Diario

December was a month of discoveries... early on we had I Break Horses, towards the end there was Blouse and in the middle was find-of-the-year Still Corners.

Where to start with Still Corners? I hear David Lynch, Trespassers William, Slowdive, Let Love In-era Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, often within the same song. Album Creatures of an Hour is rammed full of highlights, and I swear if I'd come across it a few months earlier it would probably be top of my album charts by now... Opener Cuckoo sets the mood perfectly: at once it has an autumnal chill similar to Slowdive's Spanish Air AND a hot and bothered American Gothic feel that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of True Blood. Mostly instrumental Circulars picks the pace up, but retains the majesty, and Endless Summer is another stormer, thundering drums not detracting from the mood. Into the Trees then somehow manages to take things UP a gear, sounding like a delicious blend of 80s Cocteau Twins, the Get Carter Ost and a full-on Swallow dream-pop wig out. …

While everyone else is busy making year-end lists, No Conclusion is busy making – mixtapes. And it’s not even a best-of-2011 mixtape. Hah!!

NO CONCLUSION MIXTAPE#13: plants

http://www.no-conclusion.com/2011/12/12/mixtape-13/

01. Guyer's Connection - Ballade Pour Nous
02. Tearist - A Of N
03. //TENSE// - The Visitor
04. Eleven Pond - Watching Trees
05. Belle & Sebastian - I Didn't See It Coming (Cold Cave Remix)
06. Chelsea Wolfe - Mer (Water Borders remix)
07. Spoek Mathambo - Dog To Bone (Telepathe Remix)
08. Nick Nicely - On The Coast
09. Psychic Reality - Fruit
10. Maria Minerva - noble savage
11. NiKE7UP - DIRTY POP/RAY OF LIGHT NIKE7UP AMNESIAMIX
12. Videosex - U sjeni eksotičnih trava
13. Oskarova Fobija - Beli Dekolte
14. Patrick Kelleher & his Cold Dead Hands - Seen Me Blue
15. Litanic Mask - VIRGIN SPRING
16. Pink Industry - Pain Of Pride
17. Keep Shelly In Athens - Song To Cheer You Up (Maria Minerva Holler Remix)
…

Artist: a shoreline dream
Album: losing them all to this time
Label: Latenight Weeknight Record

Groovemine]

If we were to separate and consider only the great and creative bands, we would be left with only two trends: those that learn from and subsequently forget the aesthetic trappings of their influences, and then those that keep those original sounds close to their hearts, but end up pushing them into territory altogether new and fresh. The first option is relatively rare, and most bands only achieve the second after a few recorded tries and heavy touring. But Denver, Colorado’s a shoreline dream has somehow managed to succeed at it from the outset, creating an amalgam of post-rock, shoegaze, and the alternative innovators of the early 90s that is hazy, vivid, beautiful, and truly its own. The band seems to have taken up where Slowdive and The Catherine Wheel left off and hurled it into the new era with acts like Mogwai, Grouper, and God Is An Astronaut; while the sounds of these bands...
…

The Gathering - Accessories

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/174s/5086706.jpg

Maybe a little bit weird to review a compilation album of rarities and b-sides, but I would like to do it anyway. At first I had some doubt whether I wanted to buy this album, because I usually don't really like these kind of collections with leftovers, b-sides and other outtakes. They don't form an album which is nice to listen to as a whole. But it was very cheap and I wanted to have the versions of Strange Machines and Leaves with the Metropole Orchestra, so I bought it in May of this year (2011). It consists of two discs, one with the b-sides that were released on the singles and one with "rarities", which are actually demo versions. Both discs are very nicely packaged in a dark red cardboard sleeve with a big letter "G" cut out in the middle through which you can see the front of the booklet. The front of the booklet is yellow and dark brown with figures of flowers…

The Gathering - Nighttime Birds

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/174s/63109291.png http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/174s/41262891.jpg

In my last journal about the album The Westpole, I described how I started listening to The Gathering. After putting all of their songs on my iPod shuffle and listening to them without knowing which song I was listening to, I finally got into them and bought some of their albums. Nighttime Birds was actually one of the last albums I bought, in January of this year (2011). I bought the "De Luxe Re-issue + Bonus Tracks" version so the cover actually looks like the image on the right, which is more beautiful and more classy than the original cover in my opinion. I really like the picture on the front of the cover with the dark tree and its gray shadow on the white snow. It fits really well with the atmosphere of the album, which is also a bit dark, sad, mysterious and winter-like. The package of this re-issue version is very beautiful and stylish. …

Ah yes, so I have been into shoegaze ever since June 2010 when I heard a Cocteau Twins track, "Summerhead", on a prog radio show that I listened to every Thursday before its end just recently in August 2011, called The Interdimensional Vortex. I started getting into Cocteau Twins, and then I heard "Catch The Breeze" by Slowdive on the show a couple weeks later. The rest is history. I have really been a fan of 90s shoegazers like Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, Chapterhouse, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Cranes and the like. I didn't really go for a lot of the "newgaze" stuff that was out (basically 2000 and on).

But then, along should come Air Formation.

Wow.

I really liked their sound. It was very melodic, which I adored, but also had that edge to it that kept it really... shoegaze-y. Their sense of composition was something that really struck me, too, as well as the bass playing by Ben Pierce. I don't normally notice the bass…

www.recordedsoul.com loves


Slowdive