KILDREN – “Sundance”

Just as Kinoko Teikoku spawned a generation of Japanese emo-shoegaze bands, I think we’re starting to see the legacy of For Tracy Hyde and their hyper-melodic, nostalgia-soaked ethos, manifest itself in a new wave of J-gaze bands. One of them is Tokyo’s KILDREN, whose debut single last year is a six-minute sugarblast of noise and […]

Guy Chadwick – “This Strength”

Guy Chadwick went to ground for a few years after The House Of Love’s initial dissolution in 1994, eventually resurfacing in 1997 as a solo artist and with the assistance of Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, released a solo record in Lazy, Soft & Slow in 1998. It’s a pretty low-key affair of originals and one […]

Cocteau Twins / Twinlights

I’ve been filling a few longstanding holes in my Cocteau Twins collection, most recently getting the Lullabies To Violaine, Vol. 1 compilation of all their 4AD-era EPs – easy enough, as it’s still in print in CD – but the second volume, which covers their Fontana years but was also released by 4AD, is somewhat […]

Burrrn – “Vague Words”

Newcomers to Japanese shoegaze over the past decade – I’m looking at you, me – will have surely come across the name Burrrn and their 2011 debut album Blaze Down His Way Like The Space Show as must-listens, and indeed the My Bloody Valentine-admiration on that record treads just on the right side of slavish […]