Shoegazer Revival - S/D

Ten years after the first one! Or so it seems.

YES! Especially The Sound of the Colour of the Sun. Absolute classic (if you're into shoegazer, that is).

Mahogany
Pia Fraus
Brasilia
On!Air!Library!

All worthy of checking out.

whoops! I actually forgot to paste your post before mine. I figured out the track I heard was "Gleaming Auction", but other songs on the album, 'Final Straw' sound similar.

I vote for the Delays over Mew, they work better on some undefinable level, though both are quite fine. Fennesz is better than both, though. The Joshua Treble solo album that came out recently is a pretty good if not striking Fennesz-like release which has its moments of haze and gaze.

Are they? I have to be honest, I didn't sense that, it just seemed like, well, enjoyable shoegaze, and I definitely don't recall any Pumpkins-like ego-apocalypse. Even Stina Nordenstam singing on tracks didn't spark things up further. The Delays are fairly straightforward perhaps, but they've got a good producer in Graham Sutton and they know how to work in strange noises into their songs, and it was all in all more involving for me, by a hair I guess.

I think Fennesz is doing something that can't be compared to those "bands".

Which is part of the point, by demonstrating how to use haze for alternate purposes -- it's a seemingly obvious equation of gaze plus IDM with ridiculously grand results that tends to trump all the other recent attempts at same -- whereas all the new bands sound like...bands doing shoegaze. Which, as I thought while I listened to some Bethany Curve, isn't always enough anymore.

"Am I Wry? No"
"156"
"Snow Brigade"

There's *way* more going on with the arrangements and textures than anywhere on the Delays album, and the vocals go quite stratospheric at points.

Really, this is all based on first listens, and the Delays' hooks worked better than Mew's, and that always counts for something. As such, Mew really ultimately strike me as no more or less creative than the Delays, the latter just has a little certain something in the end results more.

As for Fennesz, as much as I enjoy his records (and especially several of the tracks on 'Venice'), it just whets my appetite for something that's beautiful on more levels - whether it be a catchy melody, more propulsion, more rhythm etc. The best tracks on 'Venice' sound like 'Loveless' interstitials which is a high compliment, but they're not specifically why I always return to that record. Also, there's a Kevin Shields piece called "2" from his La La Human Steps collaboration which is perhaps his best pure texture track (I've only found a barely acceptable quality .mp3 unfortunately). It gives me that same ecstatic nausea that frankly, no other "shoegaze" artist can do.

One Delays track I'm thinking of has this bit of Sigur Ros-style 'beautiful' guitar noise, but they then proceed to make a hook out of that instead of floating off into the ether wibbling like Our Boys From Iceland. Really captured my ear, because it's a seemingly simple approach that adds some unexpected depth, and not in the 'oh it is art' sense, just in the 'hey, more going on!' sense.

it just whets my appetite for something that's beautiful on more levels - whether it be a catchy melody, more propulsion, more rhythm etc

Well that's why for me when Sylvian brings in the purring voice everything's all 'oh heavens, THIS is nice.' I hadn't even realized he was on there and I still haven't heard the stuff they did together last year, so it was quite striking how well the two combined.

ecstatic nausea

Mmmm, nausea. Needs to be more of that. Haven't been knocked sideways in a long, long while.

Yes there is (re: Snowpony), and the second disc is remarkable, being as it's tracks off the album remixed in a drum'n'bass stylee by, er, Moving Shadow's Rob Playford...

As a slight aside, I finally got my mitts on a copy of Lush's Gala compilation! Arrived in the post yesterday. My, is it lovely.

Oh, and as to the shouegazine revival, think I might've mentioned Sennen before, but I've only just found out they have a website. so ner.

I mean, it was even called "Sonic Cathedrals" and everything.

Radio Department played. But that wasn't even the highlight of the evening. The Telescopes DJ'd.

Next thing you know some corny English fuck will talk over some crappy electro beats about SMSing....

What's crazy is I had forgotten just how danceable much of Shoegazing really was! I mean, sure, lots of it was Cathedrals of Sound type prettiness, but the extended dance mixes and the Weatherall mixes and the "rave music with Rickenbachers, right?" stuff...

I guess, post-Manitoba, someone actually realised "YOU KNOW WHAT?!?!? CHAPTERHOUSE REALLY WERE GREAT!!!"

(And hey surfacenoise - I'll be visiting Melbourne in a couple months, so you'd have five people there... )

I spent the first 20 minutes just staring at the screen, until I realised that it was on a repeating loop. I mean, Lush videos! Ride videos I'd never seen. Slowdive videos. Chapterhouse videos. Did I mention the SONIC BOOM videos? They did a whole Spacemen spin-offs set including even The Darkside.

cough, splutter. my mouth is opening and closing but no words are coming out.

I think Pale Saints were one of the most underrated bands of the 90s.

I was in the loo when "Sight Of You" came on, but I was so so so so soooo happy to hear it again.

Yes, definitely, very much OTM!