Discover – Aglet Eaters

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.

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.

30 Songs That Blew My Mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 2

Five more tracks that stopped me in my… tracks.

6. Chromium – The Church: I didn’t meet The Church through ‘Under The Milky Way’ like most of the world. I met them when I was 17 and Pandora (which was in India at the time) played me a track called ‘Chromium’ which, I would later find out was not the original recording from After Everything Now This, but the acoustic version that appeared on El Momento Descuidado. I struggle to tell you what it was about this track that made me stop and listen and, once it was finished, rejig my radio station genres so it would play again. I could be as simple as the stripped down opening. It could also be the meaningfully meaningless lyrics (‘neo maniac in the cul-de-sac’ was my forum signature back in my Songfacts days). Maybe it was just the name of the song? Whatever it was, no other track by The Church – and I love every song they ever made – came close to doing for me what ‘Chromium’ still does.

7. Soul One/Mouthful of Cavities – Blind Melon: I still don’t know of a voice as emotive as Shannon Hoon’s. Blind Melon may be seen as one-hit wonders for ‘No Rain’, which is beautiful in its paradoxical pairing of uplifting melodies with lonely verses, but ‘Mouthful of Cavities’ and ‘Soul One’ (and St. Andrew’s Fall/Walk) are more than just the best of Blind Melon. They’re among the best things to have ever happened to us.

I’ve never seen Shannon Hoon’s face on a t-shirt but I wept for him, for Nico and for the songs I would never get to hear, when I heard ‘Soul One.’ I cried for his bitter little heart (Inside – pain in my heart often made her cry. Outside, I cursed the birds and the sugar skies‘) for his childlike joy (‘you know it felt like she was the only one’) and for his unresolved grief (‘but I never – no I never got a chance to say goodbye.‘).

Like ‘Soul One’, it’s the devastation in lines like ‘see I haven’t seen him smile in a little while,‘ on ‘Mouthful of Cavities’ that breaks my heart. Hoon says the line twice, first with desolation (it’s almost a question with the lilt at the end of the sentence), and then with frustration. And when he says, sadly but matter-of-factly, ‘One of these days this will die – so will me and so will you,‘ you know it turned out of to be true.

The more I listen to Blind Melon, the more I fall in love with them – for their words, their music and their raw emotion. But today, I live in a world without Shannon Hoon and there’s no one to warble ‘Life Ain’t So Shitty’ into a tape recorder kept by the window of a hotel room and make it sound like a masterpiece.

8. You Look Fine – Pia Fraus: Let everything I say about ‘You Look Fine’ be as beautifully simple as it is. If I had ever done music theory, I would have used this track as a study on the significance of composition, of silence and of chaos, and propounded a corollary on the irrelevance of complexity. Pia Fraus don’t tell me anything beyond ‘you look fine’, but I believe them. Their musicianship isn’t masterful, but it’s exactly what I need to hear. And they throw in a wall of chaotic noise – why? I don’t know, but it was meant to be there. Walk down a busy street with this song in your headphones and let Pia Fraus be the voice in your head, your armour against interaction, and your boost of self-confidence.

9. Do You Feel Loved – U2: One day I will write a 12 page paper on how Pop is U2‘s best and most underrated album. Maybe it’s the natural successor to their experiments with Zooropa and Achtung Baby, but Pop is more innovative than both – nothing like its name suggests. I still wish they could have taken the maturity they showed on that album further. Instead they followed up with the palatable All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and got more and more formulaic with every successive release.

It took me a decade of listening to Pop to realise that ‘Do You Feel Loved’ was the standout track on the album because I would keep coming back to it. For the first and only time in my life I wished more people knew about this obscurity because it was made to be danced to with wild hair and wild arms and not an inch of space between two bodies (‘stick together man and woman‘*). ‘Do You Feel Loved’ is orgasmic, but it remains one of the many dog whistles on Pop, an album that most know for its most mediocre track – ‘Discotheque.’ Make love to ‘Do You Feel Loved’ or just dance to it with someone, or by yourself, or in your mind. You’ll find yourself transported out of this world.

*please ignore the heteronormativity this is 1999

10. Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand – Primitive Radio Gods: I’m almost willing to go as far as to say that this song is meant to be listened to with someone else though, personally, I would never do such a thing. ‘Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand’ is a quiet companion – reassuring in nothing but its presence. It’s rare I meet a song that paints such vivid images with nothing more than a few words and fewer sounds. You can see how ‘Moonlight spills on comic books and superstars in magazines.’ You can hear the plane take off from Baltimore and touch down on Bourbon Street. I think I hear coins dropping in a phonebooth when the song opens, but is that just a jukebox scratching a BB King record? Friends or more-than-friends talk about god and conspiracy theories into the night. ‘Phone Booth’ is the soundtrack to our solitary evening reflections. It’s profound, cynical and possibly meaningless – like most of us.

30 Songs That Blew My Mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 1

Celebrating 30 (and a half) years on the planet with a six-part series on the 30 songs that changed my life and blew my mind. Here we go:

1. El Topo – HANDLINGNOISE

Two. That’s how many times I’ve listened to ‘El Topo’ in my lifetime.

I don’t recall how I found HANDLINGNOISE or where I was when I first heard this album, but I recall my heart coming to an abrupt halt at the clap that falls at the start of the track. I remember it staying that way for the next few seconds before picking up and racing ‘El Topo’ all the way to the end.

I listen to ‘El Topo’ sparingly. I wait for stars to align, darkness to fall, and for people to leave. Doors are locked and devices silenced. There is likely no other track that I am as selfish about. I’m an overzealous parent, forbidding it from reaching the ears of those unworthy of its magnificence.

Perhaps I should learn to share.

Is the rest of this album as good as the first track? I have no idea. I’ve usually ceased to be a sentient being by the time it ends.

2. Zoë Machete Control – [The] Slowest Runner [in all the world]

Another album opener that had me at first listen. I don’t remember my first [The] Slowest Runner [in all the world] experience either, but I do remember the smug satisfaction with which I killed a party when I played this track. Drinks paused, phones drooped, eyes glazed over. Someone tried to be cool and I heard them attempt to croak their approval but their voice was puny and insignificant, whipped into oblivion by the tornado in the room. If there’s another group that carries the label ‘neo-classical’ as gloriously and as genuinely as this one, I am yet to meet it.

3. Prodigal Summer – Snow in Mexico

‘Never gets old’ is the new ‘awesome’ – a phrase reduced to flippancy through overuse. But use and overuse it all you like when you’re talking about this track, and tell me – how is listening to ‘Prodigal Summer’ every time like listening to ‘Prodigal Summer’ for the first time? How does it compress every ASMR-trigger the world has ever known into just four and a half minutes? How is it so flawlessly composed of a thousand analogue childhoods when it was released in 2012? How is this song so new and, simultaneously, so, so old?

Here’s another overused word in shoegaze circles – ethereal. Again, use it all you want here. ‘Prodigal Summer’ doesn’t give you anything to grasp. There’s nothing by which you can pin it to your memory, no catchy hooks or sticky riffs. So you listen to it again, and again, and again, hoping that this time – maybe this time – it stays.

4. Fake Lights in the Sky – Last Leaf Down

I remember this vividly. It’s 10 am in the office. Under stark white lights I decide to listen to a track a friend of mine has assured me I will love. A minute and a half in and I can see the world around me slowing to a crawl. By 2.30, the earth has stopped spinning, time has stopped (naturally), and the outside world is frozen in place. Two minutes later, it’s all over. I’m looking at the post-its on my pinboard and I could swear I had only just blinked.

<a href="http://lastleafdown.bandcamp.com/track/fake-lights-in-the-sky">fake lights in the sky by Last Leaf Down</a>

Life on Venus – Encounters

If you’ve been missing The Daysleepers since the cruel taunt that was ‘Dream Within A Dreamworld’ 3 years ago, word on the street is that they’re releasing an honest-to-goodness album this year. Take it from DKFM.

I am yet to see news of said album out in the wild, so forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.

2017 has been kind in other ways, however. Shoegaze superpower, Russia, has given us what is NOT a cheap imitation of the Daysleepers BUT RATHER a worthwhile adversary.

Encounters by Life on Venus is one of the most authentic shoegaze albums to have come out this year.

And how fortuitously do they just happen to hark back to the days of ‘Drowned in a Sea of Sound’ and ‘Hide Your Eyes’

Listen to ‘There Will Be Blood’ and tell me it’s not ‘Run’ and ‘Stars On Fire’ having a session in the sheets.

<a href="http://lifeonvenus.bandcamp.com/album/encounters">Encounters by Life on Venus</a>

Pick up Encounters here. It’s pay what you want, but it’s always nice if you pay a little for it.

serve cold: bloody knives

bloody knives are a band after my own heart.

There’s never been a group more suited to soundtracking the cold-blooded crime I will one day commit.

Not since ‘To Fix The Gash In Your Head‘ has a group succeeded in capturing the serenity that accompanies a perfectly planned and executed retribution.

In fact, Preston Maddox‘s languid vocals only serve to enhance the careless loathing a typical bloody knives track spits out.

Similar to how Oliver Ackermann’s vocals on ‘To Fix the Gash…’ are less furious and more disconcertingly calm when he declares ‘I’ll just wait for you to turn around/and kick your head in‘.

And not unlike Archive‘s disaffected chant ‘there’s a place in hell with your name on the seat/with a spike through the chair just to make it complete‘.

So does Maddox ever so serenely dare you to ‘tell me I’m wrong‘ on Burn it all Down

Or politely inform you that there’s ‘blood in your mouth‘ on blood.

Or sweetly croon that he’s ‘waiting for you to die‘ on DEATH.

The fulfilment that comes with the manufacture and execution of pre-meditated violence is a recurrent theme throughout the bloody knives discography.

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bloody knives do not make music for the hot-headed – those who might not hesitate to throw themselves headfirst into a shouting match or a street fight.

They do make music for the sort of person who, on seeing you looking a bit high strung, offers you comfort and a coupon for a relaxing spa session and then bakes you alive in the sauna.

Because isn’t the glee on ‘Buried Alive’ not just the smug contentment that comes with suffocating someone to death while simultaneously disposing of their body?

You only attain this clean efficiency with time and reflection. Not through impulsive action.

There’s a lesson to be learned from all of this.

Guard your fury.
Plan its release.
Let its consequences stretch across weeks, months or years.
And let your parting note read:

‘This will be your last mistake‘

<a href="http://bloodyknives.bandcamp.com/album/blood">blood by Bloody Knives</a>

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