Category Archives: Shoegaze Spotlight
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Medicine is a shoegaze/noisepop band from Los Angeles, CA. The band is generally considered to have had two distinct incarnations. The band was first formed in 1991 by guitarist, vocalist and programmer Brad Laner (aka Electric Company), based on some four track recordings Laner was working on in 1990. After showing the tapes to some industry people, he was told that if he formed a band that sounded like the tapes, he could get a record deal. Laner then assembled a band of musicians from the L.A. music scene. Medicine’s early lineup included Laner, drummer Jim Goodall, guitarist Jim Putnam, bassist Eddie Ruscha, and singer Annette Zilinskas, an original member of The Bangles. Putnam, Ruscha, and Zilinskas eventually left; the latter was replaced by former Fourwaycross singer Beth Thompson. On the basis of the original demo, the band got signed to Creation Records, becoming the first American band to do so.
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Nightmare Air is an LA-based trio fronted by the dynastic duo of Dave Dupuis (guitar, vocals) and Swaan Miller (bass, vocals). Dupuis, a veteran of L.A. shoegazers Film School (Beggars Banquet) and Miller, whose stark early-2000s acoustic album on Important Records melted hearts and faces everywhere, meticulously layer indie boy-girl harmonies, psych noise loops, fuzz-ripped bass and howling rock power into a fresh, upbeat sound all their own. In 2012 Dave and Swaan teamed up with Detroit heavy hitter Jimmy Lucido on drums to create a live show that is not to be missed.
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The Daysleepers formed in November 2004 in Buffalo, New York by Jeff Kandefer. The band came together when Jeff (Vocals/Guitars/Bass VI/E-Bow) gathered some friends – Scott Beckstein (Bass/Keyboards/Bass VI), Elizabeth Kandefer (Vocals/Keyboards/Bass) and Mario Gimbrone (Drums/Percussion) – from other bands in the local music scene that shared his love of ambient, ethereal indie rock.
The Daysleepers self-released their first two EPs, Hide Your Eyes (December 2005) and The Soft Attack (October 2006), on their Rain Delay Music imprint. Hide Your Eyes (possible an homage to Slowdive’s Hide Yer Eyes) won the band many fans around the world, selling out the first pressing, as well as garnered praise from shoegaze legends such as Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead of Slowdive. It also hit No. 1 for several weeks on Tonevendor’s Top 20 Record Sales list. The Soft Attack EP showed a heavier side of the band’s sound, with ethereal guitars spinning way into outer space, and vocal melodies that hauntingly soar to new heights.
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Melody Prochet, French pop aficionado and multi-instrumentalist (formerly of The Narcoleptic Dancers and My Bee’s Garden), has embraced dream pop with her Melody’s Echo Chamber project. The classically trained Parisian recruited Tame Impala front man Kevin Parker to produce her … Continue reading →
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Engineers are a British shoegaze/dream pop band, formed in London in 2003 by Simon Phipps (singer, guitarist), Mark Peters (bassist, guitarist, keyboardist), Dan MacBean (bassist, guitarist) and Andrew Sweeney (drummer). After the release of their second album Three Fact Fader in 2009, MacBean and Sweeney left the band, and were replaced by well-known electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss, bassist Daniel Land (who also fronts the band Daniel Land & the Modern Painters), and drummer Matthew Linley (who also records under the name Gilbert), making up the current line-up of the band. Engineers’ sound has been described as “hazy, ethereal, and atmospheric,” and the band often cites the works of Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins, Spiritualized, and Pink Floyd as influences.
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Formed in London in 1986, A.R. Kane was essentially the partnership of Alex Ayuli and Rudi Tambala. Arguably the most criminally under-recognized band of their era and often credited as the creators of dream pop, the British duo A.R. Kane anticipated virtually all of the key musical breakthroughs of the 1990s a decade before the fact, with the roots of everything from shoegazing to trip-hop to ambient dub — even those of post-rock — lying in their dreamy, oceanic sound. Their lyrics, which frequently dealt with such topics as water/oceans, love, colours, childhood, and dreams, were often surrealist. Their music was usually danceable, due in part to its strong dub influence, and ethereal. Ayuli and Tambala were also part of the one-off recording collective M|A|R|R|S, which included the group Colourbox, in 1987. Their song “Pump Up the Volume” became a surprise worldwide number one chart hit.
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Born in the dense heat of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States in 2002, Belong is a collaborative effort between experimental music duo Turk Dietrich* and Michael Jones. The duo’s sound blends ambient and glitch styles, with a focus on guitar textures. Comparisons have been made to current electronica artists like Fennesz and Tim Hecker, as well as the early 1990s shoegazing sound attributed to bands such as My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Guitars and synthesizers are run through various effects to produce the band’s unique sound. Melodies are enveloped in a sort of aural atrophy, forever repeating their blurring calls. At the end, all that remains is a noise so potent it leaves the sonic equivalent of the sun’s imprint on a retina.
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Tamaryn are a shoegaze and dream pop duo from San Francisco, formed in 2008. The band is fronted by Tamaryn, originally from New Zealand, in partnership with her longtime collaborator and San Francisco native Rex John Shelverton. The roots of this musical partnership started growing over a decade ago. “Rex and I met in New York City where I was living in the early ‘00s,” says Tamaryn. “We bonded instantly and over time started sharing ideas for songs. Eventually we began to collaborate on some recordings, traveling between coasts until the project inspired me to move to California indefinitely.” These activities culminated in a slew of singles and the Led Astray, Washed Ashore EP. In 2010, record label Mexican Summer released Tamaryn’s critically acclaimed LP The Waves, a collision of hypnotic psychedelia and bittersweet dream pop.
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Tears Run Rings is a four piece American shoegaze band consisting of members Laura Watling (vocals & bass), Matthew Bice (vocals & guitar), Ed Mazzucco (guitar) and Dwayne Palasek (drums). Dwayne, Laura, and Ed have been collaborating in various incarnations since the mid-1990s, most notably in the indie twee-pop outfit The Autocollants. Tears Run Rings was born out of an Autocollants reunion show in 2005.
In 2007 the band released their first EP as Tears Run Rings, called A Question and an Answer. One year later they teamed up with Matthew Bice and released their debut full length album, Always, Sometimes, Seldom, Never, which was released on the beloved shoegaze label Clairecords in April 2008. Matthew and Ed also founded the well-known indie record label Shelflife Records together, which boasts acts such as Thieves Like Us and The Radio Dept. Tears Run Rings has a talent for marrying hauntingly beautiful textures and pop melodies, and Always, Sometimes, Seldom, Never was very well received, drawing comparisons to classic gaze bands like Slowdive, Moose, Chapterhouse and Kitchens of Distinction.
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Young Prisms is the San Franciscan quintet of Jordan Silbert, Matt Allen, Stef Hodapp, Ashley Thomas and Gio Betteo. Despite the “stoner-slacker” reputation the band picked up upon arriving on the scene in 2009, it was clear by the time their debut LP, Friends for Now, was released in 2011 (Kanine Records), that this band was anything but a collective of lazy couch surfing stoners. In the space of 3 short years, the band has released four split 7 inches, a handful of 12 inches, a cassette single, a full length of demos and extras, as well as two LPs – the above-mentioned Friends for Now, and 2012’s gorgeous In Between (Kanine Records). If “slacker” means “purveyor of angst-ridden badass psychedelic rock”, then the Young Prisms technically do qualify.
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Echo Lake is the songwriting and recording duo Thom Hill and Linda Jarvis, who met studying at art school in South London. Upon realizing Linda’s ex-choir girl’s voice perfectly suited Thom’s Brian Wilson-meets-Galaxie 500 productions, the two set about working on the new project, forming Echo Lake in late 2010. The act was picked up by cult London blog/label No Pain In Pop and the resulting, acclaimed debut EP Young Silence quickly caused a press feeding frenzy.
Fourteen months later (June 2012) the band released their debut album, Wild Peace, via Slumberland Records in the US (and co-released with No Pain In Pop in Europe). The debut LP is a considered, singular work brashly proving right all the hype. Marrying Thom Hill’s huge, dense production style with countless interweaving layers of Linda Jarvis’ emotive and cavernous voice, the tracks seem to float like the densest of mirages, maintaining a majestic indie-rock classicism. It’s a uniquely direct and committed take on the melodic side of psychedelia’s pop frontier; the sound of a band flying close to the sun with just their debut release.
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Exlovers is a dreamy 5 piece outfit based in London. The band self-describes their shoegazey pop sound as “the kind of diaphanous musical euphoria that can only come from the most damaged of places”. The description isn’t far off the mark; there is a nostalgic, lonely quality to their music that cannot be disputed or ignored. Exlovers’ music, particularly their 2012 debut LP Moth, is reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, Pavement and Teenage Fanclub, all filtered through a refined sensibility for sweetly resounding boy-girl harmonies and pop hooks.
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Landing is a group of 5 friends that are based in Connecticut, USA. Formed in the summer of 1998 from the ashes of a musical project started by Aaron Snow and Adrienne Snow (called May Landing), the band quickly grew to include members Dick Baldwin (guitar, bass), Adrienne Snow (vocals, synthesizer) and Daron Gardner (bass, drums) in the fall of that year. At this time the band shortened their name to Landing. They self-describe their sound as equal parts ambient, shoegaze, slo-core and space rock.
Many weird shows took place in those early years, including a punk rock tour in the summer of 1999 in their smashed up, crappy van and many underground, semi-secret “Home Shows” in the Snow’s living room. Throughout those first few years, Landing released some albums that documented their beginnings. Centrefuge EP (Music Fellowship) was released in 1999 and includes many of the home recordings that Aaron did before the band was formed, along with the very first music that Landing made as a group.
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Emerging from an incongruous Belfast music scene, Girls Names formed in January 2009 as a duo (Cathal Cully and Neil Brogan), with their first gig booked before they had even played together. Expanding to a three piece some months later with the addition of Claire Miskimmin on bass, Girls Names seemed out of step with their surroundings, but found peers across both sides of the water, unabashedly harking back to the early/mid-eighties shadow world of Black Tambourine, Felt and the Sound of Young Scotland.
The sound of outlying indie pop sitting just off-center, Girls Names is a Postcard from the margins, just as indiepop should be, and once was. Not willfully nostalgic, Girls Names instead effortlessly channel that same outsider spirit that defined K Records, Slumberland and everyone else that didn’t care if the world listened. They quickly streamlined their sound, forging their own self-styled “disposable noise pop”. Masked under the gloom and fuzz are subdued bittersweet vocals and melodic hooks, aching with the concerns of all of youth – love, death, escapism.
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Lilys began as a trio in Washington, DC in 1988, the brainchild of singer/songwriter and sole constant member Kurt Heasley. Lilys are a notoriously difficult band to categorize, likely due to their ever-changing line-up (at last count, Lilys went through over 72 members while active) and nomadic tendencies. Throughout the early 1990s, Heasley wandered from Washington DC, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Colorado, back to Pennsylvania, and so on; every environment change often involved a line-up change, so the band dynamic was always fresh and innovative.
Kurt (known to friends and colleagues as “Wally”) Heasley was just 17 years old in 1988. He was working at a club in DC when he recorded his first demo and gave it to Slumberland Records’ head honcho Mike Schulman. Schulman was duly impressed by the lad and released the Lilys’ first 7 inch single, “February Fourteenth”, on Slumberland in 1991. The title of the track was a tribute to My Bloody Valentine, one of Heasley’s major influences. Stylistically and influentially, the shoegaze sound was an inspiration for Heasley from the outset.
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