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Tag Archive for 'shoegaze'Page 3 of 5

You Need to Know About Oblisk

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on August 1, 2009
in MP3
. Comments

l_f9ff5c6f8d96cbbc46af5f6700dd8e31 You Need to Know About Oblisk

…because they riiiiiiip. Jesus Walker Christ, this band is fantastic. And they’re coming to Louisville soon (more info on that Monday or Tuesday). I plan to publish a review of their just-released full length Weather Patterns as soon as I get it, but right now I’m thoroughly vibin’ to last year’s Tune In/Tune Out. This Detroit-based collective has unequivocally concocted one of the finest, most well-balanced, most seamlessly meshed exploration of classic psychedelia, shoegaze, kraut rock, and experimental movements with a melodic sensibility. Oblisk is completely ridiculous. They exist to spread merriment to me and you, nothing more. I have a lot more to say about them in due time, but please enjoy what I’m enjoying right now.

The cover art is awesome, too. I love industrial imagery in art:

oblisk You Need to Know About Oblisk
What’s popular these days anyway? Passion Pit? Memory Cassette? The Michael Jacksons? I dunno, but fuck that jive. Oblisk. Get on it. Your shit’s about to get stratospheric.

For fans of:  Deerhunter, Ride, Faust

MP3 :::
Oblisk – Parallel
Oblisk – Tune In/Tune Out

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Three Unreleased My Bloody Valentine Jams?

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on July 31, 2009
in MP3
. Comments

mbvlive2 Three Unreleased My Bloody Valentine Jams?

Three unreleased My Bloody Valentine songs. Three. You know what I know, which isn’t much, plus what you know (Johari Window lolz).  These songs evidently were recorded sometime between Isn’t Anything and Loveless, and for whatever reason, surfaced just last week. If anyone has more info on this, give me a shout in the comments.

The conspiring part of my brain wonders if perhaps these were leaked deliberately to generate excitement for, supposedly, a new album from Kev and the Gang in the not too distant future.

Perhaps the details are menial anyway. All that matters is that “Bilinda Song” rips hard and Xmas came early for Kenny Bloggins this year.

MP3 :::
My Bloody Valentine – Cowboy Song
My Bloody Valentine – Kevin Song
My Bloody Valentine – Bilinda Song

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The Legends – Over and Over

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on July 21, 2009
in Praise and Malaise
. Comments

the-legends The Legends - Over and Over

Back in 2004, The Legends released Up Against the Legends, a rather unfortunate band and album name for a body of work that was quite good. But the Legends have always had a sense of humor. When the record was first released, many were under the pretense that this group of C86 nostalgic bros were a nine-piece noise pop orchestra. That wasn’t exactly true, as The Legends are/is really a one-studio wizard deal a la Dungen by the name of Johan Angergård. While it’s easy to ignore The Legends since they’re Scandinavian and might be mistaken for some Stereogum overhyped garbage, you should not do this. Though not terribly groundbreaking, The Legends are awesomely interpreted sublime dream/shoegaze pop perfect for these warmer months.

The recently released Over and Over is a decidedly more polished effort than their ’60s garage fuzz pop centric Up Against the Legends, and leaps and bounds better than their dreadful Public Radio. The most intriguing aspect to Over and Over is Angergård’s ability to write gorgeous, sunshiney major-key vocal melodies while created a darker album. Over and Over is more spacious and moodier in its softer moment, while the noise and distortion is more grating in its wall of sound moments. This notion is best demonstrated with the title track and “Turn Away,” included below for your consideration. Over and Over, while not a mindblowingly original record, is a well crafted and fun-loving document of what was good about C86 and the poppier side of shoegaze.

Over and Over is available now through Labrador.

For fans of:  Shop Assistants, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Vivian Girls

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan2 The Legends - Over and Over

MP3 :::
The Legends – Over and Over
The Legends – Turn Away

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Revisiting the Terrifically Loud Skywave

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on July 14, 2009
in Contraband
. Comments

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

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A Summerish Mix

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on July 8, 2009
in Super Swingin' Mix
. Comments

ssm4 A Summerish Mix

When I think of summer and the hot weather that we’ve been sometimes enjoying, I often conjure this majestic image in my head:

SF074 A Summerish Mix

Treated. It’s the Tornado at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. You can probably see this thing from space. It’s huge. I’ve made one pilgrimage across town this summer to do bidding with the mighty Tornado, and plan to go five more times (as per the season pass). Not that any of this matters to you, of course. You probably just want the jams. Fair enough. Here is a summerish mix that, despite my admiration for Brian Wilson, does not feature any Beach Boys songs. That’s just too obvious, ya know:

beachboys A Summerish Mix

As a buddy of mine once said “keep it crunk, but keep it positive.”

MP3 :::
Darker My Love – Summer is Here
Shop Assistants – Almost Made It
Sun City Girls – Radar 1941
The Jesus and Mary Chain – On the Wall (the better Barbed Wire Kisses version)
Atlas Sound – On Guard
City Center – Gladest
Amen Dunes – In Caroline
Friends – Summer Sunday Blues
Seals & Crofts – Summer Breeze
The Clean – Beatnik

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Bloodsport, Shoegazing for the Punks

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on June 2, 2009
in MP3
. Comments

l_45965f8c58eb9a95e7b4e9fed458cb20 Bloodsport, Shoegazing for the Punks

I like what I’m hearing on Nova Scotia-based Bloodsport’s debut EP Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. A moody, blacker than black dark pop collection of industrial chanties, Goodbye to the Holy Mountain is breathy and angular, somewhere between the fist-pumping anthems of Magazine and the concise shoegaze of Moose. The gloomy yet soaring “Japanese Democracy” offers the type of cinematic melody that remains subtle at first, acting as a type of hummable dirge that offers a revealing reward upon multiple listens (which is truly the most effective method of composing a catchy song).

My only critique is with the band name. I thought at first I got, like, a speed metal record in the mail. But that’s just a tertiary detail, of course. Goodbye to the Holy Mountain is not yet available in the states, but you can follow the group on MySpazz to get the skinny on future release details.

For fans of:  Film School, The Warlocks, Foreign Born

MP3 :::
Bloodsport – Japanese Democracy

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The Best of Swirlies

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on May 25, 2009
in Contraband
. Comments

61adnfeydgL._SS500_ The Best of Swirlies

Continuing the Contraband series, showcasing various finds and older, often out of print, records that deserve some ink in the blogololosphere, today we discuss Swirlies and three albums – Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, What to Do About Them, and They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons – all of which are very worthy of your attention.

Swirlies served as a Yankee response to the Thames Valley-centric shoegazing movement, though it could still be argued that Swirlies didn’t necessarily fit nicely in that box either. The group masterfully amalgamated both dream and noise pop aesthetics like champs, while also pioneering what was known as “chimp rock,” or music with a deliberately childlike, uncouth approach to songwriting.  Though they’ve not done a whole lot in more recent times, it’s worth noting that Swirlies never officially disbanded. As a matter of fact, they recently resurfaced to play three east coast shows in February.

What to Do About Them, released in 1992, is rather cohesive for a debut EP. Under the soundboard-clipping washes of noise is a touch of bubblegum pop that carved a niche for Swirlies as America’s The Vaselines. Dig the sweet and sour “Chris R” and anthemic “Upstairs.”

24c5c060ada055dd040d0210.L The Best of Swirlies

Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, released in 1993, maintains the typical cadence and aesthetic of the time as a freewheeling, sloppy recording. One important distinction, however, is Swirlies’ mastery of the quiet/loud dynamic. Songs like “Bell” have a real Ride quality in terms of soaring melodies and silky guitars – minus any sort of production, of course.

61fvRZOYY1L._SS500_ The Best of Swirlies

While Swirlies’ 1995 album They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons is still in print, it isn’t widely released, discussed, or revered, and that’s an abject bummer. Compared to their noisier, more disjointed previous releases, …Salons features cleaner production and more sophisticated, concise songwriting, ostentatiously because it is, indeed, a latter album and the members are older, etc. However, the band proves they still don’t give a shit by way of their classic muddy, brutal distortion. The liner notes state that no synthesizers have ever been used in Swirlies, making some of the sounds scattered on “Sound of Sebring” over the ’90s-centric, tinty, active rhythm quite curious indeed.

MP3 :::
Swirlies – Upstairs
Swirlies – Chris R
Swirlies – Pancake
Swirlies – Park the Car By the Side of the Road
Swirlies – In Harmony New Found Freedom
Swirlies – Sound of Sebring
Swirlies – Sunn

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Meridian Signals Escape Route EP Now Available for Free Download

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on May 8, 2009
in General Communique and MP3
. Comments

ms1 Meridian Signals Escape Route EP Now Available for Free Download

Sure, self-promotion might be kinda lame, but I’m excited that I finally got around to releasing this EP. And since I’m giving my jam hive away for free, don’t be hateful.

Meridian Signals is my personal music project that I work on at various intervals – whenever I have some free time and feel productive. Meridian Signals combines three musical ideas I really like – lots of reverb, subtle melodic qualities under thick textures, and odd radio recordings.

The instruments used to create Meridian Signals include my Epiphone electric guitar, a Boss SP-303 sampler, a Digitech RP150 multi-effect guitar processor, a Casio keyboard, and a variety of unusual radios, including a shortwave, a police scanner, and a weather band – all thrown together in an overloud, underproduced, psych shoegaze burgoo.  Other than for the expressed purposed of featuring bizarre broadcast clips (all recorded by holding the radio speaker against the guitar’s pickups, except on “Mountain Propagation” wherein I use a couple of clips from The Conet Project), the music is instrumental not so much out of an artistic statement, but rather due to a lack of confidence in my vocal abilities. That, I believe, will change on future recordings, however.

Four of the six tracks on Escape Route were recorded in our shitty Wicker Park apartment in Chicago during a particularly foul winter circa early 2008 (in the title track, you can hear the semi-apocalyptic NOAA weather advisory for the Chicago area). “Consumer Confidence in Christ is Down” was recorded later that spring in a different and more comfortable apartment in Lakeview/Boystown, and “Mountain Propagation” was recorded just a couple of months ago at the current Bloggins Base Camp here in Louisville’s Highlands after coming home from the bars late one night and feeling inspired (oddly enough).

The vast majority of the guitar arrangements were laid to tape in one take, though some parts were rearranged in production. I don’t currently play live since I’m uncertain how to reproduce most of this on cue as just one person. However, I’ve been chatting with a couple of guys about playing around, so that may happen in the not so distant future.  I consider Escape Route to be sketches of songs rather than, like, a magnum opus or somethin’. As such, I’m giving it away for free for you to enjoy and tell me what you think.  Right now, it’s just a hobby and a time passer, but who knows where this will go.

ms2 Meridian Signals Escape Route EP Now Available for Free Download

The .ZIP package below contains the six songs (all iTunes ready) and the printer-friendly cover art, designed by me. Just burn the disc, print out the cover, fold it in half, and you have a free disc to hit the bong to!

For fans of:  Boards of Canada, My Bloody Valentine, Odd Nosdam, Mogwai, Belong

ZIP :::
Meridian Signals – Escape Route EP (approx. 63 MB)

MP3 :::
Meridian Signals – Mountain Propagation

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Protect Yourself from the Swine Flu

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on April 30, 2009
in General Communique and MP3
. Comments

n12901847_35378230_48 Protect Yourself from the Swine Flu

I’ve got my gas mask ready. What about you?

In the interest of preparedness in these uncertain times, the incomparable @NotNotoriousBIG on Twitter has procured a mask for you all to wear. The graphic below is a PNG file with transparent background, so all you gots to do is take your profile picture from your preferred social network, open it in the graphics program of your choice, and paste that lil’ dude about the mouth and nose regions. Can’t be too careful when it keeps looking like some 28 Days Later shit’s gettin’ ready to go down.

zOMG ZOMBIES!!!1 THUNDERKISS 65 ASTROCREEPZ 2000!!

cover_large Protect Yourself from the Swine Flu

Get prepared, ya’llz. Swine flu/Bird flu/West Nile/SARS/terrorism/E. Coli ain’t nothin’ to fuck with:

mask Protect Yourself from the Swine Flu

MP3 :::
Nothing People – Sickness
The N.E.C. – Old Medicine
Medicine – Till I Die
Disturbed – The Sickness (J/K LOL)

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The Nightblooms and their Summertime Shoegaze

Published
by
Kenny Bloggins
on April 28, 2009
in Contraband
. Comments

51dYpyGnxML._SS500_ The Nightblooms and their Summertime Shoegaze

Recently, I discovered I had quite a volume of unmarked CD-Rs lying about my personal caverns (closets, that is, not some strange sexual euphemism). Last night, I gripped L-Train’s industrial-strength Sony Walkman (remember those?) and went through 30 or so unnamed CDs. I found some amazing stuff – much of which I will share with you over the next few weeks. A lot of tracks I found were certainly of the older, rare, and/or out of print variety, as I pirated a lot of music from my former college radio station WRFL, where I dwelled for most of my college career. The station pretty much had a “don’t throw anything away” policy since its inception in 1988, so it’s a veritable museum (though certain titles were stolen at some point in the past obviously). This is why you see a new category called “Contraband.” Since the concepts are somewhat similar, entries from Cut-Out Bin Classics and Vinyl Finds have been consolidated into one easy, low-APR category. The MP3 categories, as always, refers to hawt new traxxx (or easier to find music).

The first awesome find in last night’s excursion is the 1992 self-titled album by The Nightblooms. The Nightblooms were, as often is the case, an underappreciated collective from The Netherlands who only released two albums. Shoegazing is certainly the easiest reference point, as the group concealed melodic vocals under massive Big Muff guitar sounds. However, the Nightblooms were not nearly as ethereal as, say, Lush – the group packed a crunchy punch… almost reminiscent of a sped-up stoner metal band. You also hear an amalgamation of fuzz, punk, noise, and twee a la The Vaselines. There’s very little information on the group and I have yet to find any interviews on the intarwebz. If you find something, please send it my way! Otherwise, enjoys these rare gems perfect for warming weather.

For fans of: Lush, The Vaselines, Velocity Girl, Aislers Set

MP3 :::
The Nightblooms – Panicle
The Nightblooms – 59#1
The Nightblooms – Slowly Rising

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