research into Ethereal Goth and Dreampop (and other stuff for fans of early 4AD and Projekt)

you need Kaleidoscope!

i love the albums. i love the singles. lots of love. this is the stuff i really got excited by this year:

do you guys like GRAVE BABIES? the nu-jesus&marychain goth underground champs

Siouxie has never really grabbed, although you can see the influence on Garlands, which I love. I can only dream of how good that album would have sounded with a mature Raymonde, rather than Will Heggie, who seems to be doing a permanent one man Primary impersonation.

make that 'grabbed me'

I'll need to get some Grave Babies samples.

When we had that massive Cocteau Twins poll recently I was surprised at the range of contrasting opinions. I adore Will Heggie's contribution so much that I wish he did another 2 albums with them. What he did with Lowlife is very different. Did that Lowlife documentary ever get off the ground?
I've not good at spotting instruments so I've never been able to spot what Raymonde did because he is very subtle and his work blends in way more, so I cant always hear him distinctly; I just assume he is great because he is on so many good records.

As an example of an original influence on this style I think Echo And The Bunnymen's Ocean Rain is extremely underwhelming. I think it has 2 or 3 great songs but the rest is pretty forgettable.

Heaven Up Here would be a better reference point. I like hearing it a lot these days. Sounds great.

Yeah that one is my favorite of the original four in the end.

Just my reviews for RateYourMusic and Amazon, repeats some of the info I gushed at the top of the thread...

TRANCE TO THE SUN – GHOST FOREST

Ashkelon Sain was previously in This Ascension and Blade Fetish for a brief time but Trance To The Sun has him as the dominant force but not quite solo since the female singers were a defining aspect of their sound.

This first album is different enough to set them apart from other ethereal goth bands but before they became truly distinct. It is dark, meanders mysteriously and evocatively with almost ghostly vocals but doesn’t have the exotic colour and “oomph” of the later albums.
I wish I could hear the words better because I catch interesting things here and there; maybe the remastered version is clearer. I love the song title “Lend Me Your Most Vile”.

“August Rain” had previously appeared as a This Ascension song and Trance To The Sun would return to it later again.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – BLOOM FLOWERS BLOOM!

The characteristic sounds of the band come in here a bit more and better quality tracks in general. Probably succeeds more as an atmospheric journey too.
“Gira Sola” is dedicated to someone in the sleeve notes, it sounds like it was for someone who passed away and it is one of the most beautiful things in any of their albums, easily the best thing on this album.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – VENOMOUS EVE

I think this is when they started being a properly brilliant band. There aren’t many bands where I struggle to choose an essential “if you only get one, get this” record, or picking an ideal introduction album. A lot of my favourite bands maybe have two contenders at most, with exceptions like Swans, REM or Beach Boys there might be as many as 5 I could choose. I feel that way about this band. Venomous Eve, Delirious, Azalean Sea, Urchin Tear Soda and Atrocious Virgin all seem like contenders for a best album of theirs.

The previous two had this feeling of wandering around in dark vague landscapes with hypnotic distant echoes drawing you around. This one really nails their early sound but adds lots of odd touches. A lot more is done with the vocals, quite soft but also banshee like (I don’t mean Siouxsie), and Sain’s fantastic voluptuous bass sound really comes into its own.

The sounds make me think of large tall subterranean dark caverns, while slightly less vague than previous and with more detailed visions, is still filled with suggestive, ominous mystery. The ending that gets louder and really strange is a brilliant finisher.
There might be quite a number of ethereal atmospheric goth albums but I don’t think there is much else quite like this. I don’t think this is territory already explored by earlier similar bands; this underworld is a different place they are luring you to (although I imagine other people imagine totally different places not underground).

Vocalist Zoe Alexandra Wakefield left after this album (there were still tracks of her that appeared on later compilations) and from most interviews I’ve seen with the band members, it seems nobody knows where she went.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – DELIRIOUS

This is probably the their album that excites me most when I think about it in retrospect and the one I have the most urge to replay; that might be because it was the first album I got by the band but I’m not sure.
I’ve seen it listed as an EP but I’m sure it is a full length album and I wouldn’t like people to think it was any less important than the rest. It is very different from anything else they did, a lot brighter and more colourful than the previous albums. I might be influenced by the cover art but I tend to think of oceans of glaring purple/pink lava in several songs.
Dawn Wagner is the vocalist on this one, this is the only album she was on; apparently she left because it was felt she cared about her own solo stuff much more than being in this band. I think she is really fantastic on this, so I’m eager to hear her Scarlet Slipping albums.

When I first got this, I never liked the idea of dancey goth music but I learned from this that it could be energetic and fun but still keep the atmosphere and otherworldly qualities in full force.
It taken me a while to really appreciate the first track because it feels like a slow intro before the album really kicks in, but I love the little story it tells, about this intimate obsessive couple talking about the past “do you remember when we tried to make it rain?”.
There is a really brilliant sequence of really exciting tracks, perhaps 3 or more in a row; working to an extent that I don’t hear often, it keeps a great momentum.

I really really love this album.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – AZALEAN SEA

This is a compilation of salvaged highlights from as many as four aborted albums. It is structured kind of oddly that it starts from most recent material and ending with their older songs. I’d say it was just as important as any of their albums.

Ingrid Blue became the vocalist here and I think she really established herself really well after a few vocalists came and went (including Gordon Sharp from Cindytalk but as far as I know, he didn’t record any songs with them). The songs are mostly rockier than usual, several have this really hard, satisfying, confident strutting quality.

Dara Rosenwasser (Faith and Disease) sings on a track which is strange and has this low almost brooding quality about the sounds but “brooding” really isn’t the emotional quality of the song overall; at first it seemed slapdash to me but there is something pleasingly weird about it.
Ashkelon Sain sings some of the songs himself and although he isn’t as good as the other singers, there are one or two where he manages some interesting things.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – URCHIN TEAR SODA

Much bigger album than the previous albums, more variety and more ambitious. I’m usually not one to care about lyrics that much for most bands, but the combination of sounds and lyrics creates vivid little scenes which I find really fascinating.
I think of Clark Ashton Smith’s exotic colourful lost planets but featuring strange gothy punks with mental issues inhabiting those worlds. The cover art is much better than the other albums and it gives you a fairly good clue to how it sounds.

The version of Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” is really great. The end tracks have some very lengthy very psychedelic journeys with lots of different phases. I think this one takes you more different places than the other albums.

TRANCE TO THE SUN – ATROCIOUS VIRGIN

I don’t know if when they recorded this if it was meant as a final album, but it sounds that way to me. Some of the tracks have what I interpret as big celebratory feel; even something like “Homewrecker” with fairly miserable lyrics sounds like it has a sense of wonder about it. A lot of it feels like air travel across weird skies. The word “cunt” makes several appearances.

There is a spoken word piece by someone not from the band, it can be difficult to hear a lot of it but I think it is in the sleeve cards, which have quite a number of interesting paintings by Ingrid Blue; but for some reason this and the previous album are much harder to find on cd than the earlier ones, so I don’t know if people will get the images and lyrics with the mp3 version.

After this Ashkelon Sain formed Submarine Fleet and later collaborated with Soriah; I’m fairly sure Ingrid Blue was in an eccentric punky classical band called Bela Lugosi.
Trance To The Sun got together for some later gigs and I think they are working on a new album now.

SUBMARINE FLEET – IN A CASE OF FIRE

Ashkelon Sain got back with Mark (Marc?) Linder, quite some time after Blade Fetish (though he was in some Trance To The Sun stuff). This sounds far more collaborative for Sain than his previous band; which might be why I’m not quite as into it as Trance To The Sun; but it is good stuff all the same.

SUBMARINE FLEET – A VERY STRANGE SIGHT IN THE DISTANCE

Quite a bit more adventurous than the previous EP. Some really lovely colourful ethereal tracks on this and I do recommend it but I’m glad Sain went onto different things after this. I think he used the name Submarine Fleet for solo improvised shows. I haven’t heard his Soriah collaborations yet but I’m very much looking forward to that.

Finished listening to the second Esben And The Witch album. It is much better than the first, but I think "When That Head Splits" is disproportionately better than everything else, a really amazing track.

Finished listening to the second Esben And The Witch album. It is much better than the first

Yes, definitely! Took me ages to get round to listening to it cos the first one was so boring but I have become unreasonably obsessed with the second since I heard it. Very post-4AD, kinda reminds me of early Lush, Piano Magic circa Low Birth Weight, even maybe early period Disco Inferno. Love 'When That Head Splits', but I love the opening song too and this one is also lovely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w61LU6AvvPo

I've been meaning to check out Disco Inferno forever.

the stuff compiled on In Debt is the most relevant to this thread, but it's the sampled-based music that came afterwards that they're acclaimed for

Also been listening to that complete Vyllies collection. Starts off very punky and then more elegant synth later on, several horror themed tracks, pleasantly sinister. Some of it more poppy.

Also the Rosewater Elizabeth album Le Petit Mort. The first dreampop album I've ever seen that warns you about the frequencies possibly damaging your sound system. Unusually for an obscure ethereal goth band, the production sounds really expensive and it has a nice depth to it.

not be all plug-y but some of you may like this band i play bass in
https://soundcloud.com/stealthistrack/shatter-mp3

pretty! dunno if it's just the power of suggestion just cos yr in the band tyler, but the chorus sounds a bit neil youngish, like only love can break your heart or something, that kind of lilting voice hanging over things

ha, well, i didn't have anything to do with the writing, but I'll take it as a compliment!

I've been meaning to check out Disco Inferno forever.

Rightly so.

but of course! it's an interesting blend of styles xp

I've been thinking of starting a thread listing all the bands I've wanted to hear for years (some as long ago as a decade) but I'm not sure if there is a point other than getting to shout at each other "drop everything and listen to them now!"

Probably isnt a good idea, I could probably list 200 bands that I've wanted to hear for years. Gordon Lightfoot is probably the one longest ago that I still havent got around to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79lLJsk8CqU

good one - who are these guys?

Yeah great track.

Pointers to some artists conspicuous in their absence above:

80s: Hetch Hetchy, Hugo Largo
90s: Anymore, Breath of Life, The Changelings, Collection d'Arnell-Andrea (I cheated, here), Elysium, Orange, Perfume Tree, Scala, Skinner Box
00s: Aisth, Au Revoir Borealis, Halou, Rhea's Obsession, School of Seven Bells (sadly), Sol Seppy, Violet Indiana
Current: A Sunny Day in Glasgow, 2:54, Exitmusic, Gazelle Twin, Zambri

xp: White Poppy is Crystal Dorval from Canada, she's got a bunch of stuff on bandcamp and the album that song's from is out on Not Not Fun (CD and LP). Apparently she's touring Europe in March. Lucky Euros.

Velour 100?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSidApDmTc

Majesty Crush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKZKBW752k4

Thanks to everyone (especially Sanpaku) for the contributions. Quite a few of them are already on my shopping lists but Hetchy Hetchy, Anymore, Breath Of Life, Skinner Box, Zambri and White Poppy are all new to me, thanks.

Does Hetchy Hetchy really have Michael Stipe's sister? Surely they would have been more famous for that alone?

=========================
Rosewater Elizabeth's Le Petit Mort is far more unusual than it appeared to me at first. It has lots of nice recurring moments and I love the way the songs seem to emerge out a deep space; some really gorgeous sparkly moments in there. It does have one or two typical goth moments but it's actually quite avant-garde. I know people might say this about a lot of ethereal music but you can really sink into this album and lose track of time.
Looking forward to the earlier album, hope I can get it on cd but it is on mp3.

The Vyllies collection was really good. The sinister horror tracks are easily the best thing on it. Some of it is actually quite spooky.
It is all remastered but I've never heard the originals (they are very rare it seems). I know next to nothing about the techie side of music so I'm not sure if I find the production lacking or if the instruments aren't good enough but I feel like the song material had the potential for more and deserved better sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jymp9Jdy8T4

I was watching the latest new Trance To The Sun live video and I saw a band called Solemn Meant Walks down the sidebar. Pretty good stuff.

http://solemnmeantwalks.bandcamp.com/

Finished listening to STARE - Haunted.
Pleasingly murky/swampy with those virtuous heroine vocals you hear in goth and metal bands often(this band surely calls themselves Goths), a few tracks I really liked but otherwise passable/okay. It has a cover of a Glove song.

Glad someone mentioned Sol Seppy up above. I have that album (well, mp3s) and it's really intriguing. Know nothing else about her/them, seem to have vanished completely.

http://trancetothesun.bandcamp.com/

There's a limited edition EP with 2 exclusive tracks, one being a live version of an old song. The album is supposed to be out very soon.

Need more of this stuff in my life, I'll probably get This Lush Garden Within by Black Tape For A Blue Girl.

Can anyone tell me about the Black Tape For A Blue Girl EPs? If they're proper releases or just previews for albums or skippable alternate versions of songs.

IIRC, they're a mix of album samples, live tracks, and outtakes/ephemera. Same issues as with all the BTFABG: melodically thin, interchangeable guest vocals, glacial pacing. Rosenthal will be better remembered for Projekt, especially for defining the genre in its mail-catalog and its reissue program.

I really love the 5 BTFABG albums I have, and after several years of going into these genres I appreciate them all the more. I think a few of the guest vocalists were very good, especially the amazing guy who sung "I Wish You Could Smile", I've always wanted to know if he sung on any other recorded music, I could easily imagine him being theatre singer.

Oddly enough when I remember Portishead's "The Rip" sometimes I mistake it for BTFABG for a few seconds.

I have the Heavenly Voices comp box set somewhere which is full of this stuff

These guys, Oake, are more on the dark and electronic side of things (somewhere between Succour-era Seefeel and the stuff from the Chasing Voices thread), but I figured someone else might dig this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=370XllR0yBQ

I tend to think of BTFABG as a band that came after all the famous goth bands died down a bit. But I always have to remind myself that they started in 1986 but it's hard for me to picture their three 80s albums coming out at the same time as everything else that happened at that time (not that I'm disputing it).
I just think of all that stuff (including earliest Lycia and This Ascension) is hard to place in that time. It always feels to me like it was all happening in a separate world (that they weren't popular in either). I guess that might be a part of the appeal. Same goes for a lot of goth, industrial and oddball bands.

It has been written that David Lynch was a fan of BTFABG. In the unlikely event I ever meet him, that's the first thing I'll ask. I should have went to that Q&A years ago.

Certainly the only reason I checked BTFABG out in the early 90s is that 4AD's focus shifted from annual releases from gothy stalwarts (CT/DCD) towards a Pixie/Throwing Muses/UVS and related bands focus in the 90s. After tracking down fellow travellers like Area, Bel Canto, Strange Boutique things thinned out quite a bit. Even C'est La Mort had slowed its release schedule down a bit in the early 90s.

There were a number of Euro bands in the Projekt mail catalogs that hit my buttons in ways BTFABG never did. I recall Hyperium and Hall Of Sermon being akin to 80s 4AD, though with quality control issues that 4AD managed to overcome during its classic period.

Album by album Trance To The Sun reviews in this thread! Elon was one of my flatmates sophomore year of college at UCSB. He was a good guy. Very serious. Not surprised at all he's still going strong, guy was obviously in it for life. Always had quality sounds coming out of his room. This Ascension was ok but Trance was definitely when things clicked.

What a cool story! Small world, really.

Had a chance to finally hang out with Sam R. in Portland back in April for dinner. Great guy! Dry as hell sense of humor.

That is cool Milton! Trance To The Sun really are one of the biggest bands for me.
I've been thinking a lot about the sort of fantasy worlds that bands create, it'll be different for every listener but I think a lot of bands deserve more credit for creating unique fascinating worlds. Trance To The Sun stands out in that regard.

Sanpaku- can you remember the European bands? I always want more of this stuff.

I've always admired BTFABG because there seems to be either a defiance/rebellion or (perhaps preferably) an obliviousness about how much their extreme sensibility would be hated and mocked by most music journalists, but it's difficult to imagine many bands not having that awareness.
I wonder how the band would have coped if they had wide enough exposure to have been written about in the main music papers? They probably would have got it 10 times worse than Slowdive.

To anyone who hasn't heard them, I'd describe them as having an old-fashioned theatricality, romantic poetry tropes (many would say cliches), full on seriously and lovingly depicted depression, baroque elegance and spacious sumptuous dark ambience.

You always have bands who try to even it out and say "it isn't all sad stuff that we do, we're funny guys, we like to have a laugh too" but then you get slowcore bands that that unashamedly go for the sad stuff and don't care what people think. I think Black Tape are kind of like that.
I mean, Black Tape, Slowdive, Red House Painters and Low have shown they have a sense of humour (whether in the music or otherwise), but I don't think anyone should have to prove it in their music. I've never understood why people get so offended by complete seriousness in a piece of work or why that should suggest the artists have a dangerous lack of humour.

There is happiness in their music too though, just like most "sad" bands.

Love that song they did about the drowning sailor, that was really atmospheric.

I have the same feeling as Robert, the Projekt stuff seemed to exist in a parallel universe to the other alt music stuff back then... I liked college and indie stuff and mined the music press for information about it (pre-Internet), but the Projekt catalog was a totally separate thing. I didn't really *want* to see that stuff reviewed, because it seemed to come from another place entirely.

Sam is posting some really interesting stuff to the Projekt mailing list lately about the label's history and how it operates, how the Internet has changed things for record labels. Glad he's willing to share on the subject.

RAG: To be honest, my fandom departed to more easily grazed pastures after the early 90s. Shoegaze/Trip-hop/IDM etc. There are a few artists unmentioned so far in this thread worthy of spelunking expeditions. Speaking Silence, Aude, Boudoir, for example. For the most part though, this genre has unencouraging hit/miss ratio for me: too many operatic dropouts, too few clever sound engineers.

Thanks. I haven't heard of Boudoir or Aude. Speaking Silence is familiar.

in champaign urbana no one can hear u scream.

jk, know nothing of it. zines rekkid stores cassettes and wordamouth. they all tried i spose ha

boy are the keys settings hit or miss on this, to my (tin) ears tho

Heavenly Bodies - Celestial is available now via mp3. I haven't found it through a streaming service, but I found the entire album (plus an EP!) on itunes. Featuring two guys formerly of Dead Can Dance and Caroline Seaman of This Mortal Coil. From 1988.

It's pretty good

I love Caroline Seaman's voice. So many "ethereal" vocalists fall short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6cQbj8r3tI

I've never heard of Mors Syphilitica until now, but this song is sick and that promo pic is iconic

I've meant to get that album for a long time, I have the other two and the Requiem In White album and Lisa Hammer's amazing first solo album. She said there will be another solo album soon.

Listening to the last Trance To The Sun album and Blue Obscurities, I think Ashkelon Sain might be the most visionary person in all these bands. Trance To The Sun takes me places few other bands or artists do, it's like lush science fantasy. I hadn't paid attention for a while and he's in yet another band: Solara Obscura.

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/no-songs-tomorrow-darkwave-ethereal-rock-and-coldwave-1981-1990-4cd-box-set
surely a chunk of these tracks came after 1990, I don't have the time to check right now but I'm sure a bunch of this is from the 90s.

I'm a very reluctant listener of various artists compilations for a few reasons but hard to say no to all these unfamiliar names

I love the Soriah albums with Ashkelon Sain, they reward repeated and deep listening! The live show was pretty breathtaking as well.

I love Cherry Red but those comps are a real churn of the same stuff over and over.

There's definite bleedover but I know the compiler of that and Cherry Stars Collide, he's a good egg and is doing his best to shine a light on things that can tend to be walled off a bit.

I had another look at the tracklist and I haven't heard the majority of those bands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVRIBvrnzYE
I thought I had posted this before but finally listened to this, very interesting dive into the Burning Circle era, Mike's regrets about some of the remasters, why he made a one disc version of Burning Circle and why that was a bad idea

Yeah I was going to say, The Burning Circle has to be the full two hour thing. I'm glad he realized that!

I'm kind of amazed it was all supposed to be for separate albums, it sounds like a beautifully planned single experience to me

love this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLar4WIePmg

This blew my mind when they played it as opening act of Neubauten’s Tabula Rasa tour in LA. Nothing else reached that high but man they were good back then

Quite enjoying this Deary album.

https://deary.bandcamp.com/
which one?

Occurred to me, thanks to this revive, that I don't think either of the Frank Deserto-curated sets on Cherry Red he put together have been linked here. Kinda great resource helping to make sense of the roots of this demigenre as such:

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/no-songs-tomorrow-darkwave-ethereal-rock-and-coldwave-1981-1990-4cd-box-set

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/various-artists-cherry-stars-collide-dream-pop-shoegaze-ethereal-rock-1986-1995-4cd-box-set

Or at least he did the liners for one or both sets, if not being the sole person to assemble the sets. Outgrowths of the separate Silhouettes and Statues and Still in a Dream sets on early goth and shoegaze respectively, but with a smart broad sense of how there was a lot of general bleedover and expansion across all these years that pointed to where it would go in the future.

I should get all these but I'm kind of nervous about getting compilations with bands I've already wishlisted. It's one of the nice things about small bands is hearing an album totally fresh with no prior experience. I guess I could just keep these compilations long term and listen to them after I've heard all the burning priorities.