expect delay
The dearth of quality footage from The Sound is one of the great injustices of the internet age, so on occasions such as this rather than bemoan the low quality of this footage from the band’s performance in Madrid, Spain in 1984 – broadcast on La Edad de Oro – we’ll just be grateful it […]
A return to North America and English-language content with this one courtesy of Stereogum; Toronto journalist Lesa Hannah has collected a trio of interviews with some of the women who defined the first wave of shoegazer bands – Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, Emma Anderson of Lush, and Deb Googe of My Bloody Valentine – and […]
And now, a farewell to Tokyo after two glorious and exhausting weeks with the most on-the-nose selection possible, by one of the most unashamedly on-the-nose acts around – Tokyo Shoegazer. This selection comes from their last full-length of new material, 2022’s Moonworld Playground (not counting last year’s re-recorded Turnaround) and while it’s my least favourite […]
If there is any place on earth that is a physical manifestation of the Japanese dreampop/shoegaze scene, I think it would be Kōenji HIGH, a venue – or live house, as they call clubs here – in the northwest of Tokyo. They regularly host showcases from label/promoters Dreamwaves and Total Feedback, and by pure luck […]
This one’s a little bit of a cheat because I’ve been listening to MONO for years, and odds are if you’re here you know who they are, too. But you know, I’m totally okay with that. They recently announced their 12th album, Oath, which is due out on June 14, and while they’ve pretty well […]
I don’t know much about re:lapse, save for the fact that all the members have previous tours of duty in other bands in the Tokyo shoegaze scene and they’ve put out a series of terrific EPs since the Fall 2021, helpfully self-titled and sequentially numbered. The first was a pleasant if rather unremarkable slice of […]
My appreciation for Tokyo’s yuragi predates my J-gaze obsession, so they certainly helped lay the groundwork for where my head is now and deserve some (more) props. This live clip comes from the October 2021 release show at Shibuya WWW for their sophomore effort For You, Adroit It But Soft; it’s an album that certainly […]
“Influenced by Kinoko Teikoku” is basically a J-gaze subgenre – or maybe a synonym – and one of the current leading lights of that style is Hammer Head Shark, a Tokyo quartet especially good at their forebear’s combination of sonic aggression and angsty vocals, with a healthy dose of snotty youthful rebellion added for good […]
Despite being probably the heaviest rotation artist for me in the past year and having discovered them through my investigations of Japanese dreampop, I’ve not written anything about Hitsujibungaku because, well, I don’t really think of them as dreampop. As I mentioned in my 2023 wrap up I’d grant you adjacent, maybe, as Moeka Shiotsuka […]
From the relatively familiar to the new , Hokkaido’s Plums, who despite being wholly un-Googleable, have put out a number of excellent EPs of fuzzy power pop since 2019, including a new one just this past February in Life. At least those exist on streaming, and they’ve got a YouTube channel so folks can stumble […]
