I hope I haven’t violated any kind of embargoes in buying copies of Blankenberge’s last two albums – Everything and More – on the May edition of Bandcamp Friday, but I think I’m okay. I’m pretty sure they shipped from Portland. And come on, the Russian outfit’s soaring shoegaze kind of transcends borders or nationality.
Originally from Siberia but last based in Saint Petersburg – and named for the Belgian town where band principals Yana Guselnikova and Daniil Levshin first saw the sea – Blankeberge cherry pick the best facets of the genre and combine them into a take that sounds familiar yet fresh: pounding drums, walls of guitars that feel weightless, angelic vocals from Iana Guselnikova wrapped in reverb that renders phonemes meaningless.
Their 2019 third record, Everything, got the band some western press. Veil Of Sound talked to the band about the Siberian music scene and the the origins of the band while The Big Takeover found out about the difficulties around trying to get their music out there from Russia during a pandemic… and that’s before the war in Ukraine made things exponentially more complicated.
Interview with Blankenberge @ Veil Of Sound
Blankenberge: Shoegaze Is Everything @ The Big Takeover
They released a video for the title track of their last album, which isn’t even the best song on the record by my estimation – but that just goest to show how solid a listen it is start to finish.
On a positive note, the band posted an update on Instagram a couple months ago that confirm they are not stuck in Russia, but instead in Serbia recording their fourth album.
