Category: Shoegaze

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tan Cologne Returns with Meditative and Trance-Inducing “Infinity”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — have released work rooted in terrestrial and earthen landscapes: Their debut, 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico explored the topography of cultures and subcultures on the surface of New Mexico. Their sophomore album, 2022’s Earth Visions of Water Spaces was inspired by past, present and future water and waterways, embodying the power of water and how it has shaped our planet. 2023’s Pescetrullo (soundscapes) captured a series of on-site instrumental and field recordings made in the remote architectural Pescetrullo in Puglia, Italy, immortalizing the contrasts of ancient buildings, new bold structures, insects, and lapping water of the surrounding environment.

The New Mexico-based duo’s forthcoming third album Unknown Beyond is slated for a June 20, 2025 release through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty. 

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album. 

The album reportedly sees Green and Macias seeking a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” they say. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interweaving and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date. 

Last month, I wrote about “Cloud of Mirrors,” a woozily meditative track, featuring swirling and painterly, shoegazer-like guitar textures and Green’s and Macias’ soaring harmonies ethereally floating over a bed of pulsating, metronomic-like drum machine click. Sonically, “Cloud of Mirrors” marks a sonic and thematic shift for the New Mexico-based outfit as they embrace a richer blend of electronic elements to their sound, all while seemingly recalling A Storm in Heaven and Souvlaki-era shoegaze. 

“’Cloud of Mirrors’ is about life happening to you and having to deal with whatever is handed to you – a chemtrail above, being ‘over it,’ knowing we are all interconnected and a part of the disaster and the beauty,” the duo explain. “The idea that we are a mirrored image of the sky – manmade or natural, or even simulated. A reflection of everything around you being internally present.”

Unknown Beyond‘s latest single “Infinity” is a trance-inducing, meditative song anchored around gently swirling, reverb-based shoegazer guitar textures serving as a lush and hazy soundscape for the pair’s dreamy, reverb-soaked vocals. The rack ruminates on shifts in form as we move through life — and the untold end that all physical beings will inevitably face.

“‘Infinity’ is about an endless drift into the infinite,” the band explains. “The lyrics ‘All pass through known’ evoke the comfort of knowing we all enter and leave, though the definitive dimension is the unknown beyond.” The duo continue, “We understand the passage through physical form, and take into account the infinite depth outside of our comprehension.”

Directed and shot by the duo in Taos, the equally meditative, accompanying video for “Infinity” follows their friend Ricardo de Jesus Tejada, walking around Taos for a stop to check in on his horse Lupita, before heading back home.

“Our music video circles a day or dissolving timeline of a man on a walk and how he finds himself in a meditative drift with a horse, and then returns to the beginning and also the end,” the duo explain.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: PANIK FLOWER Shares Brooding and Uneasy “rearview”

Formed back in 2022 through a combination of chance introductions and long-time friendships, Brooklyn-based indie outfit PANIK FLOWER — Sage Leopold (vocals), Mila Stieglitz-Courtney (guitar, vocals), Jordan Buzzell (guitar), Max Baird (bass) and Marco Starger (drums) — have firmly cemented a sound that mixes dream pop with an understated heaviness. The result is a unique soundscape featuring soft and dreamy harmonies, hard-hitting instrumentals and cutting lyricism that evokes the hazy nostalgia of distant memories of love, loss and identity.

Through playing shows around the New York Metropolitan area, the band quickly developed a fanbase and reputation for their live show. Building upon a growing reputation, the band released their Carl Bespolka-produced debut EP, 2023’s Dark Blue.

The rising Brooklyn-based outfit’s sophomore EP, the recently released. six-song rearview is deeply rooted in intentional juxtaposition. Thematically, rearview EP sees the band looking inward to explore identity; namely the dichotomous nature of uncertainty and self-acceptance paired with a lush yet jagged soundscape.

“This EP felt like a lot of us finding ourselves as a band — our sound and how we perform,” the band’s Max Baird shared. “Sage’s spoken word has become such an important part of that and we really wanted to explore it in this project. It contributes a lot to the push-pull dynamic of our music, often adding another rhythmic element on top of an already lush, sonic landscape. Many of the bones of these tracks were brought to us by our drummer Marco, who was our missing piece up until early last year.”

The EP’s latest single, EP title track “rearview” is a stormy and uneasy take on 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock anchored around a wall of shimmering and swirling shoegazer-like guitar, explosive hi-hat driven drumming paired with Leopold’s unhinged wailing. And at its core, “rearview” explores a barely contained simmering rage over being taken advantage of, of being made a fool, and of having to maneuver in the aftermath of an embittering, humiliating experience.

Directed by Harleigh Shaw, the accompanying video for “rearview” is a brooding, horror movie-influenced visual that at one point that features the band’s Leopold as a “final girl” being chased by a relentless pursuer.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: The New Colossus Festival 2023: Day 4: 3/11/23: Shoegaze Party at Arlene’s Grocery feat. Lauren Lakis, Astronomies and Gossamer Blue

Live concert photography of Lauren Lakis, Astronomies and Gossamer Blue playing 2023’s New Colossus Festival Shoegaze Party.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tan Cologne Shares Hazy, “A Storm in Heaven”-like “Cloud of Mirrors”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — have released work rooted in terrestrial and earthen landscapes: Their debut, 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico explored the topography of cultures and subcultures on the surface of New Mexico. Their sophomore album, 2022’s Earth Visions of Water Spaces was inspired by past, present and future water and waterways, embodying the power of water and how it has shaped our planet. 2023’s Pescetrullo (soundscapes) captured a series of on-site instrumental and field recordings made in the remote architectural Pescetrullo in Puglia, Italy, immortalizing the contrasts of ancient buildings, new bold structures, insects, and lapping water of the surrounding environment.

The New Mexico-based duo’s forthcoming third album Unknown Beyond is slated for a June 20, 2025 release through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty.

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album.

The album reportedly sees Green and Macias seeking a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” they say. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interviewing and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegeazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date.

Unknown Beyond‘s latest single, the woozy yet meditative “Cloud of Mirrors” features swirling and painterly, shoegazer-like guitar textures and Green’s and Macias’ soaring harmonies ethereally floating over a bed of pulsating, metronomic-like drum machine click. Sonically, “Cloud of Mirrors” marks a sonic and thematic shift for the New Mexico-based outfit as they embrace a richer blend of electronic elements to their sound, all while recalling A Storm in Heaven and Souvlaki-era shoegaze.

“’Cloud of Mirrors’ is about life happening to you and having to deal with whatever is handed to you – a chemtrail above, being ‘over it,’ knowing we are all interconnected and a part of the disaster and the beauty,” the duo explain. “The idea that we are a mirrored image of the sky – manmade or natural, or even simulated. A reflection of everything around you being internally present.”

Fittingly, the accompanying video is a hazy in-studio performance featuring seemingly endless reflections and refractions, as though looking at the duo performing through a mirror.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The KVB’s Coldwave Remix of A Place to Bury Strangers’ “Bad Idea”

New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — released their seventh album Synthesizer last year.

While Synthesizer is the album’s title, it’s also a physical entity, a synthesizer specifically made for the album — and a synthesizer that you too, can own (in part), if you buy the record on vinyl. The album’s cover art doubles as a circuit board and functional synth for curious and enterprising fans. “It’s pretty messed up, chaotic. But it feels really human,” the band’s Oliver Ackermann says. 

In an era of making music where so little is DIY and so much is left up to AI, never setting foot in a practice room or a home studio, making something that feels deliberately chaotic, messy, and human, is entirely the point. The album celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community. 

The writing sessions for Synthesizer started in the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of 2022’s See Through You. The band’s new lineup which features Ackermann and his friends John and Sandra Fedowitz was especially inspiring for Ackermann. “It felt like a fresh new thing,” he says. “I wanted to write songs everyone was excited about playing.” 

The album captures the band at a place of reinvention, where they take a carefully honed sound and approach and crack it wide open to gut its then reimagine it. And of course, to ever so slightly reinvent one’s sound, one must also built a new instrument — the synthesizer at the core of the album’s overall sound. 

Synthesizer is arguably one of the band’s most live-sounding albums to date, accurately capturing the rawness and explosiveness of the band in a live setting, which is a fitting for a band that is best in a live setting, where the material takes on a new energy in the presence of a crowd. “We’re artists,” Ackermann says, “Going to shows and bringing that imperfect and beautiful DIY ethos is important.” 

Album single “Bad Idea” is anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat, woozily oscillating feedback-driven guitar lines. John Fedowitz’s plaintive yet punchy delivery weaves in and out of the stormy and soundscape, which helps to evoke the vacillating, almost nauseating unease of self-doubt. 

“Bad Idea” showcases the raw creativity of the band’s bassist John Fedowitz. “He came to the studio with a simple looping drum beat, thinking he didn’t have any good ideas — thus, this song was his ‘bad idea,’” the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann says. “We each penned some lines on paper, and he sang the ones that resonated. After a few instrumental passes, the recording was complete. The result is an innovative track born from spontaneous collaboration and a touch of self-doubt, turned into something uniquely captivating.” 

Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The KVB gave “Bad Idea” the remix treatment, turning the woozy chaos of the original into a brooding and hypnotic bit of coldwave that channels Depeche Mode, John Carpenter soundtracks and the like while being simultaneously headphone and dance floor friendly.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Death Drive Teams Up with Dogs on Shady Lane’s Tori Hall on Dreamy “Let The Wound Heal”

Brooklyn-based electro shoegaze outfit Death Drive‘s latest single, the recently released “Let the Wound Heal,” features Dogs on Shady Lane‘s Tori Hall. Coming on the heels of last September’s split EP with Yuurusu, A Bit Closer to Heaven, “Let the Wound Heal” pairs Hall’s ethereal and plaintive delivery with a lush retro-futuristic leaning production featuring twinkling synths, swirling guitar textures, live drumming and a supple bass line.

While influenced by a wide range of influences including The Postal Service and Radiohead, the song sonically reminds me a bit of BLACKSTONE RNGRS, No Swoon, The Orielles‘ recent output and Death By Piano. The song’s lyrics, which were written by Hall, were inspired by the monologue delivered by Rutger Hauer’s character Roy Batty in the climax of the 1982 film Blade Runner.

“The demo was named ‘harrisonfordbladerunner,'” Death Drive bandleader and sampler Raj explains. ” That’s where the idea took off for Tori with the lyrics, and I named it that because that was the poster in front of me in the room where we finished the demo.”

Death Drive will celebrate the release of their new single at The Woodshop in Brooklyn on April 4th, alongside Holiem, Blood Estate, and MKUltra.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Heaven Shares Rousingly Anthemic “Dream Aloud”

New York-based shoegazers Heaven was founded in the wake of its founding members Matt Sumrow (vocals, guitar) and Mikey Jones (drums) touring and recording with Dean and Britta, Swervedriver, Ambulance LTD, Caveman, The Comas, The Lemonheads and a lengthy list of others. With the addition of their newest member, Sonia Manalili, the shoegazer trio’s third album Dream Aloud officially released today through Little Cloud Records.

The band’s third album is the trio’s most somnambulistic effort to date. Recorded here in NYC with Jonathan Krienik, the album features guest spots from Longwave’s and Wah Together‘s Steve Schlitz. 

“The record was conceived in the dark depths of the pandemic, when all we could do was stay at home and work on projects and watch the end of the world on TV,” Heaven’s Matt Sumrow explains. “It was created as a vision of hope and dreams, an escape from the reality we were in. It’s also a deliberate move back to a DIY way of making music. Realizing that facing the apocalypse, you have to rely on yourself to make things happen, make art happen, conjure your love and dreams.”

In the lead-up to the album’s release today, I wrote about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “I Need You More Somehow,” a hook-driven, slick synthesis of Heroes-era Bowie, New Zealand jangle pop paired with bursts of feedback and Sumrow’s longing vocal. “Both at home on the beach in California or a seedy underground nightclub in Glasgow or Berlin, the song layers two worlds,” Heaven’s Matt Sumrow says. “The lyrics are purposefully ambiguous, needing more of someone and longing for more connection, but also sounding content and blissful with the present situation at the same time.”

  • “The Fire You Know,” a brooding and melancholy song that reminds me a bit of Ocean Rain-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Psychedelic Furs with a lush string arrangement from cellist Megan LaMarca and propulsive drumming that drives the song from its fever dream-like verses to a chugging hook and dreamy coda. Thematically, the song touches upon deeply held secrets, fated beliefs and madness which, fittingly emphasize the song’s swooningly Romantic vibe. 

Dream Aloud’s latest single, album title track “Dream Aloud” is a dreamy mix of jangle pop, 90s alt rock and shoegaze, anchored around Sumrow’s uncanny knack for crafting rousingly anthemic hooks with earnest, nostalgia-inducing lyricism. “I wrote this song in the wee hours of the morning, recording it into my phone,” Sumrow recalls. “Honestly, I don’t even remember writing it. I found it amongst a bunch of other song sketches. It was a hushed lullaby at first, but we turned it into a rocker. I guess if I was trying to explain it, lyrically it’s a Tibetan sand mandala, building something beautiful then destroying it.”

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with director Jeska Sand, the accompanying video for “Dream Aloud” stars Jacqueline Valenti as lone, angel wing-wearing figure wandering around the bars and streets of East Village before heading off to Coney Island as the sun rises. The video captures moments of loneliness, discovery, reflection and dreamlike observation through the city’s shift between neon and daylight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 63rd Birthday, Simon Raymonde!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Simon Raymonde’s 63rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Fotoform Shares Lush and Woozy “Grief is a Garden”

Deriving their name from a mid-century, avant-garde photography movement, Seattle-based post punk outfit Fotoform — longtime collaborators and married couple Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar), along with  Death Cab for Cutie‘s and The Long Winters‘ Michael Schorr (drums) — can trace their origins back to the formation of a previous project,  the goth-adjacent dream pop act C’est la Mort, which formed shortly after House and Cox married. 

Specializing in what they dubbed “pointy-shoegaze,” C’est la Mort released their full-length debut through their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks, including a limited split 7 inch with Stars for American Laundromat‘s The Smiths‘ tribute Please Please Please. After a series of lineup changes, House and Cox re-emerged as Fotoform in late 2016. 

House and Cox released their Fotoform self-titled debut in 2017. Supported with tours of the West Coast and Europe, the album received airplay and praise both locally and nationally: Album single “I Know You’re Charming” was featured as a KEXP Song of The Day. The self-titled album was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 Albums of 2017 and it landed on several year-end lists, including The Big Takeover and Part-Time Punks. 

Building upon a growing profile, the band followed up with 2018’s Part-Time Punks EP, which was selected as one of The Big Takeover’s EPs of 2018. Schorr joined the band back in 2019 and by the following year, they released two benefit singles as a newly minted trio “Yves Klein Blue,” which was recored for voter outreach and the Christmas-themed “They Say It’s Always Lonely” to benefit local food banks. Both singles found the trio expanding upon their sound with the addition of synths. 

In early 2020, the trio went into the studio with Evan Foster to record the material for their sophomore album, Horizons. Recording sessions were interrupted as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-enforced quarantines and restrictions and continued a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles recording drum parts. The album saw the band pivoting from the towering wall of guitars-driven sound of their previously released work and towards a much more nuanced sound that drew equally from shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk with the band continuing to pair synths with layers of guitars and driving bass lines.

The Seattle-based trio’s third album Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) is slated for an April 18, 2025 release. The album reportedly sees the band’s evolving yet again, with the band further refining their long-held crystalline sound into a lush and introspective soundscape that blends the emotional weight of post-punk with the ethereal beauty of shoegaze with the album’s material increasingly drawing from classic 4AD heyday artists like This Moral Coil, Pale Saints and Lush.

The album’s material thematically touches upon loss, change, heartache, pain and transformation, while tackling the big existential questions. The album, also features some of the band’s most vulnerable and disarmingly honest lyrics of their growing catalog.

Album title track “Grief is a Garden,’ is a brooding slow-burning tune anchored around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Kim House’s yearning and ethereal delivery paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sounding a bit like Garlands-era Cocteau Twins and 4AD Records classic heyday period, “Grief is a Garden” sees the band thematically into delving deeply into personal themes of grief, loss, and in time, gradual acceptance.

“The title track to our upcoming album, ‘Grief is a Garden’ reflects on the enduring, ever-evolving nature of grief and how it changes over time,” Fotoform’s Kim House explains. “Grief blooms, decays and nourishes itself, embodying love, beauty, pain and transformation. As we move through life, we accumulate grief, and the song contemplates the evolving nature of our relationship to loss and love, as grief becomes a part of us, forever changing us and informing our new selves as we continue with life after loss.

“My brother Jeff passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of February, right after we released our first single. I am still trying to absorb the devastating reality that he is gone. I never could have imagined I would lose another brother just as we are starting to release songs off our album, which is centered around grief, loss, resilience and healing. The lyric ‘Waves keep crashing, unforeseen, losing someone is never what it seems‘ has been swirling around me as I feel blindsided by the loss of my brother. We’d been planning on talking about grief with the new record, but it’s another thing to suddenly find yourself newly grieving again. 

“The longing for answers to life’s unknowable questions is palpable throughout this song, as I’ve wrestled with existential doubts since childhood, questioning everything from the stories I was raised with to the mysteries of life and death itself. ‘Into the ether, we all call out‘ is a reference to the unknowable place we enter when we die – an acknowledgement and a cry for connection.

Loved ones who touch our souls meld with our spirit and never leave us. Tethers to those we’ve lost surround us when we open our hearts. We often feel these connections after we lose someone: a certain song comes on the radio or a shared symbol appears at the most poignant time. Heightened awareness of these synchronicities tethers us to those we’ve lost.

“Grief, so deeply personal yet also universal, is hanging heavy for so many of us these days. We all find ourselves in mourning, whether for loved ones, the erosion of societal values, social injustice, dismantling of democracy, upheaval from natural disasters and the intensifying climate crisis, loss of relationships, former versions of ourselves after injury and disability and anticipatory grief of what’s to come – the list is endless.

Creating this album was a ritual in reflecting on grief, sitting with it, metabolizing, and letting it sink into all the cracks and crevices, fully absorbing grief to understand – and eventually release – some of its tight hold / energy. As I return to this familiar and tender state of fresh sorrow and loss, I take comfort in the knowledge that with time, grief will soften around the edges and the warmth of love will reclaim its position in the foreground.”

Directed by Erik Foster, the accompanying video for “Grief is a Garden” is a lush and woozy fever dream shot in a verdant garden that would have been perfect in an Edgar Allan Poe short story or in a Mary Shelley novel.