Aglet Eaters

Coming Home: Alcest

I started a lot of posts about bands who I once felt were incapable of making a flawless album, who have then gone on to do it anyway. I never finished those posts, because I’m no longer a subscriber to the opinion that critics need to criticise. There is way too much music available and accessible to spend time on putting down someone’s work. Best let the ones who like it like it and keep my subjectivity to myself. I still love the bands, I’ll still go see them if the opportunity presents itself, and I still want them to do well.

That said, let’s talk about Alcest, who REALLY haven’t made a bad album in the decade+ that I’ve been following them. This is a reality that I only accepted recently when I moved on from Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde and Ecailles de Lune – the two albums I know by heart – and decided to more mindfully listen to the four albums and one EP that they released after. Sure, I’d listened to Les Voyages de l’Ame, Shelter, Kodama, Spiritual Instinct and Le Secret several times over shortly after their release, but never with the same presence I reserved for the first two releases. That is until this year.

<a href="https://alcest.bandcamp.com/album/souvenirs-dun-autre-monde">Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde by Alcest</a>

I wonder if it’s because Alcest and I have walked a similar evolutionary path, and while Souvenirs and Ecailles are what spoke to me back in 2010, it’s Voyages and Kodama that resonate with me today. I’ve been vibing more ‘heavy’ these past few months, and dreampop isn’t doing it for me (shoegaze is fine, as always). I’m really getting into music with more WEIGHT. It’s nothing new – I’ve been loyal to HANL and Jesu for a while – BUT metal and scream vocals were a different beast.

<a href="https://alcest.bandcamp.com/album/cailles-de-lune">Écailles De Lune by Alcest</a>

Yet here I am today, talking about Alcest while listening to Møl and I KNOW I would not have been able to appreciate the latter 5 years earlier (so it’s convenient that they only came into existence 4 years ago…) when I was more into the sweetness and light, and not yet ready for the acid and lead. It’s not that surprising either – the appeal of shoegaze was always the ‘beautiful noise’ and the ‘search’ for a delicate melody under waves of distortion. But I don’t want to float anymore, I want to sink under the weight of noise.

<a href="https://alcest.bandcamp.com/album/kodama-luxus">Kodama (Luxus) by Alcest</a>

Back to Alcest. I maintain they’re masters of this technique, though from memory I can recall metal message boards being vehemently opposed to the change in style from Amesoeurs. I can understand that perspective today, in the light of my own take on their debut but I wonder if that view has changed (I’m too lazy to go find out). Shelter, Voyages and Kodama sound different but I couldn’t tell you why. When they came out, I lost the hooks they hid in their tracks regardless of how often I listened to them and I’d go back ‘home’ to Souvenirs and Ecailles. That’s OK – I wasn’t ready for ‘Les Jardins de Minuit’ then. But I am today.

<a href="https://alcest.bandcamp.com/album/spiritual-instinct">Spiritual Instinct by Alcest</a>

This is the kind of evolution I can get behind, and this is is why I come back to albums I may have originally ignored, dismissed or – if I was still an on trend critic – been non-positive about. I have the internet’s content saturation to thank for my liberation from my obligation to comment on albums at the time of release. We need to grow, ruminate and then revisit. We’re not always ready for a sound at the moment it comes out. Maybe we feel the tickle of an emotion we can’t place. The unfamiliarity makes it so we can’t process what we hear. Then maybe years later it ‘clicks’ and suddenly, everything makes sense.

<a href="https://alcest.bandcamp.com/album/les-voyages-de-l-me">Les Voyages De L'Âme by Alcest</a>

Full disclosure: I’m still not ready for Sunbather.

30 songs that blew my mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 6

In the three years it took to complete this list, you may have heard of some of these.

Beat Around The Bush (feat. Somersault) – Nothing

I had to have a Nothing track on this list, and of course that track would be from their first and finest (don’t @ me for speaking facts) Guilty of Everything.

Every song speaks to someone, but not everyone could tell you why. This entry was a toss-up between ‘Beat Around The Bush’ and ‘Somersault.’ ‘Somersault’s matter-of-fact simplicity speaks for us. ‘Outside the door the world’s alive/I’ll stay and hide on the other side’ – an empathetic companion at the best of times – and more so in 2020.

‘Beat Around the Bush’, meanwhile, speaks to us – of an experience, alien and unfamiliar, but one that still resonates. We understand what’s being talked about even though we haven’t quite lived it ourselves. ‘God in men, our souls are spent/can’t be saved, can’t repent’ – if you can’t relate to the religious overtones, you can feel them. It may not tell our story, but we can sit by it and listen.

Mind the Wires – Tears Run Rings

Say what you will about music piracy and try to convince yourself that you wouldn’t download a car, but I owe a debt of gratitude to the bootleggers of the mid 2000s who put shoegaze and dreampop mixtapes up to torrent. I downloaded music then, so I know what to pay for now. There is no way I would have chanced upon Tears Run Rings (among other new-gaze classics) without the mixtape creators, their torrents, their seeders and the mediafire links buried in obscure blogspots.

It’s a shame ‘Mind The Wires’ came out when it did – in a label-free music non-industry – because it has all the elements that could have made it an iconic shoegaze track if it had come out fifteen years earlier: lyrics hovering above the range of human comprehension, a haunting vocal hook, melancholy and rapture.

Most incredibly, and like most of their tracks, ‘Mind The Wires’ was recorded remotely. More about their process of creation and AE’s stab at what the lyrics are saying here.

Low/Lilitu – Blueneck

Please spare me your righteous anger as, for the fourth time in this series, a single spot is occupied by more than one song. You should be grateful, if anything, to receive more bang for your internet buck.

Sonic siblings ‘Low’ and ‘Lilitu’ sit three songs apart on Blueneck’s otherworldly The Fallen Host. These are songs that are so expansive, so intricate and layered, they leave you feeling like you’ve lived an entire lifetime by the time they end. Sated, fulfilled, self-actualised, you wait to ascend to a higher plane. But instead of nirvana, you’re met with silence. Then the dull drone of reality fades in as you descend back to the mundane.

PROTIP: avoid the inevitable deception AND get a bonus sleep aid by playing ‘Low’ and/or ‘Lilitu’ once you’re in bed. I’m pretty sure their cosmic vibrations are in tune with the human body. Melt into moksha and stave off the real world for another 8 hours.

Restrained in a Moment (I Love You) – The Royal Family and The Poor

You don’t know this, but I’m a YouTube influencer. In a time before streaming was a thing, I wanted a space where some of my obscure, overlooked discoveries could be preserved*. There’s a whole debate to be had on the ethics of copyright and intellectual property, but the truth is that a) at the time there was no more convenient way to share a song with someone than through a YouTube link, and b) as mentioned, if it wasn’t for the songs shared by other people then, it’s unlikely I’d be supporting my bands financially today.

I don’t even know how I found The Royal Family and the Poor. it was probably during the phase when I was excavating fossils of the 80s British indie scene. On first listen ‘Restrained in a Moment’ was a masterpiece. Why did it move me so? I was at a loss for words.

When I uploaded it to YouTube, the comments started coming in – they still do today – and they put words to the feeling I couldn’t describe. Of the handful of videos I shared, this one gets the most heartfelt, emotional and grateful response. I have the words now, but to appreciate the intimacy of the song, just click the video above and go through the comments.

*Fun Fact: among these obscurities was pinkshinyultrablast’s ‘Blaster’ which was subsequently pulled down when Umi released and they became a big deal.

Makes No Sense – Soundpool

Do you know what really makes no sense? There is no other song in the world that sounds anything like the heady disco-shoegaze Soundpool invented with this one track. I would give anything to have an entire album that is composed up of nothing but this goosebumpy nostalgia for a time I never knew. The rest of Mirrors in Your Eyes comes close but even it can’t replicate, the unfiltered warmth, joy and sparkle of ‘Makes No Sense.’ It’s like a comet – you’re lucky if you experience it in your lifetime. Yet the eternal question remains: how can something so unique sound so, so familiar?

—

Spin with me: How I met Peripheral Vision

The strength of Peripheral Vision lies in the indisputable fact that it is perfect.

I dont even know why I bother to keep up with new music when:

a) it’s impossible

b) we all know I’m going to miss out on whatever’s really meaningful because:

it’ll be drowned in the infinite deluge of daily new releases
my desperate yet passive listening habits mean I’ll blank on it even if it does find its way to my headphones.

Despite the hopelessness of the situation, I do keep a tiny, irregularly updated, and frequently overlooked list of bands/tracks that have caught my attention. It’s a list written on actual paper and therefore prone to the vagaries of the physical world eg. spilled cups of milky tea, inkstains, and general wear and tear from natural forces of erosion.

One of the tracks written on this loved-but-not-consulted scrap of paper is ‘Diazepam’ by Turnover – a song I heard more than once on DKFM, duly noted/confirmed on my list each time and did not research any further for reasons I can only ascribe to the non-existence of free will (just roll with it, Sartre).

One eternity later, still listening to DKFM, I find myself captivated by a dreamy little song that I learn is called ‘Dizzy on the Comedown.’ I see that it is by a band called Turnover that I have obviously never heard of before, because if I had I would surely, definitely, 100% have looked into them immediately.

If you think I am lying to myself, you are correct, and have been paying attention. I appreciate this, let’s be friends, but please stay where you are. I dont think either of us enjoys meeting new people.

I turn to my trusty parchment, yellowed with age and crumbling to dust, and raise my quill – but wait! what’s this? Staring back at my myopic eyes is the name Turnover, already inscribed not once but TWICE!

Ooo, you didn’t see that coming.

It turns out that not only had my past self already made a note of ‘Diazepam’, she had also had the good sense to add ‘Humming’ to the list. Yet my idiot future/present (and now also past) self needed to be struck by ‘Dizzy on the Comedown’ before making any sort of move towards further exploration. At this point, the shoegaze universe had moved way past ‘giving a sign’ and gone straight to ‘we’re going to have to hit her with the signboard.’ (it’s super effective, btw)

Coincidentally, yet unsurprisingly, all three songs are off Turnover’s iconic album Peripheral Vision. My dawdling has meant that I’m way too late to the release party but I’ve made up for that lapse by listening to it incessantly since then.

The strength of Peripheral Vision lies in the indisputable fact that it is perfect. It is a vial of nostalgia that hasn’t aged a day since 1994 – which is impressive because it was released in 2015. Though it is never overtly implied, the throwback hangs heavy in lyrics like carelessly you pass the hours, humming songs you used to sing when you were young as well as in familiar themes of anxiety and frustration. Like the 90s, it pits impossibly cheery melodies against lyrics that are nothing short of tragic or, of course, angst-ridden.

But this isn’t your garden variety existential, adolescent angst. And why should it be? It’s 2020 and we’re no longer deluded enough to believe that ‘angst’ is a phase reserved for frustrated teenagers. If anything, the angsty kids of the 90s have grown into the still-angsty adults of the 2000s. In a world that’s progressively going to pot, ‘New Scream’ is an ode to adult ennui, to the obligation and pretense that ‘everything’s ok’ when clearly, evidently, it is not:

Can I stay at home? I don’t want to go
I don’t want to wake up till the sun is hanging low
Stay up through the night, sleep away the light
Just another dream I had that’s better than my life

Adolescent dreams gave to adult screams
Paranoid that I won’t have all the things they say I need
What if I don’t want a pattern on my lawn?
All I know is something’s wrong

‘New Scream’ is a lot more subtle than ‘Diazepam’ and ‘Dizzy on the Comedown’ when it comes to talking about mental health, but the latter two hide these bleak references behind delightfully upbeat melodies. ‘Diazepam’ has guitars twinkling over it from start to finish, but it’s someone sinking into depression and worrying about how much of an emotional burden they are to their partner who they’re convinced will eventually have had enough and leave.

It was always a dream just to know you
Sometimes I find I can hardly speak your name
I know one day I’ll come home and I’ll find you
It’s just a matter of time till you break from the strain

‘Diazapam’ finds a mirror in ‘Dizzy on the Comedown’ . You’d be forgiven if, even by the twentieth listen, you hear nothing on ‘Dizzy…’ but the innocent euphoria of young love. But listen a little closer and you’ll realise something’s been off from the very beginning:

Up and down like a red rubber ball,
You’re always back and forth like a clock on the wall
…
If I stay do you think you could change your routine?
I know a trick I’ve always got a few up my sleeve

And right to the chorus

Won’t you come here and spin with me?
I’ve been dying to get you dizzy.
Find a way up into your head,
So I can make you feel like new again.

But it’s still a charmer. It’s a reversal of the dynamic on ‘Diazepam’, with our protagonist doing all he can to support his partner’s moods and insecurities, and it’s only with this reading that we realise that this isn’t quite the naive infatuation initially perceived, but a sturdier, almost desperate, kind of love.

There’s a sketch in an old MAD magazine from back when it turned out quality content that pins 23 as the age when you hear of an artist on MTV and go ‘who?’. I don’t have to explain this but I will – the joke is that by the time you hit the ripe old age of 23, you’re no longer cool enough to be in on the music scene. It also (unintentionally?) implies that there comes a time what’s when you’re no longer the target audience for mainstream media houses.

It’s likely that, had the internet not shown up, us 90s kids would have nothing but our withering, overplayed CDs (and DVD-Rs burned to a crisp) to turn to for a hit of nostalgia. But the internet did show up – and conveniently enough, it did so IN the 90s. And so, while the erstwhile 90s kids aka millenials, may not be the target audience of mainstream music programming today, some of them are taking the sounds they grew up with and reinventing them for the 21st century. Some others are writing words of praise to these revivalists on Pitchfork or Aglet Eaters (an unfair comparison, as P4K comes nowhere close to the superior quality content you find on AE). And everyone else is mesmerised by our absolutely objective, unbiased and 100% correct opinion and is buying Peripheral Vision on Bandcamp.

30 songs that blew my mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 5

FUN FACT: The original deadline for this series was December 2017. It’s harder than it looks.

21. The Nasty Side – The Reegs: Sometimes you come across a track on a mixtape (aka Mediafire link, ‘sup 2010!) composed of nothing but obscurities and you find yourself deliberating the eternal question: ‘How does no one else know this???’

The situation only becomes more baffling when you consider that this particular obscurity was born from the ashes (shreds, rather) of a band known and loved by everyone, without exception – The Chameleons. The Reegs is that band and ‘The Nasty Side’ is proof that we live in a paradoxical parallel universe where sublimity wanders, alone and unheard, into oblivion. I’m just grateful it stopped to pay me a visit.

22. As I Walk Away – Yuck: Yuck is my shoegaze equivalent of casual gaming – I enjoy them immensely but I listen to them absent-mindedly, letting album after album flow over me without taking the time out to stop and identify individual tracks.

Then I heard ‘As I Walk Away’ and was convinced that Winamp (!) was done with the album and had skipped over to an unheard treasure in my music library. I was wrong. On this fateful day, I realised that Yuck was not a single band, but a portal to a sonic multiverse – or a biverse at the very least. I could listen to ‘As I Walk Away’ indefinitely and it would still stop me in my tracks every time.

23. Destinos – Have A Nice Life: I confess, I am not an OG Have A Nice Life fan because my first taste of the group was Voids – the informally released collection of demos and unreleased tracks from their magnum opus Deathconsciousness.

I have no recollection of what I knew of HANL or even life itself before I heard ‘Destinos’ – a track so strong, so vivid, you can see it, feel its weight throbbing in your chest. ‘Destinos’ is the last track on Voids and has no counterpart on Deathconsciousness, which makes perfect sense given that the track – dark, heavy and soaked in a meaning none of us can comprehend – is an album all by itself: a palate cleanser at the end of Voids, overpowering any memories of what you heard before and leaving you with echoes of itself.

24. Maggie Says I Love You – No Joy: We don’t really have the kind of summer here in New Delhi that this song evokes. It’s undeniably geographic. I can tell you right off that it sounds like a California summer; despite the harsh realities of: 1) never having been and having no desire to go to California; 2) knowing a summer more akin to the fires of hell than the mellow haze ‘Maggie Says… ‘makes me imagine. Still, I maintain this to be an accurate description of the track in question, even in the face of the harshest reality of them all: 3) No Joy are Canadian.

25. Sunbeam – A Place To Bury Strangers: I used to listen to this track in the park in the evening on my way home from work. I’d take a break between trams to escape the peak hour rush and the crowds it brings, to sit under a tree with ‘Sunbeam’ watching time crawling over us.

Don’t wait for me

Hello, hi – I see you are perplexed by the relative silence on the blog over the past few (many?) months BUT what if I told you this silence is JUST AN ILLUSION as is the date on this blog post, because I am in fact living in March 2018, not March 2019 as you have so falsely assumed, and so are you (you just don’t know it yet).

Forget March 2018, I’m living in 1994 for the rest of my life via Chrome Neon Jesus, the album that I haven’t yet turned off loop. My partner whose primary language is NOT english is now fluent and also contaminated as he cannot stop himself from shrieking along the lyrics with me, so thank you Teenage Wrist for the language course, highly recommended to all non-native English speakers and available at the low, low price of 8 USD (booster pack expected to come along later this year).

Yeah I haven’t listened to an album so diligently on repeat since I was 15, and rightly so because that is the recommended listening format. Back when they made CDs you could read this rule in the fine print under the technical info that nobody read and that’s why you didn’t already know this.

One minor side effect that I have discovered, however, is the corresponding urge to listen to Swervedriver who I now realise I didn’t really appreciate until Teenage Wrist came along, so maybe share the royalties from Duel around?

I have not yet got around to scratching the Swervedriver itch. I’ll consider it in another 25 years when I arrive in 2019. Don’t tell me what happens though.

30 Songs That Blew My Mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 4

The posts are getting farther apart as I struggle to select that final 50%.

16. Bashling – Emperor X: My Emperor X story is a weird one and it starts with me meeting the man before the music. My friend, who worked at a community radio station at the time, was the obsessive fan and by the end of our adventure I had morphed into one as well. We were at the studio for an interview and in came a request for E-X to perform. Problem: we have no instruments on hand. The show goes into break as the four of us are scurry around this tiny room, tapping on floors, walls and furniture, looking for anything that could provide a beat. ‘Something hollow!’ – Chad Matheny/E-X specifies. I stumble upon a hollow panel in the wall and E-X smashes into it bare-handed. That afternoon in a tiny studio on the 9th floor of an old building in the Melbourne CBD, I watched the most beautiful, raw and honest live performance in the world.

The sheer emotion and heart and passion and love in E-X’s music hits you like a steel beam you can almost taste and, of the lot, its ‘Bashling’ that wrapped itself around my stony little heart. An oddity in the E-X catalogue, it speaks to me the loudest (or hits the hardest). Watch him perform this lonely, loveless song under a bridge in Glendale and you’ll understand why I’ve never known a performer more compelling.

17. Bayshore – Bleach Dream: We just met a few months ago and if it hadn’t been for DKFM, this album would have drifted right by leaving me none the wiser as it has nearly the entire shoegaze community because how else can you explain its absence from every best of list from 2017? It’s my own stupid and nearly criminal fault that I didn’t catch the aptly named Saudade sooner because it would have topped mine.

It feels almost wrong to have such a young track on this list, but the more I listen to ‘Bayshore’ and its reprise, ‘I Love You,’ the more I am convinced that it belongs here. It tastes of summer sunsets and teenage love. It’s charmingly simple but you’ll feel your heart drop they the way it would when you caught a glimpse of your inexplicable teenage crush, skipping a beat like it did when you received a text message you knew was from them on your 3310. If I miss out on making an end of year list for 2018, it’ll be because I was listening to ‘Bayshore’ all year long.

18. According to Plan – I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness: Why do love songs have to be sad to be beautiful? How can there be so much devastation in so few words? How can six strings sound so soul-crushingly plaintive, yet so stoic, yet so hopeful all at the same time? I had to turn to the stories of gods to explain all that ‘According to Plan’ is and all that it can be and even the most epic of sagas couldn’t capture what you feel when you hear ‘In a perfect world / the perfect place is with you / the truth is the world is without love.‘

19. Solera la Reina – Amusement Parks on Fire: One of only two bands in the world that can do no wrong (the other is No. 20 on this list). Find me a weak APOF track and I’ll… I guess we’re not friends any more then?

‘Solera La Reina’ is peak APOF – six minutes of perfection tucked away on an unassuming EP which is sort of analogous to how tucked away APOF were themselves at the time. I’ve struggled to find what I can say about this track beyond: it is beautiful. Not beautiful like a tableau is beautiful, but something more profound. It’s something to take your breath away and bring tears to your eyes and leave your hands trembling. Out of everything flawless that APOF have ever created, Solera La Reina is far and away the queen.

20. Freddie and the Trojan Horse – The Radio Dept.: Do you remember the feeling you’d get when a song you loved came on the radio or on TV and you’d will every cell in your body to full alertness so you could give it your undivided attention, soak every note, take in every vibration, and commit it to memory hoping to be able to play back in your head once it was over because you weren’t sure when you’d hear it again? You’d concentrate so furiously on that one song that by the end of it you’d feel like you hadn’t really listened to it at all. Do you remember that pure, childlike (because we were children) all-consuming love and obsession for just one track? ‘Freddie and the Trojan Horse’ is that feeling and when it plays you can’t imagine how a song more perfect could ever exist.

Mixing it up with Andrew Saks of FLDPLN

You’ll remember Andrew Saks from Sway and the seminal track ‘Fall.’ which came out way back in 2003 and remains a cult shoegaze classic to this day.

Andrew aka ASAKS is defined by his experiments with audio. As Sway he didn’t hesitate a moment as he moved from classic shoegaze on The Millia Pink and Green, to game-changing bleepy-bloops on This Was Tomorrow. If there’s anything that defines his music, it’s that it has remained undefinable for a decade and a half.

Today, Andrew is FLDPLN and he’s just put out his first album, Let You Down. In this interview, He’s going to tell us about his evolution from Sway to FLDPLN, how he conquered uncharted territory (again – this time it’s hip-hop), and if we’ll ever see him shapeshift back to the Sway we once knew.

AE: OMG you’ve lost your vowels! What is FLDPLN?

ASAKS: Ha! FLDPLN is vowel-free for “field-plan”, which is derived from my other life/day job where I’m a utility a designer or planner. I thought it would be kind of a funny way of branding my music – a weird way of bridging dimensions. The day job is such a big part of my life, and it really keeps me from doing as much music as I should be or would like to, but I can’t escape it.

I know it’s my job, but I’m having trouble defining your sound. Could you do it for me?

I’m not really sure what to call it or how to define it either. I guess it’s primarily electronic music with maybe some lo-fi hip hop? I sort of look at it like sound collage. The other night I was trying to think of a food that would be metaphor for the sound of what I’m doing. The best I could come up with was some sort of parfait, but then I thought of Halo-Halo, a Filipino dessert. It’s like a big cup of shaved ice, some cheese ice cream, prune or taro ice cream, condensed milk, coconut, gummy candies, sweet corn, dried fruit, mochi… and pretty much anything else that’s sweet. It looks like a parfait when you get it, then you mash the hell out of it and mix it all up. It’s amazing – all these layers and textures mushed together. FLDPLN is kind of like that. A couple of hip-hop guys told me my stuff was ‘chill’. So… noisy chill-hop?

Talk me through the evolution from The Millia Pink and Green > This Was Tomorrow > Let You Down and why you felt you needed a new identity for the last one.

With The Millia Pink and Green I was still very much enamored with huge, dramatic guitars and swirly Robin Guthrie-ness. I just wanted to make music that was like windy+carl but with really melodic bits to it. I loved Slowdive, and at that time (maybe like 2000-2003) I felt like that whole shoegaze thing was so dead that the handful (or so it seemed at the time) of bands doing it were unique in a sense that we were holding on to these sounds when so many other bands were going very snappy, pop-punk and all that. Or like rap-metal shit. I wanted to do something that reflected what I liked and made me feel nostalgic.

In about 2004 or 2005 I had a couple of friends that were messing with electronic stuff, like Fruity Loops (pre-audio FL) and they got me into it. I got into Ableton Live, which is THE greatest instrument/audio workstation ever made. This Was Tomorrow as Sway and the ASAKS singles I did for Saint Marie Records compilations were meant to be a bridge between the shoegaze stuff and my love of electronic stuff.

I was always fond of 80’s pop stuff, even some of the cringe-worthy, sugary sweet stuff. I’m also a die-hard old-school video game nerd, so I love chiptunes sounds. I’m a decent guitar player, but for some reason the whole guitar thing annoys me a lot. How many pedals do you have? What kind of pedals do you use? What guitar? I feel so ordinary as a guitar player – it just bores me. With electronic music and synthesis, I feel like there’s this whole endless universe of sounds that one can create. When you start smashing sounds together, it’s kind of like the whole shoegaze/noise thing but using digital tools. I’m completely captivated by the possibilities. FLDPLN is going to be my outlet for the things I’ve been experimenting with on my own since 2006 or so. My Northern Two album with Seth from Sway was kind of a beginning to this I suppose.

I think many of us loyal Sway fans saw something along these lines coming our way since This Was Tomorrow. But I have to admit, the hip-hop component is a welcome surprise. What’s the story behind that?

I was really hoping NOT to lose the Sway fans with this. I feel like shoegaze/dreampop fans have the potential to be really open-minded about mixing sounds and stuff, so I’d hoped I really wouldn’t alienate anyone that’s been following Sway for so long. Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved rap music. I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the genre these days. There’s a lot of really cool, more underground stuff out there. You know like more indie rap than the big, over played shit you hear on hip hop radio. A lot of that stuff annoys me because of the really basic, crank-it-out production and over the top misogynist lyrics. I’m an art guy, so I won’t fault peeps for making their art, just some of it’s not for me. I love the artists featured on the Let You Down and picked them out because of their varied and unique sounds. The idea of featuring some hip hop artists came from one of the first times I did a little street performance/busking deal, just out making my beats when I had a few dudes with their crew come by and start freestyling over my shit. It was kind of a ”um, yeah… that kind of sounds legit!” moment. I’m excited about the potential to do more production for others.

Do you think you’ll ever go back to your shoegaze roots and one day we might hear another ‘Fall’?

Hmmm. I dunno. I feel like that’s kind of flown, as far as the guitars thing. MBV is back. Slowdive is back. Ride is back. I feel like the time for homage is over. There’s ways I can make music and sounds I can explore that don’t necessarily have to step in on that territory. I will always have those sounds and the Sway sound as part of my production, so you will absolutely hear more huge swirly textures. The next FLDPLN release will feature some downright ambient stuff, but it will be mostly synth stuff. I love dramatic soundscapes. It’ll be in the mix.

I know I’m not the only one to think this but we’re all happy to have you back on the scene. What’s been keeping you busy since This Was Tomorrow?

My day job. I’ve been desperately trying to tough it out and make music for years but it’s been slow going, and I’m a very harsh critic when it comes to my own stuff. The FLDPLN album is actually the second album I’ve done since then. The first one started out very This Was Tomorrow-ish. I put it on ice. I started doing a lot more field recording stuff and sampling and stuff and that led to what you have with the Let You Down. I also used a lot of sounds that I made on my phone using music apps and stuff. If you listen really close, and I hope some folks will, you’ll even hear some Sway samples from The Millia Pink and Green in there. I sampled my own stuff! I’ve just been plugging away. Last year, I got a new position at work (field planner) and I now work closer to home and have more time to make music so there will be more on the way. I already have a rough framework for the next FLDPLN release, which will probably be an EP.

Tell me about what inspired the music and the songwriting on Let You Down.

Like most of the stuff I do, nostalgia is the main driver. I love mid-century modernism and while it’s become super hip over the last ten years or so, I still really notice the beauty in things that were once supposed to be part of the future, and were so contemporary at the time, but have been abandoned and neglected. I’m really influenced by architecture (a field I wish I would have studied professionally) and print art.

I absolutely love 50’s and 60’s jazz. I love Expressionist art and things that experiment with texture. Street art gets me going. I’m just very interested in making very textural, layered but not necessarily chaotic music. I like fuzzy, broken sounds. For the past five or so years now, a lot of what I’ve done is experimenting either in my home or out busking. I’ll improvise using synths and collected samples and just make a mess. These sessions usually have their golden moments, so with Let You Down I tried to do an album that sort of captures that feeling. It’ll be an ongoing challenge. The improvisational spirit is a focus with this project. I love the accessibility of electronic music, and the potential for textural experimentation. Making sonic collage really makes me happy. I just hope people enjoy listening to it!

Perhaps it’s too early to ask this question, but what’s next for FLDPLN?

I’m going to be working on a follow-up EP with about 5-6 songs that I hope to release by the end of 2018. It’ll be a similar vibe, but there’s definitely going to be some very ambient stuff in there. I do love my ethereal stuff, so I have some pieces that I’ve already put together with some really pretty stuff. I’m not sure if the next release will feature any guest artists yet, but I’m open to it. I’ve already discussed with a couple of different peeps. We’ll see. For now, I’m looking forward to playing versions of the tunes on Let You Down out at some shows and just enjoying having something new out!

Let You Down released on 23 March, 2018 and can be bought here.

Dawn Breaks Through: In Conversation with Jeff Kandefer of the Daysleepers

I cut my shoegaze teeth on The Daysleepers back in 2008. To me they were the most enigmatic of the new lot of shoegazers, dropping the majestic Drowned in a Sea of Sound and immediately vanishing into the ether leaving the rest of us hanging on for a decade before announcing their next full-length. Creation is out Fall 2018.

As it turns out they aren’t all that inaccessible – they’re just regular, busy humans. Jeff Kandefer kindly consented to being interviewed for AE and I had the chance to ask ten years worth of questions about the band, their new album and marine life.

AE: There’s this music review trope that goes ‘no review of a shoegaze album released after 1995 is complete without a reference to how it is influenced by MBV/Slowdive/Ride.’ While I am sure this is not entirely untrue, I feel it’s unfair to the work and creativity the bands put into defining their sound. I can tell a Daysleepers track apart from a stack of other bands by the music alone, and I know I’m not the only one. This is just a really round-about way for me to ask the question – how did you and the band come to discover the sound that defines The Daysleepers?

Jeff: The sound in a way just defined itself. A happy accident I guess. When we first started this band my intention was just to make more shoegaze in the style of some of my favorite bands like Slowdive, which you mentioned. At first that’s pretty much what we did, but the sound evolved into something else by the time we got to Drowned in a Sea of Sound. Back in 2003-2004 I was really not able to find too many new bands making shoegaze music, at least not in a manner that I wanted to hear, so really we just set out to make our own. I guess others had the same idea because the scene started to grow again around the same time we put out our first two EPs.

I think our sound is defined by what influences us and those influences are not confined to the shoegaze genre. So even though we use the tools of the genre (reverb, delay, chorus, fuzz…) there are influences that take it in other directions too. I think we have a new wave feel at times and even some post punk elements here and there.

Your new album, Creation, releases later this year. Can you tell me a bit about your journey from Hide Yr Eyes to Creation? How have you seen your aesthetic evolve in that time – musically, lyrically etc.?

I just think as we mature as individuals the music matures naturally. Creation has a way more mature, developed, big sound and because we are producing it, every decision is one made by the band, not anyone else outside of it. We have been able to take more time experimenting and exploring guitar and vocal sounds which is really fun. Also I feel my songwriting and lyrics are the best I have written yet. They are really meditative and personal to me. When I listen to the old stuff I still love it but with the ten-year gap between Drowned in a Sea of Sound and Creation to me, I feel we have stepped up to a whole new level. I can’t wait for people to hear it!

The music industry is not the same beast it was in the OG shoegaze era and the odds of ‘profiting’ from music aren’t as high anymore. What are your thoughts on the Bandcamp and/or Spotify models for musicians? What would your idea of an ideal platform for listeners and musicians be?

All of these models have positives and negatives. I don’t think there is a perfect solution to it. Bandcamp is great and probably the closest thing to being perfect. I mean you can upload lossless audio, high-res artwork, sell merchandise and post a release immediately. It gives the artist so much control and I think it can bypass the need for an official website which can be an added expense that an artist no longer has to deal with. It pretty much is your own simple website. I just wish it had a blog feature and It would be perfect. Actually it would be perfect if they took 0% of sales but I think we need to be reasonable.

As far as Spotify and Apple Music go, I think these streaming services all serve a purpose. What they pay artists seems almost criminal but they are very helpful in making music accessible to more people. I can’t help but think it makes music less valuable and more disposable. It’s hard to value music and focus on specific albums when you have millions of songs at your fingertips. I stream and I buy digital tracks. I like the convenience of just being able to cull up a song when you want to hear it anytime and anywhere, but I have also started getting back into vinyl so I can just sit in my living room with the TV off and appreciate an album. It’s nice to hold an album in your hands and see and hear an entire artistic vision.

When I was younger often times I would buy an album because of the cool artwork or maybe because it was a band I knew but didn’t hear that particular album. Sometimes the album ended up being good, sometimes it didn’t. Other times I didn’t like the album at first but because I committed to the purchase I focused on it and gave it a chance. Some of those albums are my all time favorites now. MBV‘s Loveless was one of those albums for me. If I was a kid now I might have missed out on that because If I started to stream it and didn’t care for it immediately I’d probably just switch to something else and never go back. That’s kind of scary to think about.

What inspires the lyrics to your songs? What are you usually writing about?

I almost always write the lyrics last. Most times, as we are writing the music I develop a melody that I like and then at the end I fit words to it. The sounds and mood of the song often times pushes me in a direction for the lyrics. Lyrics are easily the hardest part of the process for me. It always seems like a struggle for the longest time and then all the sudden they just start to come together and in the end I am usually pretty happy with them. As far as what the songs are about it is pretty varied from song to song. Often times I’ll write about big abstract ideas but I still try to keep a human element there. I’ll write about life’s struggles, experiences, dreams, fears, nature/creation, moods…all kinds of things. Creation is a bit more of a concept album. There is a theme that runs through it and it is more of a spiritual one. Meditations of the universe, how it began, where it’s going and how we move along with it. While it seems like a big theme, I also think it is very human and relatable.

A little while ago I wrote a few lines on my interpretation of ‘The Soft Attack’ – the first song I heard by The Daysleepers, and one I never grew tired of. One interpretation was instinctive – it felt like it was about flying and freedom. The other I developed after I paid attention to the lyrics and then it sounded to me like someone throwing themselves into the ocean (seagulls, waves, drags me down… etc). I can’t stand the conflict – what is it about?

Interesting interpretation! I’m glad you told me that because I purposefully write songs so that there is room for the listener to interpret the words and sounds however they want. They all do mean something specific to me though.

‘The Soft Attack’ was written about a reoccurring dream I used to have where I am swimming in the ocean on a peaceful evening and meet my end at the jaws of a Great White Shark. For some reason the dream is always in black and white. If you wonder why the song sounds so liberating for something that subject-wise is kind of morbid, there is a reason for that. In the dream, the whole experience naturally seems terrifying at first but as the blood drains from my body I enter this peaceful, euphoric state. Everything feels warm and numb, and I sort of accept this as my end. In those moments where my vision starts to go dark it does feel like a very freeing, beautiful thing in a weird way. Leaving the world in a beautiful ocean, by a primitive creature, but somehow enjoying the last few minutes left in the world… there was something sort of beautiful in that.

If you know anything about Great Whites often times they’ll just take a bite or take off a limb and then swim away. Most times people die from bleeding out rather than a relentless attack. That’s the case here. So it’s not like a violent attack, it’s more of a soft one – get it? The original artwork I designed for the EP cover had this awesome image of a shark lurking just under the surface of dark water. It was both terrifying and beautiful but sadly the photographer wanted way too much money for me to use it, so I went another route and decided to leave that theme more of a mystery.

Can we talk about ‘Dream Within A Dreamworld’ for a hot minute? I feel like it popped up during the long break after Drowned in a Sea of Sound, hinted at the promise of a new album that year, and then vanished. Where did it come from? Where did it go? What’s the story?

Sure – that song was an experiment and really kind of a one-off. It was never meant to be the start of a new album, just a single. At that time we had been talking more about recording a follow up to Drowned in a Sea of Sound but we weren’t sure how to go about it. We didn’t want to record in a studio like the previous releases, we wanted to record and produce new material ourselves, but we didn’t have all the equipment necessary at that point to do it right. Our drummer, Mario, had the closest thing to a home studio at the time and he showed me an early demo of ‘Dream Within a Dreamworld’. I loved it so much that I asked him to send me a copy of it so I could record vocals for it. I had some recording equipment at home so I put down vocals and some keyboards. After Scott recorded bass we decided to mix and master it and use it as an experimental track to see if people would respond to it. I sort of didn’t expect anyone to care about it and all of the sudden we started getting fan mail and people raving about it on the internet. That track started us down the path of where we are today. We have much better equipment to record with now. Once I got everything I needed for my studio setup in late 2016 we started on Creation. ‘Dream Within a Dreamworld’ is pretty unique for us and favors a more New Wave sound. When I started writing the songs for Creation I knew I wanted to go in a very different direction than that.

You’re not the first shoegazers ever, but you’re definitely the one of the first bands responsible for the resurrection of the genre. I’m not from your country or continent, but I believe the scene was pretty tight in the late 2000s/early 2010s – I’m basing this assumption on band lineups I’d see littered across my Facebook. Is there anything you can tell me about how this scene (re)emerged in the States and what it was like then?

I didn’t know much about the early 2000’s shoegaze scene back then. All I knew was that my favorite bands were not making this kind of music anymore so I was determined to put a band together and make it myself if they weren’t going to. I saw Mojave 3 live around that time. I talked to Neil about Slowdive and at the time he was so dismissive about it. He was focused on different things. I thought to myself that if these forefathers of the genre don’t care about it then I guess I will have to. Out of that The Daysleepers were born. Like you said, we weren’t the first to bring it back. Bands like Airiel, Bethany Curve and Air Formation were doing their thing before we formed but I didn’t find out about them until a little later. By the time Drowned in a Sea of Sound came out it seemed like this revival was really picking up.

I’ve read that you have a 9 to 5 job as a designer and your own freelance business, which sounds pretty gruelling. You also make music. I, too, have a 9 to 5 job and I struggle to juggle that and maintain this blog. Tell me the secret behind your time management skills.

My secret is that I deprive myself of sleep in order to make progress on the music. I’m probably taking years off of my life but it is working! I’m getting the results I want but that is why it takes us a little longer. We really have to work around a busy schedule. There is something so meditative about writing, creating and producing late at night when the neighborhood is asleep. It’s so quiet and calm. I don’t really freelance anymore so that frees things up a bit. I know what you mean though. It is a juggling act for sure but I make sure I don’t overdo it too much. I want to enjoy the process and not feel too stressed to do it. I feel like I have a really good system to manage all of this now. When the album is finished I plan on getting a lot more sleep though.

Your comment on my Life on Venus post made my day. I know you’ve been asked this question before, but the answer must keep changing: What are your (other) favourite shoegaze bands from the last year or so?

That’s nice to hear. Thanks for writing about them! In my opinion I think Life on Venus is the best new shoegaze band in years and I think they deserve a lot more attention than they get. They nail all the classic elements that I love about shoegaze music, but they add something fresh to the genre too. The vocals and guitars are so beautiful and they strike that great balance between sadness and hopefulness. I’ve listened to that album so many times it’s ridiculous!

Over the last year I have been heavily involved in making our new album so I purposefully don’t immerse myself in new shoegaze bands because I don’t want to be influenced by trends or where they are taking the genre. I want to do what comes natural to us and go on those instincts. I think that’s how we get a great and genuine sounding Daysleepers album.

Having said that I do tune into my favorite shows on DKFM (When The Sun Hits & Somewherecold) to see what’s going on in the modern shoegaze world. Besides Life on Venus I really like Lowtide, Yumi Zouma, Softer Still, Nothing, The Morelings, Bellavista… A lot of other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting. There’s so much shoegaze now and that is a great thing!

Finally, let’s not kid ourselves: We pretend we listen to nothing but shoegaze, post-rock and other musical intellectualisms, but our lizard brains crave a periodic dose of pop. What are some bands/artists you listen to who we wouldn’t have expected you to listen to?

I was raised on pop music in the late 80’s/early 90’s so I think that’s what drew me to dreampop. Under all that noise there are some really catchy pop tunes. Unfortunately, I don’t like hardly anything on the radio these days. I like some Lana Del Rey songs quite a bit though.

One thing people might not expect is that I am a huge fan of the more ambient sounding R&B artists like Sade, Maxwell and Eryka Badu. Sade is a huge vocal influence for me. She holds those long, beautiful, melodic notes that just drip like honey. Her album Love Deluxe is in my top 5 favorite albums of all time. I would love to see her live.

I love trance music and electronic stuff. I’m also really into Post-hardcore bands like Mars Volta, Circa Survive and Coheed & Cambria. I love old and modern Jazz. I’m a huge fan of all kinds of Indie rock/alternative acts like Interpol, The Shins, Bjork, Washed Out, Stereolab, Dinosaur Jr, The Mary Onettes, Bon Iver and so on. I love experimental instrumental bands like Tycho, Bonobo and Jaga Jazzist. I love 80’s music, 90’s grunge music… I’m all over the place. Of course my staples are The Cure, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, The Smiths, The Chameleons and Depeche Mode.

Past albums, EPs and, soon, Creation available on bandcamp

DEAFCULT vs. pinkshinyultrablast

DEAFCULT‘s Auras made it into every Best of 2017 Shoegaze list I came across, but I wonder if they named ‘Echoes’ for the not-so-subtle throwback to pinkshinyultrablast‘s BTWF*-era ‘Blaster’

*BTWF = Before They Were Famous

30 Songs That Blew My Mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 3

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Tracks 11-15 are here:

11. Distressor EP – Whirr: This isn’t a track, but I’m making an exception for one of the most significant releases of my lifetime. I used to listen to Distressor every day on my 1.5 hour commute home from work back in 2010. It ‘spoke’ to me, for no discernible reason. If you ask me today, I could swear that every year since 2010 was composed solely of Whirr (who I called ‘Whirl‘ till the bitter end). One day we must have fused into one because five years later I saw my life play out to Distressor, and this time when it spoke to me I understood what it said.