Tag: shoegaze

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Larmes Noires Shares Shoegazey “L’aurore”

Mathieu Schreyer is a French singer/songwriter and musician, best known for his synth wave project MPKS. His side, solo recording project Larmes Noires is a decided departure from his best known work: Larmes Noires sees Schreyer exploring darker thoughts, much more honest feelings paired with soundscapes inspired by Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, The Cure and the like, and dreamily delivered vocals.

Since starting Larmes Noires, Schreyer has released a handful of singles, last year’s full-length debut, Les ombres dérangées and the recently released self-produced sophomore album Stigmate. Sonically blending elements of post-rock, shoegaze and darkwave to create an atmospheric and immersive soundscape, the album’s material was crafted as an intimate journey, where each track serves as a raw expression of vulnerability and resilience. And fittingly, the album’s material touches upon themes of melancholy, social isolation, inner strength and resolve — in a deeply personal fashion.

Stigmate‘s latest single “L’aurore,” is a brooding and cinematic track that pairs elements of Souvlaki and A Storm in Heaven-era shoegaze with Collapse Under the Empire-like post-rock paired with Schreyer’s plaintive and ethereal delivery and enormous hooks. At its core, there is a sense of resilience and hope.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The background world Shares Anthemic “it goes like this”

Skövde, Sweden-based indie outfit The background world was founded by primary songwriters Martin Platan (lead guitar) and Hanna Leijon (vocals) back in 2018. The pair met at a local bar and shortly after meeting, decided to start collaborating on a musical project. As they began amassing a collection of songs, they started playing live shows together. But they quickly began to realize that the material they had written — and had been writing — needed to be further fleshed out to fulfill their vision. The duo first recruited two old friends, who the pair had worked with in different projects over the years, Oscar Hjerpe (guitar) and Mikel Åkerman (drums). The band’s first lineup was completed with the addition of high school friends Edwin Muratovic (bass) and Tove Håkansson (backing vocals).

The band went on to release their debut EP 2022’s, It’s about a band. Paradise takes, Live at NSL, which they followed up with a handful of standalone singles that included 2022’s “Gasoline”/”I love you,” and last year’s “Love ends,” along with a list of others. This early batch of material saw the band crafting songs that thematically touched upon addiction, mental health, the search for something better and just the simple things in everyday life.

Since then, the band has gone through a massive lineup change — with the band currently as a trio featuring founding members Platan (guitar, bass), Leijon (vocals, keys) and Marcus Helmner (keys). They’re currently working on their highly anticipated full-length debut, which will feature “Why” and “Love ends,” a lived-in anthem about the dissolution of a relationship that’s slowly petering out to its embittering and inevitable breakup. Sonically, the song brought Til Tuesday‘s “Voices Carry” and Vancouver-based JOVM mainstays FRANKIIE to mind.

The forthcoming album will also feature the Swedish outfit’s latest single “It goes like this,” features what may arguably be the most anthemic hooks and choruses of the band’s growing catalog paired with a earnest, plaintive vocal and a crafted, classic shoegaze-meets-dream pop-meets college radio arrangement. But underneath the shimmering guitars and rousing chorus is a proudly defiant song.

The accompanying video for “It goes like this” features a super saturated VHS-styled visual that follows a woman dressed in white in a forest named
“Paradise.”

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: Slowdive with quannnic at Brooklyn Paramount 11/19/24

Live concert photography of Slowdive with quannnic at Brooklyn Paramount earlier this week.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: 802 Returns with Disco-Tinged Ripper “Princess”

Andreas “Slowoff” Asingh was one of the most critically acclaimed electronic artists in Denmark, working with internationally renowned artists like Raekwon while touring the world. Eventually, life’s twist and turns took Asingh back to his roots, the Danish countryside of Mols Bjerge.
Back in 2022, Asingh met Emil Sørensen and Kristian Holbæk, two young dudes making names for themselves in the country’s underground metal scene. Although the the members of 802 weren’t an obvious creative musical match, they bonded over their desire to create a sound that meshes elements of classic heavy metal, hazy shoegazer textures and ghostly synth pop with unashamedly catchy melodies. According to the band, the 802 world is ruled by musical anarchy and is a place for headbangers and pop lovers to unite.
The trio’s first ever show was at last year’s New Colossus Festival. And since then they’ve released three singles that received attention internationally: “My Girl,” and “22 (Velvet Vampire),” which were featured in award-winning horror shorts and “1986.” “1986” saw the Danish trio firmly cementing their sound: dense layers of crunchy metal riffage and thunderous drumming reminiscent of Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets-era Metallica, dreamy and incredibly catchy melodies, the sort of twinkling and atmospheric synths that will remind some of shoegazers like Chicago‘s Lightfoils, BLACKSTONE RNGRS, Hong Kong‘s Lucid Express and Montréal-based JOVM mainstays Bodywash paired some rousingly anthemic, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy hooks.
Over the summer, the Danish outfit took their hook-driven mesh of metal and pop to some of Scandinavia’s biggest festival, including Copenhell and Roskilde. The band has also received New Artist of the Year and New Live Artist of the Year nominations at the Danish metal awards, Den Hårde Tone. Building upon the growing momentum surrounding the band, the rising trio share their fourth single “Princess.” “Princess” sees the band pairing a relentlessly propulsive, Metallica-like chug with glistening synth arpeggios and the band’s penchant for enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Gothenburg’s Ljud & Bild Shares Broodingly Cinematic “Under Vattnet”

Gothenburg-based indie outfit Ljud & Bild was founded by co-frontpeople Karin Pallarp Nilsson (guitar, keys, vocals) and Anders Kjellberg. Expanding into a quartet that features Nillson, Klellberg, Erik Ridelius (keys, bass, percussion, vocals) and Yiva Holmdahl (drums, percussion), the Swedish outfit has become a mainstay in the local scene while developing a sound that meshes elements of shoegaze and krautrock.

The Swedish outfit’s latest single “Under Vattnet” is a brooding and slow burning track anchored around glistening and blocky synths, squiggling reverb-soaked bursts of guitar paired with a tight, driving groove. The song’s arrangement serves as a lush, Beach House-meets-post punk-like bed for Pallarp Nilsson’s and Kjellberg’s dreamy and ethereal harmonies.

“The mood is Twin Peaks for tadpoles and the song was written during a spring afternoon in the forest,” the band explains. “You fall asleep by a stream and disappear in a soft, warm light.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Share a Tense and Uneasy Tale of Conflicted Emotions

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 month through Dedstrange. 

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 new lineup which featured 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.” 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about three of the album’s previously released singles: 

  • “Disgust,” an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time. “‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

  • “Bad Idea,” a track anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat and 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.” 

  • “Fear Of Transformation,” a snarling and scuzzy New Wave/goth punk synth-driven ripper featuring layers of oscillating synths, a relentless motorik groove, explosive bursts of feedback paired with the band’s long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly hooks and Ackermann’s punchy delivery. Thematically, the track focuses and delves into the struggle of overcoming internal barriers. As the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann explains, “Sometimes fear builds up and pins you in a cage. A conversation occurs in my head where I have to convince myself to just fucking do something to break out of it.” The song embodies that internal dialogue, capturing the battle between the compulsion to avoid fear and the push to confront it. And as a result, the song is a raw, uneasy and intense conversation with the devil within.

Synthesizer’s fifth single “Don’t Be Sorry,” is a brooding and tense tale of complicated and conflicted emotions, the hate, longing, heartache, betrayal and frustration that frequently comes from your nearest and dearest, and from those you’re estranged from through the use of angular and woozy surf rock guitars, bursts of abrasive synth noise paired with a chugging, motorik groove.

“This song is about how nothing in life is black and white. You sometimes feel hurt and hatred from certain people and yet somehow still miss them,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann explains. “Also, as time goes on there are always connections lost with family and friends.  You really want them back in your life but can’t always make it work. Anxiety builds with regret.  You continually miss chances to reach out and see them and then there just isn’t any time left. 

“I feel guilt and worry, wondering what they must think;  if it’s just me who feels this lost connection or if the feeling is mutual. Whatever it is, I would like for these people to know that I miss them and would greet them with open arms if it’s ever possible to reconvene.

“The ‘Synthesizer’ was used to create the abrasive crash sounds that drive home the forcefulness of the chorus ‘Return Home, Don’t Be Sorry’, contrasting with the intimate and concerned vocal delivery.

Directed by Sweden’s Johannes Nyholm, director of the modern cult horror masterpiece Koko-di Koka-da, the horror-themed video depicts a love triangle and power struggle between life, death and art, that stars the Master, the Minion and the Wife that features a fix of animation and live action, shot in a gorgeous black and white.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Babel Map Shares Stormy “Pazuzu”

Initially started as s solo, trip-hop/electronic music project of then-Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter and musician Jessica Drummer, Babel Map became a full-fledged band when Drummer relocated to Harrisburg, PA in 2015. Upon her arrival to the commonwealth’s capital, Drummer started playing live shows, networking and playing with other musicians.

After a series of lineup changes, the band’s lineup settled with the addition of Steph Warner (guitar) and Michael Stipe (bass). The lineup change saw the band’s creative process becoming much more collaborative, and that was quickly followed by a decided change in sonic direction towards a sound that incorporated elements of shoegaze, post-metal and trance.

The trio recorded their full-length debut, 2020’s Raw Tomato, My Heart with Ian Scheila at Philadelphia-based Headroom Studios while cutting their teeth as a live unit, until COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and shutdowns. During the shutdowns, the band wrote their sophomore album, 2022’s CANCEL THIS!, which was recorded right after restrictions were lifted.

Slated for a Friday release through Lost Future Records, the band’s soon-to-be released third album Teeth was originally written last year with electronic drums as a result of another lineup change. The band’s newest member Brian Doherty (drums, percussion) later joined the Harrisburg-based outfit and began writing and producing drums and percussion parts for the album’s material. Babel Map explains the symbolism behind the title, as it is both about “showing your teeth,” but also “leaving a permanent piece of yourself behind for the world to reflect on.”

Recorded with God City Studio‘s Kurt Ballou, Teeth captures the band at a new creative chapter: They explain that the lineup change allowed for a progressive increase in experimentation in terms of song structure and arrangements. Their previously released efforts were written, refined and recorded mostly from playing in a live setting. But for Teeth, the newly constituted quartet came together with no preconceived notions, pressed record and slowly built songs. Once the album’s material was complete, the band began practicing as a quartet to prepare for recording and eventually live shows.

Teeth single “Pazuzu,” is an expansive, deeply brooding and forceful ripper that pairs swirling shoegazer textures and atmospheric keys with enormous stoner rock-like riffage, thunderous drumming serving as a stormy bed for rousingly anthemic hooks and Drummer’s expressive, powerhouse delivery.

The accompanying video fittingly focuses on spooky season tropes, beginning with the video’s protagonist in a creepy house with demons and witches while also nodding at 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock-like visuals.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: High. Shares Swooning and Rousingly Anthemic “Catcher”

Boonton, NJ-based shoegazers High. can trace their origins back to 2021 when Christian Castan (vocals, guitar) and Bridget Bakie (bass, vocals) met while playing across the Garden State’s DIY and college circuit, building Bakie’s reputation as “The Queen of The Quarter Note” and Castan’s profile as an unforgettable guitarist. After the pair played in a band together, they longed fora project that would be their sole creative focus and could tour as far and wide as possible. A few weeks and two weeks after their proper formation with the addition of Jack Miller (drums) and Danny Zavala (guitar), the quartet made their live debut at Saint Vitus. They followed that up with shows across the Tristate DIY circuit. 

The New Jersey-based quartet’s highly-anticipated Matthew Molnar-produced sophomore EP Come Back Down is slated for a January 24, 2025 release digitally and on vinyl through Kanine Records. The EP’s first sessions started last June when the band, along with Molnar went to Chairlift‘s Patrick Wimberly‘s Greenpoint studio to test new material with engineer Sam Darwish. They also brought tracks to Shane Furst and his Cloud Factory Recording to review their recent work and begin the next stages of completion. 

Come Back Down marks the beginning of the band’s partnership with Kanine Records — and a key period in the band’s development. With a greater expression of sonic range, the EP sees the band offering more noise, more hooks, more heaviness and much more emotion: The sad is much sadder and the love is more swooningly in love. There are more song about loss and being lost. For the band, it’s the culmination of their growth after the release of their well-received debut EP Bomber, which was released through Julia’s War and Suburban Creep.

Last fall, the band took a break from the sessions to do a week-long tour with Austin-based outfit STAB, as well as opening slots for DIIV, Glare, Lowertown, A Place To Bury Strangers, as well as a Midwest run with Chicago’s Smut. After touring across the nation, the band finished the EP with Jeff Ziegler at his Philadelphia-based Uniform Recording. Zeigler’s work on Nothing.’s Guilty of Everything has been a major inspiration for the New Jersey-based group. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “In A Hole,” a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era take on shoegaze anchored around a towering wall of stormy guitars, thunderous drumming and ethereal boy-girl harmonies. The song’s brooding soundscape evokes the stormy emotions, trauma and unease that inspired it — but also the comfort of finding friendship and a community that truly understands where you’re coming from. 

“’In A Hole’ is inspired by meeting our group of friends,” High.’s Christian Castan explains. “It’s about being depressed and the people close to you dragging you out of it. It’s about the peace and belonging I used to dream about during childhood trauma and finally finding it. There’s a lyric – ‘These are the new stars, they burst alive.’  It’s about living life at its best and never wanting that feeling to end.”

Come Back Down‘s latest single “Catcher” continues a run of 120 Minutes MTV-like shoegaze, much like its immediate predecessor while featuring remarkably blissed out choruses and hooks. Arguably one of the most swoon worthy songs of the New Jersey shoegazers growing catalog, “Catcher” is anchored around deeply introspective lyrics tackling grief with a wisdom that belies their relative youth.

“I came to the band with the structure chords and bassline of this song, I am very attached to the music personally. Then, Christian wrote lyrics over it that have massive significance to him,” the band’s Bridget Bakie says. “’Catcher’ explores the depths of grief and the unwavering hope that binds us to those we’ve lost,” the band’s Castan adds.

Directed by the band’s Bridget Bakie and filmed by Bakie and her brother Max, and edited by Shower Curtain‘s Victoria Winter, the accompanying video for “Catcher” was filmed in New Jersey and stars the band’s Jack Miller. The grainy VHS-styled video is rooted in a bittersweet nostalgia that becomes a larger and larger part of adulthood.

On directing the video, Bakie says, “I felt I should make the music video because I know the source of the lyrics so closely, but they still aren’t my own. I used the boat as a metaphor for staying afloat through grief, while still moving and trying to find peace. The vast lake and the change of seasons are also a part of that. I tried to show the combination of pain and peace that this song holds.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Manchester UK’s TTSSFFU Shares Woozy “Studio 54”

Tasmin Nicole Stephens is a Manchester, UK-based producer, singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the emerging and rising DIY shoegaze solo recording project TTSSFU (pronounced phonetically as T-T-S-S-F-U). With TTSSFU’s debut EP, Me, Jed and Andy, which was released earlier this year, Stephens quickly established an enormous and atmospheric sound that according to some deftly combines the dreamy and eerie qualities of The Cure with the breakneck BPMs of bands like The Strokes and The Drums.

Me, Jed and Andy EP features “I Hope You Die,” a track that is nearing one-million plays on YouTube. Stephens has begun to make the rounds of the British festival circuit, playing sets at Green Man, Bristol Sounds and Manchester Psych Fest, as well as opening slots for acclaimed JOVM mainstay Soccer Mommy and Mannequin Pussy during those two acts’ UK tours. Adding to a growing profile, Stephens recently signed to Partisan Records, the label home of PJ Harvey, IDLES, Cigarettes After Sex, Blondshell and more. The label will be releasing the rising British artist’s forthcoming new material next year, a scheduled EP and a full-length studio debut.

“Partisan is a label that holds a lot of the bands I’ve looked up to for years, and for them to see enough potential in me to be signed was just mind blowing,” the rising Manchester artist says of her recent signing to Partisan. “I’m so grateful to be taken on by such a kind group of people who care about my music and future and are totally on board and patient with me. Biggest thank you goes to Matthew at Partisan who found me in the first place. Without him none of this would have happened x.”

And to close out a massive year, the Manchester-based artist will be opening for English Teacher during their upcoming November UK tour. But in the meantime, Stephens’ latest single off the Me, Jed and Andy EP “Studio 54” is a brooding and uneasy bit of sheogaze featuring an angular bass line, layers of eerie, reverb-drenched vocals and gently buzzing guitars that serve as a woozy bed for for the British artist’s ethereal, achingly tender lead vocal. “Studio 54” reminds me a bit of the big, reverb-soaked sound of My Gold Mask but with an eerie, dreamy quality. It’s slick synthesis of goth and shoegaze that sounds almost as though it could have been released during 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock days — but subtle, modern sheen.

“‘Studio 54’ is about how Andy Warhol got swept up with the New York party scene and how it eventually pushed his partner Jed Johnson away,” Stephens explains. “Andy let Jed down many times, the drugs made him uncomfortable, and Andy seemed to care more about partying and hanging out with his famous friends. Jed eventually had enough and left him for someone else which ultimately broke him. The story resonated with me because sometimes I don’t recognise what I’ve got when I’ve got it and take things for granted.”

Directed by Seth Lloyd, the accompanying video follows Stephens as she prepares for and heads to a drug and booze-filled party that also features couples hooking up, fighting and breaking up in a seemingly infinite pattern.
“The video was super exciting to make with my good friend Seth,” the Manchester-based artist says. “It was amazing to create the vision that’s been sitting in my head for a while now and bring it to life with such a talented team. We also had some amazing extras who were so fun and helpful all night.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Shares Pulsating Synth Punk Ripper “Fear Of Transformation”

New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing their seventh album Synthesizer on October 4, 2024 (digital) and October 25, 2024 (vinyl) through Dedstrange.

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 new lineup which featured 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. 

Reportedly, 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.” 

In the lead-up to the album’s digital release on Friday, I’ve written about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Disgust,” an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time. “‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

  • “Bad Idea,” a track anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat and 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.” 

Synthesizer‘s latest single “Fear Of Transformation” is a snarling and scuzzy New Wave/goth punk synth-driven ripper featuring layers of oscillating synths, a relentless motorik groove, explosive bursts of feedback paired with the band’s long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly hooks and Ackermann’s punchy delivery.

Thematically, the track focuses and delves into the struggle of overcoming internal barriers. As the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann explains, “Sometimes fear builds up and pins you in a cage. A conversation occurs in my head where I have to convince myself to just fucking do something to break out of it.” The song embodies that internal dialogue, capturing the battle between the compulsion to avoid fear and the push to confront it. And as a result, the song is a raw, uneasy and intense conversation with the devil within.

Created and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle, the accompanying video for “Fear Of Transformation” follows a teenage boy, who sneaks out from his parents’ house to go to his first furry party — but he has a deep secret: he’s a werewolf. And he winds up going on a bloody rampage.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: High. Shares Stormy and Cathartic “In A Hole”

Boonton, NJ-based shoegazers High. can trace their origins back to 2021 when Christian Castan (vocals, guitar) and Bridget Bakie (bass, vocals) met while playing across the Garden State’s DIY and college circuit, building Bakie’s reputation as “The Queen of The Quarter Note” and Castan’s profile as an unforgettable guitarist. After the pair played in a band together, they longed fora project that would be their sole creative focus and could tour as far and wide as possible. A few weeks and two weeks after their proper formation with the addition of Jack Miller (drums) and Danny Zavala (guitar), the quartet made their live debut at Saint Vitus. They followed that up with shows across the Tristate DIY circuit.

The New Jersey-based quartet’s highly-anticipated Matthew Molnar-produced sophomore EP Come Back Down is slated for a January 24, 2025 release digitally and on vinyl through Kanine Records. The EP’s first sessions started last June when the band, along with Molnar went to Chairlift‘s Patrick Wimberly‘s Greenpoint studio to test new material with engineer Sam Darwish. They also brought tracks to Shane Furst and his Cloud Factory Recording to review their recent work and begin the next stages of completion.

Come Back Down marks the beginning of the band’s partnership with Kanine Records — and a key period in the band’s development. With a greater expression of sonic range, the EP sees the band offering more noise, more hooks, more heaviness and much more emotion: The sad is much sadder and the love is more swooningly in love. There are more song about loss and being lost. For the band, it’s the culmination of their growth after the release of their well-received debut EP Bomber, which was released through Julia’s War and Suburban Creep.

Last fall, the band took a break from the sessions to do a week-long tour with Austin-based outfit STAB, as well as opening slots for DIIV, Glare, Lowertown, A Place To Bury Strangers, as well as a Midwest run with Chicago’s Smut. After touring across the nation, the band finished the EP with Jeff Ziegler at his Philadelphia-based Uniform Recording. Zeigler’s work on Nothing.’s Guilty of Everything has been a major inspiration for the New Jersey-based group.

Come Back Down‘s lead single “In A Hole” is a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era take on shoegaze anchored around a towering wall of stormy guitars, thunderous drumming and ethereal boy-girl harmonies. The song’s brooding soundscape evokes the stormy emotions, trauma and unease that inspired it — but also the comfort of finding friendship and a community that truly understands where you’re coming from.

“’In A Hole’ is inspired by meeting our group of friends,” High.’s Christian Castan explains. “It’s about being depressed and the people close to you dragging you out of it. It’s about the peace and belonging I used to dream about during childhood trauma and finally finding it. There’s a lyric – ‘These are the new stars, they burst alive.’  It’s about living life at its best and never wanting that feeling to end.”

Directed by Aleko Syntelis, the accompanying video for “In A Hole” was shot and is set in Brooklyn and features the band playing a rooftop show and hanging out with their crew. The video captures the feeling of being young, of seemingly infinite possibilities ahead of you, of the pure joy of hanging out with your dearest ones, who will hold you down when you need them most.

“We shot this video during a rooftop show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the first night of our tour with Birthday Girl,” the band’s Castan recalls. “It was the last weekend of summer with hella New Jersey heads, some new friends, Keg stands, and the New York Skyline. Sh*t was nuts, someone downstairs tried to shut us down. Aleko captured our live set and we hope anyone who sees this gets what that night felt like.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place To Bury Strangers Share Woozy “Bad Idea”

New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing their seventh album Synthesizer on October 4, 2024 through Dedstrange records. 

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 new lineup which featured 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. 

Reportedly, 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.” 

Earlier this year, I wrote about album single “Disgust,” a classic bit of APTBS. Or in other words, an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time.

“‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

Synthesizer‘s latest 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.”

Shot and edited by Nick Kulp with additional filming by Mathilde Cartoux, the accompanying video for “Bad Idea” was shot during various live performances by the band between 2023-2024 on a Sony Hi8 video camera, and was edited through various analog glitch processors.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Eterna Shares Murky and Uneasy “Whatever Reason”

Rising Barcelona-born, London-based artist Eterna follows his attention grabbing section1 label debut “Perfect Comms,” with “Whatever Reason,” an eerily goth-like take on post punk/shoegazey take on goth that sees him weaving murky, reverb-soaked guitar distortion with lyrical themes that touch upon modern isolation apathy and ephemeral romance — with a frustration and despair that feels all too familiar.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Seafoam Walls Share Woozily Meditative “Humanitarian Pt. II”

Formed back in 2016, the acclaimed Miami-based quartet Seafoam Walls — Jayan Bertrand (vocals, guitar), Josh Ewers (bass), Josue Vargas (electronic drums) and Dion Kerr (guitar) — quickly caught the attention of undgeround music and art communities across South Florida a unique sound that they dubbed “Caribbean Jazzgaze,” a mesh of jazz, showcase, rock, hip-hop and Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

The Miami- based outfit exploded into the larger, international scene following a secret, all-ages matinee show with DC-based hardcore photographer Susie J. and Sonic Youth‘s Thurston Moore. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the band released 2018’s R-E-F-L-E-C-T EP and 2019’s one-off “Root.”

2021’s full-length debut, XVI, which featured the A Storm in Heaven-meets-TV on the Radio-like “Program” was released through Thurston Moore’s The Daydream Library Series.

The Miami-based outfit’s sophomore album Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room is slated for an October 18, 2024 release through Dion Dia. The album’s title is partially derived for a metaphor for the often overlooked but significant challenges and complexes that people face in their lives. But it also is a warning about getting caught up in the details — at the risk of missing the bigger picture. “Everyone has an elephant in the room; an obvious problem in their life that everyone, including the person affected, knowingly looks past,” the band’s frontman Jayan Bertrand explains. “BUT, I say that one is standing too close, because the problem is more complex and their vision is too obstructed to see the bigger picture. So viewers are providing their skewed perspectives of the same problem. It’s an illustration of the areas in which intersectionality fails to meet.”

Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room reportedly represents a new chapter for the band: The album’s material not only showcases the band’s evolution as musicians, but it also solidifies their reputation as bounding-pushing artists, inviting the listener to a Technicolor mist of experimental influences and instrumentation. Continuing their commitment to full artistic autonomy, the band’s members took production duties, shaping an album that will reward those who will revel in its sweeping soundscapes, as thematically the material delves deeper into questioning the trappings of modern society and all of its contradictions.

The album’s latest single “Humanitarian Pt. II” is anchored around glistening guitar melodies and a relentless motorik-like groove and bursts of whirring synths. The arrangement serves as a lush and dreamy bed for Bertrand’s meditative vocal to sing philosophical lyrics that examines the motivation that makes us choose our paths — and how we go about those paths. Some people are drawn to the attention or superficial perks of an occupation, without understanding what it really entails. Through the song, the listener must face the very shitty reality that only certain efforts, from certain people get rewarded. Certainly, whether as a musician, a writer or a photographer, these observations are familiar, especially when you see others seemingly being much more successful at what you do, than you are.

“Before I picked up a guitar, I was simply a fan of music,” the band’s Bertrand explains. “Then, I began learning about the oppressive tactics of governments worldwide, and my world shattered. The entities of authority that assured me that everything they did was just were actually a key part of the problem. I started to believe that art was the only safe space in this cruel world. ‘Humanitarian Pt. II’ is about disillusionment. 
 
“I jumped into the music scene headfirst without realizing that the same tactics would exist. I then made it my mission to call out such tactics and question our societal norms like my favorite artists before me.
 
I’m still looking for an answer to all of my pressing questions, but it helps to be grouped with people with a similar mindset who have practical solutions. I gravitated towards Dion Dia records for our latest and upcoming releases because while everyone I admired raised great questions and awareness, Dion Dia presented a hopeful alternative.”

Shot on VHS, the accompanying video is a lo-fi, goofy and surrealistic romp that features the elaborately costumed band members playing different instruments in the studio — and it includes the group sing-a-along, clap-a-long montage.