Via Gardner Dozois’ Facebook comes news that it’s International Clown Week. I don’t suffer from Clownophobia, but I’ve known people who do.
So let’s take this moment to remember Bart Simpson’s awesome bed:
Alice Cooper even did a song:
And speaking of bed:
Maybe International Clown Week exists to remind us it’s just three months until Halloween…
“The players here are using devices called Matryomins. They’re single-oscillator theremins that happen to be contained inside a matryoshka doll.”
167 of them.
Here’s another “Is it Shoegaze or not” entry, with Belle and Sebastian’s “Sleep Around the Clock,” which is more bouncy retro low-fi pop, but there’s enough of a shoegaze tinge to it (a little like Black Tambourine) that I’m throwing it in here.
Plus I like the sciency theme of the video. So there.
I can’t decide whether Alcest is Shoegaze, Depressive Metal, or some offshoot of the RenFaire school of ProgRock (more long-forgotten French prog band Manticore than Jethro Tull). Here’s “Beings of Light,” which features a female lead singer rather the usual metal “screaming with a mouthful of gravel” that seems to have become standard in the genre, which they do on some of their other songs.
Whatever it is, it’s interesting enough to be worth a listen.
To celebrate the 4th anniversary of the moon landing, here’s footage from For All Mankind, with Brian’s Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent)” on the soundtrack.
I recommend both the movie and the soundtrack.
The Meetings Places are a California shoegaze band that include former member’s of Alison’s Halo (a fine pedigree). Here’s the pleasant, ethereal “Now I Know You Could Never Be The One,” which sounds a bit like some of Slowdive’s pre-Just for a Day material.
School of Seven Bells are a band from New York City named after the mythical pickpocket school. They started out as a trio and are now down to a duo. “My Cabal” was evidently their first single, and is a pleasant, dreampop-y sort of number.
Blind Mr. Jones was a UK Shoegazer band from the early 1990s. “Mesa” is from their second and last album, Tatooine. Since they broke up right after it’s release, presumably they were not the shoegaze droids the public was looking for…
The High Violets hail from Portland, Oregon. Here’s “X-Tasy Monopoly,” where the lead sunger sounds a bit like a Red Dirt Girl-era Emmylou Harris, which is no bad thing.
…there’s only one possible musical choice.