Spectres - Mirror

 #Spectres #noise rock #shoegaze #post-punk #alternative/indie rock #experimental #music video 

Hailing from Devon and based in Bristol, U.K., Spectres are a noise rock quartet combining elements of shoegaze, drone, indie rock, and, to some extent, post-punk. Made up of vocalist/guitarist Joe Hatt, guitarist Adrian Dutt, bassist Darren Frost, and drummer Andy Came, the group's ascent to widespread critical acclaim both on record and on the stage began after they had started to dominate the U.K. gig circuit. The outfit's first foray into the public eye was with the 2011 EP Family. The release cemented their penchant for harsh noise and uncomfortable swathes of distortion, enveloping somewhat straightforward, albeit dark, melancholy pop songs. It was this sound that began to earn the band comparisons to pioneering noise acts such as My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus & Mary Chain.
This led to Artrocker magazine crowning them "Unsigned Band of the Year," a title that spurred on more activity for Spectres as they took up residence in a makeshift bedroom recording studio to record their next EP, the highly visceral Hunger, which was put out by the group's own label, Howling Owl Records. Following this, the band went on scheduling more performances around the country, eventually deciding to relocate from Devon to Bristol. It proved to be a bold move, as the ensemble increased activities with Howling Owl, promoting the likes of Wilde, Towns, and the Naturals. A significant change came for the group when esteemed independent label Sonic Cathedral asked them to support Lorelle Meets the Obsolete on a nationwide tour, eventually landing Spectres a spot on the label roster.
Further success followed when they released their debut album, Dying, in 2015, an effort that gained further comparisons to acts such as Sonic Youth and A Place to Bury Strangers. They were hailed by NME and The Guardian, which stated the band was among those heralding a "new wave of new noise." It was around this time that Spectres had started to fully earn their reputation as a visceral and dangerously loud and raw live act.
The band unexpectedly courted controversy when it recorded and released an unofficial theme song for the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre, a move that started out as an elaborate joke due to the issue of the group's name and the film's title. However, the track ended up drawing in positive attention due to continuous airplay from BBC Radio 6. Spectres then shared a series of angry e-mails purported to be from the management of Sam Smith, singer of the movie's official theme song, castigating Radio 6 for favoring Spectres' song over his. However, the e-mails later turned out to be fake, and Spectres were forced to apologize.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/spectres-mn0000741839/biography

Wolf Alice - Moaning Lisa Smile

 #Wolf Alice #alternative/indie rock #shoegaze #folk rock #dream pop #folk punk

Wolf Alice didn’t exactly dream big at the start of their careers. They’re one of the biggest bands in the UK at the moment but despite reaching the heady heights of music stardom, they say they never really indulged many wild aspirations when they were young. “Ellie says she just wanted enough money to buy hot lunches every day,” guitarist Joff Oddie jokes, reminiscing about the 2010s, when Wolf Alice were a folk duo starting out in London.
“I don’t think I let myself visualise those, what’s called landmark moments, because you don’t want to disappoint yourself,” says the Ellie in question, surname Rowsell, the band’s singer. She jokes that her only ambition was to play the cult east London pub The Old Blue Last, which was once owned by Vice magazine and was at the centre of the noughties Shoreditch music scene where acts with names like Shitdisco regularly played and misbehaved. It’s hardly the main stage at Glastonbury. “I didn’t mind if people came,” Rowsell adds, “it was just so I could tell people I played.”
Despite this apparent humility, Wolf Alice have managed to reach heights that feel like a rarity for a British rock group these days. Their Nineties shoegaze pop, grunge-indebted riffs and musings on the idiosyncrasies of millennial life stood them apart from the usual four lads and guitar fare that had previously bloated the 2000s indie scene. Since they expanded with bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey and released their debut EP in 2014, their albums have topped the charts, they won a Mercury Music Prize for their second record, 2017’s Visions of a Life, and they’ve just received a nomination for their third, the recently released Blue Weekend.
They’ve had to get used to the new level of fame since their last album. With Visions of a Life came the harsh, instructive spotlight of the tabloid and broadsheet media into their lives – The Sun ran a story alleging Rowsell was engaged to the frontman of punk duo Slaves and that they had bought a house in Margate, which Rowsell has denied. Winning that initial Mercury is a moment the four-piece are still yet to process, especially Ellis, who semi-jokes he still has PTSD from the fallout of unexpectedly winning. “It’s so unbelievably amazing but I just so never thought that was going to happen ever,” he confesses, “and then obviously we had to go on the news and we were really drunk.”
Wolf Alice are so down-to-earth, you imagine they don’t bow easily to pressure. Indeed, the burden of following up two well-received albums could have broken most bands but they have not only risen to the occasion, they’ve released one that many see as the truest distillation of their sound and ethos to date. Blue Weekend is a collage of familiar themes – failed relationships, honest self-reflection, anxiety – but even more widescreen, veering from guttural punk riffs to cinematic strings. Wolf Alice have often been accused of relying too heavily on their influences rather than having a definitive sound, but here they’ve leaned into the genre-hopping. “Having one sound and writing 11 variations of the same song feels lazy,” says Oddie. “Different types of music better represent different kinds of emotional content. Angry, loud, noisy things feel appropriate sometimes, but that’s not appropriate for all aspects of the spectrum of human emotions.”  From: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/wolf-alice-interview-mercury-prize-b1888079.html

Wand - Passage of the Dream

 #Wand #psychedelic rock #shoegaze #stoner rock #noise rock #garage rock #animated music video

On their third album, Los Angeles’ Wand gracefully sidestep the potential pitfalls of psychedelic songwriting—meandering guitars, rambling lyrics, directionless tracks. They ground the blurry, bizarre visions established on their previous efforts, Ganglion Reef and Golem, in colorful imagery, so that the faces of the monsters they’ve written about on past records come into full focus.
While the shadow of Wand’s mentor Ty Segall still hovers over Wand’s blown-out garage sound, the band’s own flickering light is beginning to shine through more often. They have added some progressive folk rock to the mix, fondly recalling unique and memorable records like Mellow Candle’s Swaddling Songs and Comus’ classic First Utterance without sounding like a carbon copy. Cory Hanson’s voice shimmers  against the acoustic palette of songs like the beautiful closer "Morning Rainbow", the song that also contains 1000 Days’ key lyrical thesis: "We will see this world together in its terror."
Paralysis, paranoia, disappearance, erasure, pure fear, and curdling dreams are all themes that reappear in Hanson’s lyrics for 1000 Days; even the titular song, a concise bit of folky garage pop with a sunny-sweet choral melody, seems like it might be a love song at first but quickly turns into the nightmare of relationship stasis, depression, and ennui ("I don’t need a thing ‘cause I’ve had every dream"). The mingling of beautiful, honeyed melodies with dark, bleak lyrical content is nothing new, but Wand do it especially well, and they have a precision in their songwriting that keeps their music from spinning off into glazed burnout territory.
Though one worries that with such a prolific release schedule that Wand will run out of ideas, 1000 Days is a heartening record, a record that sees a young band picking up steam, playing with their influences more deftly than on their prior LPs, and bringing a thoughtful approach to old and well-traveled sounds. There’s enough interesting moments on 1000 Days to hold onto these songs, go back to them, and explore within them. That’s more than many of their cohorts within the cluttered and long-trendy field of psychedelic garage—there are hundreds of disposable tape-label bands with little to say out there, and it’s wearying to search through all that crud for the occasional gem, which does exist—have to offer.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20995-1000-days/

Jesus on Heroine - Ardhanarishvara

 #Jesus on Heroine #psychedelic rock #shoegaze #noise rock #garage rock #drone #Danish #animated music video 

One of the most exciting new bands we’ve come across this year is unquestionably Jesus On Heroine. Two months ago, they blew our minds with “Musasabi,” which was a monumental, psychedelic experience. It is also a candidate for song of the year, but the same argument could be made for their latest single. If you’ve bathed under a waterfall, you will know the exhilaration that overcomes you as the refreshing stream splashes on your head while the warm sun beams on your body. This same sensation is experienced on “Ardhanarishvara.” There isn’t a single element that stands out, but instead the psychedelic guitars, the dabbling of the ivory keys, the throbbing bass line, and the stuttering drums cascade together like a refreshing wave of sound. The harmonies are majestic, bursting like a congregation worshiping its gods. “Ardhanarishvara” is another tremendous tune from a band that we will start worshiping as of today. For what it’s worth, Ardhanarishvara is the androgynous form of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort, Parvati, so maybe we are chanting to a god. If you are interested, the video for the song is a must-see for its eye-popping animation.  From: https://therevue.ca/2017/06/29/the-matinee-june-29th-2/

BlackLab - Warm Death

 #BlackLab #doom metal #stoner metal #post-metal #shoegaze #sludge #psychedelic metal #witch metal #Japanese #music video

When you hear the phrase ‘dark witch doom’, it’s hard to shake off thoughts of Hammer Horror clichés and the kind of retro-flared, post-hippy rock that took Coven as a starting point and never really bothered to take it anywhere else - thankfully, BlackLab take that label and drag it right into the Stygian mire where it belongs. Originally formed in Osaka as a three-piece, they soon settled on the line-up of Yuko Morino and Chia Shiraishi as the ideal vessel to transport their sound, a colossally loud mix of Sabbathian doom, sludge and noisy punk-tinged insanity. Following on from the success of Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0, a re-recording of early demo tracks made for London’s New Heavy Sounds, they have quickly set about delivering the aptly-titled Abyss in time for a UK tour that, as with so much lately, will have to wait. Still, we have Abyss to vibe to in the meantime so The Sleeping Shaman decided to catch up with the devilish duo, find out where they’re coming from and where they’re yet to take us.

You’re often described as ‘Dark Witch Doom’ - how accurate do you feel that is? Does witchcraft or mysticism play any part in your sound?

Yuko: The person in charge of the shop that handled our self-produced CD used the expression. I liked that so much and then I describe myself so. I think it’s a phrase that expresses the character of the songs and sounds I make well. I like horror movies and mysteries stories, so they may have influenced my creations. When I write songs, I often get inspiration from those visuals. But those stories are not important - it’s just from visual stuff. Foreign media sometimes metamorphose us as Sadako. I welcome that, because she’s a superstar in Japanese horror movies. I believe in mysterious world. But unfortunately, I have no magic or mystery experience. I enjoy them daydreaming.

Chia: The term ‘Dark Witch Doom’ might convey the atmosphere of BlackLab’s sound. I like it. I’m not a witch, but I live on a spiritual basis. I might be a ‘star seed drummer’.

From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/interviews/blacklab-interview-with-yuko-chia/