expect delay
I honestly thought that the arrival today of kurayamisaka yori ai wo komete, the debut full-length from Tokyo’s Kurayamisaka, would have come with a little more fanfare, with their 2022 debut EP kimi wo omotte iru being immediately hailed as a classic of the J-gaze genre and starting the buzz that’s been steadily growing for […]
Japanese idol-gaze heroes RAY announced details of their fourth album yesterday, and after 2022’s Camellia, which took their album naming convention towards the floral, they’re back to colours – White will be out on October 1. They’ve expanded their influences since their 2020 debut Pink, which owed more than a debt to their former incarnation […]
Mazzy Star isn’t dreampop by the conventional metrics – lots of acoustic guitars, atmosphere from arrangements and songwriting rather than pedals, strong blues and folk influences – but they’re still held up as one of the pillars of the genre thanks to the haziness intrinsic to Hope Sandoval’s vocals and the late David Roback’s so-tasteful […]
It’s a shame that Gothenburg’s Douglas Heart are so little-known that their Apple Music bio offers the most comprehensive backgrounder on the early aughts dreampop outfit, but at the same time, hats off to K. Ross Hoffman for managing to compile as much information as he did. I’ll refrain from repeating the whole bio, but […]
Premature or prescient? When I poured one out for Brooklyn shoegazers Dirty On Purpose back in May, it was strictly in a “oh hey I remember these guys, maybe you do to?” shout out to my exact musical demographic/generation. Well it turns out that I was far from the only one who had that sense […]
I like a little bit of online synchronicity as much as the next guy – probably more – but the way this post lines up with my first one on Okayama’s 揺れるは幽霊 – or yureruwayurei – is pretty funny. That one chose to showcase「鯨骨群衆」off their debut EP mnemeoid from earlier this year, and was able […]
Unofficial archival releases from beloved, departed bands is nothing new so at first I expected that this collection of early demos from Japanese shoegaze godheads Kinoko Teikoku was going to be some kind of sketchy, poor quality MySpace rip or something. Well colour me surprised to learn that The First Mini Demo Album is not […]
Part of the whole Chameleons narrative is that they’re criminally underrated and unappreciated, even though the other part of the narrative is that they’re hugely influential. You can debate how both things can be true, but one think that is quantitatively true is that for a hugely influential band, they are not covered very much […]
I was pretty keen on Tokyo’s KILDREN last year based on a handful – or fingerful, really – of songs released last April that carried the torch of For Tracy Hyde-influenced J-gaze-pop high and proud. Well perhaps the band weren’t quite so proud after all. They returned almost a year later this past April with […]
Spurred by recent solo activity by Savages drummer Fay Milton’s Goddess project and news of frontwoman Jehnny Beth’s upcoming solo record You Heartbreaker You (coming August 29), I’ve gone wandering through their back catalog and even though I was still well in the music media game when they came on the scene, I did not […]
