UK’s Engineer’s deftly tread the boarders of Shoegaze, Dream Pop, and Psychedelia on “Clean Colored Wire.”
Ulrich Schnauss (who seems to be to shoegaze keyboard what Tony Levin is to progressive rock bass) is also part of the current incarnation of the band.
If they were from Australia rather than Sweden, I would think that A Swarm of the Sun was A Beautiful Machine reborn, so close is the very heavy shoegaze sound.
Drifter is a practitioner of minimalist, almost steady state shoegaze, with one riff repeated over and over again for the entire length of the song. But, by and large, they’re the right riffs.
And check out their previous Shoegazer Sunday entry “Fade” if you haven’t already.
Another does of Mirage in the Water, this time with “Is It Real?”
Evidently the movie scenes are from a 1970s Japanese film on transvestites. I doubt that’s going in my to-be-viewed queue anytime soon…
Kyte hails from Leicestershire, UK. Here’s “Planet,” which sounds a bit like M83 with a dash of Sigur Ros thrown in.
Better late than never, here’s the mellow Slowdive demo “Summer Daze.”
Alcest, a French shoegazer band that sounds a little bit like M83 by way of Sigur Ros and Midsummer, offers up the compelling “Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde” (“Memories of Another World).
While plumbing the depths and breadths of YouTube for suitable Shoegazer Sunday entries, sometimes I stumble across something interesting that doesn’t fit in the Shoegaze label. Today let’s take a look at Japanese band SpecialThanks.
The first 20 seconds of silence is just to mess with you.
So a pop-punk band with a deadly cute female lead who sings in English that sounds like a cross between Blink-182 and [Insert Current Teenage Female Pop Sensation Here]. This is the sort of Japanese cross-cultural pop artifact that Bruce Sterling circa 1992 would have been all over. As it stands, I’m pretty sure some canny American record label would make millions signing them over here…
From Japan comes Clams with “Sundae Bird.” The first 48 seconds are space music drone, but after that the catchy dreampop tune kicks in.