expect delay
Ulrich Schnauss‘ take on the centrepiece of Slowdive’s Pygmalion was one of the standout tracks on the uniformly excellent Blue Skied an’ Clear, a 2002 tribute album assembled by German electronica label Morr Music. I’m of the belief that this comp in no small part helped elevate that record from its initial status as career-ending […]
With news that Slowdive are back in the studio working on their fifth album, let’s go back five – FIVE?!? – years to July 2017 when Neil Halstead appeared on Song Exploder to dissect the band’s writing process, particularly as applied to my favourite song from the self-title record, “Sugar For The Pill”. And hearing […]
It’s been a minute or two since I’ve done one of these iterations posts – they do take some time do, you know – but I’ll ease back into it with one of the landmark songs of shoegaze and dreampop, arguably Ride’s signature song, “Vapour Trail”. Written and sung by Andy Bell, it was the […]
The Jesus and Mary Chain released their landmark debut album Psychocandy way back in November 1985, which means despite putting together a remarkable career and releasing a number of good to great records, Jim and William Reid have been talking about Psychocandy for over 35 years. I went down this particular rabbit hole after seeing […]
I saw German composer/producer Ulrich Schnauss live a few times ages ago – I think SXSW 2005, supporting M83 that same year, and then opening for Chapterhouse in 2010 – and confess I never appreciated what he was doing at the time. I mean, as a certified guitar fetishist, his style of electronic shoegaze was […]
I imagine the early aughts were an odd time to be a small, independent band. On one hand, the internet and its potential to reach a massive audience, had largely arrived. On the other, the technological infrastructure to support media, e-commerce, and everything besides just words and pictures on a screen, had frustratingly not. All […]
Given the fact that Catherine Wheel fans are a particular type of fanatical, and the fact that the outfit remains one of the few ’90s acts to not yet reunite, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t take much to get the rumour mill humming. Like, for example, a sudden flurry of activity on the band’s […]
If it seems like there’s been a rush of new music from former Cocteaus guitarist Robin Guthrie… well it’s because there has been. Yesterday, to coincide with his 60th birthday, Guthrie released the Springtime EP – a set of four gossamer guitar instrumentals. This follows last year’s relative deluge of material, starting with the Mockingbird […]
Let’s kick of the last week before Christmas with the lowest-hanging of fruit for the season. In December 1993, just a couple months from releasing their major-label debut Four-Calendar Cafe, Cocteau Twins got into the festive spirit with Snow, a two-song EP comprised of covers of Christmas standards, albeit secular ones. A strange choice from […]
DVDs are hardly the most collectible things these days – I wager a lot of people don’t have the technology to even play one if they wanted to – but I’ve finally gotten my hands back on one of my most precious digital video discs after a couple years where I almost wrote it off […]
