamy rock. The album was inspired by, as they state on their Facebook account, "pandemic daydreams, birdwatching, astral projection, melancholia, extraterrestrial summer crushes, cats napping, hauntings of the 90s, sunset driving, a snapshot of liminal spaces" and makes a great and airy summary of the last two years.

The band consists of "cozy, stoned, herbal tea drinking, cat loving, late sleepers", what not to love? Their music is less sleepy though, quite the opposite, except for the very dreamy vocals from Laurie Ruroden, there's a lot of lively guitars with very shoegazey moments, appropriate reverbs and instrumental haze, as well as pace-setting drums. The male vocals, on the other hand, add some coldwave/post-punk vibes to the picture, but even those don't obscure the main nature of this music: it's just absolutely immersive and downward atmospheric and the best proof for that is Lavender with it's mesmerizing and airy finish. This is a kind of music that is both atmospheric and pop-like catchy and I appreciate it. Especially when it comes to the loud and satisfying guitar fragments as it is the case in Effrayant for example.

Whatevermind costs 10 USD.

Check: Lavender 

Country: North Carolina, US

Genre: lively dreamgaze

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Horte - Maa antaa yön vaientaa (2021)

There's some dreamy/shoegaze projects from Finland I really enjoy and now, after the likes of Radio Supernova and Mumrunner, it's time for the quartet called Horte. The band released their third album Maa antaa yön vaientaa via Pelagic Records this summer and there's no reason not to try it if you are an ethereal music fan. 

The album's title, as far as I understand, translates roughly to "The earth lets the night shut (itself?) down", referring to the darker but also calmer take on the dreamy music they go with. There's not so much of traditional guitar noise here, the airy vibes come mostly from the atmospheric vocals singing in Finnish (it's always something that in my mind adds to the mystery and attractiveness of foreign music) while music is something that borders slowcore-like indie rock or trip-hop with the way it draws from electronica-influenced backgrounds and experimental add-ons. This concoction makes it feel not only very fresh but also extremely artsy, you can see that the musicians must know well what they do.

In this view, Kun joki haihtuu is a special track, the first that shows the louder, the noisier side of the project, the one that is soaked with the unnerving but also exciting atmosphere. Together with Väisty tieltä they create a satisfying and very shoegaze-like finish, which only proves there's little the band can't carry out.

Maa antaa yön vaientaa costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Kun joki haihtuu

Country: Finland

Genre: trip-hop shoegaze

Label: Pelagic Records

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