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

I really need to learn to stop typing "I think" more than once a paragraph.

What is up with Lycia/Projekt's refusal to reissue Ionia, anyway? Do they disavow it or something? Not figure they can move enough to make repressing it worthwhile?

i would ask the same question about so many obscure, ethereal goth records that projekt never had anything to do with, but could easily press and make some money on (there's more c'est la mort and third mind bands, besides are (who i love) that sam r. could make some money on).

funny thing. i'm definitely not interested in an 'ionia' remaster. let that old album sound dirty and scratchy! it's supposed to sound that way!

Just seems like an iconic early Projekt release... all the other early 90s Projekt releases are still pretty much available!

really pissed me off that there was not ONE projekt released song on that rhino box about 10 years ago.

it was a great box, but... how the hell could they leave off lycia!!! or, black tape or lsd!?

Was gonna repeat myself and point at the Heavenly Voices as manna of this genre

Wonder how many of these bands ever did anything else (sorry for the bad formatting)

1-1 –Rise And Fall Of A Decade Pure Hands 3:22
1-2 –The Moon Seven Times Giannis 2:59
1-3 –Stoa Infant Joy 2:43
1-4 –Love Spirals Downwards Love's Labour Lost 4:19
1-5 –Chandeen Journey To The Land Of Wisdom 3:38
1-6 –Eventide Ave Gloriosa Mater 3:40
1-7 –Gitane Demone Gloomy Sunday 3:40
1-8 –Speaking Silence Immunity 3:15
1-9 –Ordo Equitum Solis Playing With The Fire 3:48
1-10 –Black Rose (2) Liebe 4:33
1-11 –It's A Secret (2) Gabriella 3:15
1-12 –Die Form Cantique 3:48
1-13 –Manic P. Lost In Silence 4:33
1-14 –Jack Or Jive Behind The Line 3:15
1-15 –Sabotage - Qu 'Est - Que C'Est?* Fait De L'Er 3:48
1-16 –Mellonta Tauta Pull The Carriot 4:14
1-17 –Attrition I Am 2:54
1-18 –Malka Spigel Yesitney 4:06
1-19 –Annabell's Garden* Winter Moon Descents 5:57
2-1 –Love Is Colder Than Death Oxeia 2:58
2-2 –Collection D'Arnell Andrea* L'Aulne + Lamort 4:34
2-3 –24 Hours [Dark Orange]* The Sea Is My Soul 4:46
2-4 –In The Nursery Sesudient 4:19
2-5 –black tape for a blue girl Overwhelmed Beneath Me 3:23
2-6 –Pupilla Jealousy 3:11
2-7 –Sleeping Dogs Wake Swan Song 5:55
2-8 –Sunwheel Walk Upon The Grass 7:36
2-9 –Kirlian Camera Twilight Fields 1:24
2-10 –Donna Regina Siren Call 5:13
2-11 –Anchorage Abandoned 6:22
2-12 –Taras Bulba Barune 4:51
2-13 –Bel Am* Winter Lanterns 2:16
2-14 –Dreamscape (3) Finally Through 3:47
2-15 –Kosova Republike Sleep Silent 4:44
2-16 –View (2) Bike Ride 4:29
2-17 –Eleven Shadows 56 In 81 2:49
2-18 –Andromeda Complex Where Has It Gone The Kitten? 4:41

The Moon Seven Times (and its precursor, Area) would be considered "dream pop" today, filed alongside Beach House. LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser. Mellonta Tauta's album was essentially Argentine (or Italian?) shoegaze. Malka Spigel was doing things with hubby Colin Newman, so be considered Wire ephemera. LiCtD is great in small doses, but tiresome at length. The real gem I discovered through the Heavenly Voices comp was Collection D'Arnell Andrea. Both Les Marronniers (1992) and Villers-aux-Vents (Février 1916) (1994) are legit classics of the genre. Unfortunately, they thereafter veered into less striking dance beat driven music.

^ might be

My kingdom for a 1 minute editing window.

First two Chandeen albums are really good, and Ordo Equitum Solis are kind of fun. Swan Song by Sleeping Dogs Wake never fails to crack me up, the chorus is top tier goth poetry.

impressive new ethereal track

Acre Tarn - Lantern

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/new-music/song-of-the-day/acre-tarn-lanterns

Continuing in the distinguished vein stretching through from the likes of Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins up to Bat For Lashes, Cumbria’s ACRE TARN, the electronic art pop project of Anna-Louisa Etherington, lays her own fine brick on that road with her latest single, “Lanterns”.

soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/acre-tarn/lanterns-1

additional, there is a single track from earlier this year from Acre Tarn

Acre Tarn - Flex
https://open.spotify.com/track/6nZ7zvxaR5RKIlzhDRblPg

and remix

Acre Tarn - Flex - saycet remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/5uy0xsmrFKwTHs6cUJpJEB

Another new find:

Kria from Iceland

there is a transcendental, immersive ethereal purity to this track as reflected in the video

KRÍA : hiding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Z-fc5NhEw

3 track ep on spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3H5Pj7oTO9Yjd8aGqbhbuM

=== Also Posted on: Johnny Fever's Not Pop Not Indie Shambhala 2015

Hope to check out those samples soon.

Lycia's new album is surprisingly loud and rocky in places.

The Moon Seven Times (and its precursor, Area) would be considered "dream pop" today, filed alongside Beach House. LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser. Mellonta Tauta's album was essentially Argentine (or Italian?) shoegaze. Malka Spigel was doing things with hubby Colin Newman, so be considered Wire ephemera. LiCtD is great in small doses, but tiresome at length. The real gem I discovered through the Heavenly Voices comp was Collection D'Arnell Andrea. Both Les Marronniers (1992) and Villers-aux-Vents (Février 1916) (1994) are legit classics of the genre. Unfortunately, they thereafter veered into less striking dance beat driven music.

― Humean froth (Sanpaku), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 11:40 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry for such an early repeated post, but this one is worth emphasizing. this post is pretty spot on.

M7X and Area are beautiful. For Moon Seven Times, search: first album, "Her House", "Miranda", "This and That" "Straw Donkeys", "Crybaby", and their Area cover of "Anyway".
For Area, search: the 'Between Purple and Pink" album, for it is the softest and sweetest and prettiest dark wave you will ever hear. Also: "Anyway", "OUR CORNER DROWNING", "Michael Writes His Parents", "All There Is", and so on.

M7X and Area are basically dream pop by today's standards, but, this is complicated. Both bands are ethereal, at least, and both of their associations with darkwave in general have to do with record labels and such. Both bands were part of the 'scene' if you will (which, admittedly, barely ever existed).

^ Both bands are two of my favorites. I love Lynn Canfield's voice to pieces.

Collection D'Arnell Andrea are wonderful. Such gothy fun.

Mellont Tauta: "Pull the Charriot". This is one of my favorite songs ever, and the epitome of the genre. Damn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSr1JkGADO0

all of mellonta tauta's other songs sound shoegaze, though.

The gothiest thing about Area was the cover of their second album:

http://www.projekt.com/store/wp-content/uploads/ARC00016.jpg

Granted, the goth/darkwave "scene" in 1986 Urbana-Champaign likely would have fit into a modest bedroom.

Personally, I'm more a fan of Radio Caroline (1987, pictured) and The Perfect Dream (1988) than the two albums produced by the keyboardist and Canfield after guitarist Henry Frayne left. M7x initially came off as a Frayne/Canfield reunion, with big/real drums. I've followed Frayne's intrumental project Lanterna off and on for two decades now, and he deserved a way higher profile amongst American "post-rockers".

yeah, area/moon seven times definitely weren't really goth/darkwave, exactly, at least in the sense of this thread (but they're both associated with the 'scene'). however, if you'd like to define the goth thing in terms of excessive-romantic-ness and torch songs, they fit in. this also has a lot to do with projekt re-issuing all the area albums and also redefining the darkwave category through its catalog.

i'm deeply, deeply, ashamed to admit this. . . i never did get around to sitting down and listening to a lanterna album. i feel like i know what to expect, that it would be wonderful, that it's probably something very important missing from my life (i always absolutely loved the area/m7x guitars), etc. but, which album to begin with? which is the most tuneful and also ethereal (in the sense of wisely used reverb)?

I've only got Elm Street but it's beautiful.

xxpost: mr. sam rosenthal of projekt is definitely gonna see this thread now, for you hotlinked that area image!
oh, i hope i didn't say anything too bad/weird about him. i frickin' love him and black tape. i guess we sort of disagree on what "dark wave" and "darkwave" should be/could be/and is, but:
cheers, sam, when you see this!

As the first post indicates, I welcome dreampop that that early 4AD and Projekt fans would probably be into.

LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser

I don't agree with this entirely. I'm listening to 'Idylls' right now, and Love Spirals Downwards always had a much larger, more expansive, fluid sound to them. Now and then, it'd even topple over into this really over-the-top ethereal-new age-ambient territory (which I doubt they'd even take my saying so as an insult), and they navigated it better than any other ethereal band. The Twins never really went there except for their collaboration with Harold Budd (which, as the Twins/Budd/and everyone else seems to agree, that album only sounds like four Cocteau Twins songs and four Harold Budd songs, anyway).

^ First two albums ('Idylls' and 'Ardor) are absolutely essential, obviously. After that, eh. 'Ever' is nice if you like trip-hop/'Flux' is nice if you like jungle/d'n'b.

This reminds me, I always wished Ryan Lum of LSD would make a solo ethereal-new age-ambient album himself, in the vein of those early LSD instrumentals.

I think Soul Whirling Somewhere are too derivative of Red House Painters [...]

I definitely disagree with this, with all due respect. Everyone says this, but I've never heard much similarity between the two. Sure, they're both extreme sad sacks with acoustic guitars, and I'll even grant that Michael Plaster of SWS is very likely a big RHP/Mark Kozelek fan, but it always sounded to me like they were coming at it from different angles. Kozelek is more of a sad-sack folk-rocker, almost Elliott Smith-type, with a some small dream pop flourishes early on in his career, whereas SWS always seemed like such a depressive affair that it would actually just collapse unto itself and morph into full-blown, slow motion ambient, with electronic flourishes and much more guitar treatment to boot. I mean, I guess I might agree that SWS sounds like RHP with about 10 X more reverb/20 BPM lower.

I'm glad you said you still really like Soul Whirling Somewhere anyway though, Robert. I still hate for people to think their a Red House Painter clone, though - I've just never heard them that way.

(forgive my type-os/misspellings/grammar above. i really need to start re-reading my posts before hitting submit.)

but, which (Lanterna) album to begin with?

The first self-titled one, originally on IPR but re-released by Ryko and easily found for cheap... it's by far the best one, although the later albums are all quite strong.

oops, the first Lanterna album was on Parasol, just the packaging was done by IPR... and they have new album called Backyards I haven't heard!

Oh, and btw, sorry, but I really wish Michael Plaster of Soul Whirling Somewhere would just do a full-blown instrumental ambient-ethereal album, as well. Or, better yet, perhaps, a similar kind of collaboration with Ryan Lum of Love Spirals Downwards. I'm surprised nothing of the sort has ever happened, actually. I always hoped Plaster or Lum would take a cue from Mike VanPortfleet of Lycia and just do it.

VanPortfleet's solo ambient album, 'Beyond the Horizon Line' is fantastic, by the way.

Jeez, now I also have to mention how wonderful Sam Rosenthal's (of Black Tape for a Blue Girl) first instrumental/progressive electronic solo album, 'Before the Buildings Fell' is, too! I never did hear 'Tanzmusik', though. Is that one any good? Rosenthal's other solo ambient material, including As Lonely as Dave Bowman, is stellar as well. Although pleasant, that old Terrace of Memories album definitely isn't essential, but if you like the other stuff here, you'd may as well go for it.

xp, thanks, f. hazel! i think i actually have that lanterna album sitting around on my hard drive somewhere? i have an album of mp3s, transferred from a cassette release, and it's 90 minutes long, and i know it's kind of ancient - never have listened to it, though. in any case, i'll assume i should start with the earliest stuff, especially since i was always just enamored by the area/m7x guitar sound, so i'm sure whatever's closer to that time period is what'll do it for me.

Oh, and while I'm still rambling about ethereal-ambient, I should also take this time to mention a random/obscure album called 'The Witch's Garden' by Abandoned Toys. It came out six or seven years ago, and it's by no means actually important or anything (I only checked it out on a whim because it was advertised at the projekt:darkwave webshop). However, if you love mid-period ambient Black Tape as much as I do (a la "Fitful", "Wings Tattered, Fallen", etc.), then you're definitely gonna wanna hear it. It's a wonderful, wonderful lost little ambient-ethereal album.

It is true they really are very different but I think in a lot of songs Plaster seems to mimic aspects of Kozelek's voice. In some songs he doesn't. This isn't a problem in the first album because of all the effects.
I read that he was planning a new album for a long time. Even scrapped an album about finding happiness, because that happiness ended before he could finish an album. I think he said he wanted it to be the final album, but I may be wrong.
To balance this out with praise, Hope Was has a few of the most crushingly sad songs I've ever heard. That song about him refusing to emotionally let go of the girl on the cover art is totally heartbreaking. Then that ambient piece about waking up, that sound of reality sinking in. I really should revisit his albums soon.
I still need 2 releases.

I'll probably need to return to VanPortfleet's 'Beyond The Horizon Line' someday. I'm not as comfortable with pure ambient. The title track was brilliant tho.

How about Lum's Lovespirals?

Do you like Rise And Fall Of A Decade and Trance To The Sun as much as I do?

I love Rise and Fall of a Decade AND Trance to the Sun! Would I be here otherwise!? :-)

Lovespirals never really did it for me, though... :-(

You, unfortunately, just reminded me something about Soul Whirling Somewhere/Michael Plaster... yeah, I love the guy, but some of his songs about women/the woman are definitely a little problematic. I mean, yeah, 90% of lyrics ever are about relationships, but when you have a song entitled "Every Female Werewolf Ever, Listed Alphabetically By Crime", you're definitely crossing a line. Don't hang that kind of shit on a girl just because she doesn't love you back!

^ BUT, it's easy to forgive it. He's only human, heartbroken, trying to figure shit out inside his own songs, etc. And, actually, I KNOW I read somewhere that he refused to release the last recorded SWS album precisely because he no longer felt it was cool to lay that kind of shit on a/the woman that didn't love him back - so good of him. (Eh, I'm not Googling for 15 minutes to find the source - this is casual conversation/do it yourself).

I guess this whole post was an aside.

(i'm not sure that last sws album was totally finished or merely abandoned in the recording process. but, projekt had been advertising it for a couple years, it never came out, then i was wondering about it and i found the interview with plaster in which he actually talked about it.)

I think that werewolf thing was just a throwaway joke title. Doesn't look like a wise choice on albums about girls you broken up with but I don't remember anything angry in those albums.

Plaster is also in an electronic band called Mr Meeble. I remember them listing Jamiroquai as an influence! Their album is called Never Trust The Chinese. Apparently that's not to be taken seriously either.

hah, man! there definitely comes a point after which you can no longer just have sad song after sad song after sad song about the same girl without crossing a line! i mean, at some point you gotta be a man and just step back from it and let it rest! otherwise, you're just being a jerk, after a while. it's hard enough as it is to be a woman without some guy obsessed with you writing -dozens- of sad songs about you!

we're definitely on a tangent now! gotta drop it.

x-post: ooh, i always meant to check out plaster's post-soul whirling somewhere stuff? have you heard it? anyone know if it's good or bad? i know plaster was a really big global communication fan! which, you can actually hear on the sws albums, if you listen. lol, nothing wrong with jamiroquai hahahh

I haven't heard Mr Meeble.

i feel like i've directed this thread toward too much slightly goth stuff. let's get back to the real goth stuff.

how's STOA doing?

THIS ASCENSION threatened a reunion six or seven years ago, but it didn't really happen, i guess. i love their first three albums dearly... don't feel like talking about their very last album, though...

that first AMBER ASYLUM album is a classic. search: "cupid", the first song on 'natural philosophy of love'. also search the amg review for said album, because it's classic one.

loving the dedication you guys are showing - would love to have an "intro to ILX ethereal goth" schooling.

Why don't you like the last This Ascension album, Sever? It has two of their greatest songs and I'd rate it above everything but their third album.

"intro to ILX ethereal goth" schooling.

good starting point, if you have spotify / apple music stick a few tracks on a playlist from each of these albums (if available) then play on shuffle

top rated Ethereal Wave albums on rym
https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=alltime&genre_include=1&genres=Ethereal+Wave&include_child_genres=t&include=both&limit=none&countries=

Ethereal Wave
https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/Ethereal+Wave/

This year's Anneli Drecker album (which seems to have made no waves whatsoever but is excellent) is definitely ethereal.

Here's the Sound of Ethereal Wave from my genre series:

https://open.spotify.com/user/thesoundsofspotify/playlist/54eDlcyhSBrHMt6dbHyFWp

Anyone spent any time with that Anka Wolbert solo album that was produced by Pieter Nooten? Cocoon Time? Is it worth tracking down?

it's probably important to take a moment, and be cognizant of the fact, that, Bimble would have loved this thread.

St. Bimble.

Getting in late to the Lanterna discussion... The original cassette release of the first Lanterna album has several extra tracks - including one with Lynn Canfield on vocals - which further blurs the lines between all that. The first s/t and Sands are the ones to get.

Always wanted to hear those extra six tracks from the cassette release... only 17 of 23 made it onto the CD versions.

x-post. i had no idea lynn canfield collaborated with lanterna!

Controversial opinion: Nicole Sabouné's Miman is a better 2015 goth album than Chelsea Wolfe's Abyss.

there are probably no good goth albums in 2015, unless they were made by lycia or other old-schoolers.

except, maybe? a few people have come in here, (and, bless their hearts), talking about things that really have nothing to do with goth or ethereal.

kalinkaland is p. f-ing cool, though.

everything is dark cabaret now, even the last black tape album. it isn't my thing. i'm still waiting for it to pass, and looking forward to the incredible ethereal albums that will come out in 2020, after people get over this phase.

the best album on projekt in 2015 was by forrest fang

i bet you're correct, f. hazel.

i feel like i've been talking too much about projekt and hyperium in this thread, and not living up to my promise of sharing other wonderful, obscure ethereal with y'all.

but, yeah, when it comes to really wonderful darki-ish ambient stuff, projekt is the first place to start. the hypnos label needs more love, too (but that hasn't much to do with this thread).

hyperium and hypnos are different labels, just to make sure to absolutely clarify for ya'll.

Is this Hyperium the same label as the acclaimed classical label?