Ceremony | The Decibel Tolls

Austin-based label Kill Red Rockets is a humanitarian effort, providing a wealth of free shit. They currently host a killer (pun intended) compilation on their website available for free download called Jesus in Space made up almost entirely of good stateside shoegaze, dream pop, fucked electro, and ethereal meditations with teeth. The comp is packed with artists readers of this blog will be familiar with (Oblisk, Ceremony, Dead Leaf Echo), and many more that I’m not familiar with at all and will take measures to correct. The nefariously titled Bloody Knives (pictured above) is one that stuck out. “Hands Around My Neck,” included below for a taste, is quality acid punk with a slight synth edge at its finest and most crafty – basically what M83 could’ve done had they not decided, on their own volition, to suck a big one after the Dead Seas set. 8-bit shoegaze hath been reared.

Quality abounds on this massive set, so no matter what else happens, go download this compilation right now and know that you’ve done at least one radical thing today.

To celebrate the compilation and generation awesomeness of the KRR community, the dudes are throwing a big SXSW party in Austin. Thursday March 18 and Friday March 19, Kill Red Rockets will welcome 21 different acts from around the nation to play at, get this, an apartment complex with a giant pool. Wall of sound noise squalls… and a pool party. That sounds like some intergalactic MTV Spring Break/Beach House action. Where Dasiy Fuentes and Pauly Shore at? Oh, looks like Pauly Shore is over here hanging out with White Rainbow. Maybe they’ll both roll through.

Details on the festivities, as well as download sampler of everyone playing, are right here. This is a Kenny Bloggins-approved event, and that should hold some weight on your itinerary, for realz.

MP3 :::
Bloody Knives – Hands Around My Neck

29fb92c008a03b19934c8010.L Revisiting the Terrifically Loud Skywave

The now defunct Virginia-based Skywave is a name you might not recognize, but their lineage is rather important in the second generation shoegaze (or “newgaze” as it’s sometimes referred) movement. Synthstatic is certainly their best, and I first heard it my freshman year in college in 2003 when we received the record at the ol’ campus radio station. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard at the time, and I think I played a cut off it during my show every week for six months. It might still be the loudest record I own, save for maybe Guitar Wolf, which is just ridiculous. I don’t know, man – point is, it’s real goddamn loud.

Every song sounds as if the mix is utterly and completely in the red – at all times. It’s the type of production that would make most audiophile-sensitive producers shit. Skywave’s wall of sound is downright frightening. Throw “Angela’s an Angel” on your ghetto blaster and feel your tweeters jump about a quarter inch at the 1:22 mark. With that said, rays of light peak through the decibel decimation on sweet dream pop numbers like “Adore,” “Wear This Dress,” and “I Believe.” “Fire” is still my favorite track after all these years, though. That jam is evil.

As per a frame of reference, Skywave is a fine concoction of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s darker moments on Psychocandy, the more bombastic selections off of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything, and the extremely tight rhythm of any given Echo & the Bunnymen record.

After Skywave split, the former members went on to form two bands you may be more familiar with – A Place to Bury Strangers and Ceremony. If you listen to the aforementioned, however, they both sound just like Skywave, right? Synthstatic is the all-in-one sinister jam hive to own.

I generally don’t do this, since I run a professional music blog, you see, and I always encourage our readers to support the artist. But Synthstatic is out of print and hustlers be tryin’ to flip copies of it for, like, $75. Hell naw; fuck that shit. Kenny Bloggins gon’ give it 2 u: Skywave – Synthstatic (ZIP archive, approx. 68 Mb). Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

For fans of: My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, A Place to Bury Strangers

MP3 :::
Skywave – Fire
Skywave – Angela’s an Angel
Skywave – Adore