records records records records

two records that pretty much caught me by surprise, still not all i have in the sorta-pipeline to write about here but well, these were lying around half-done so i just finished them. if these feel a little loose here and there it's cause i'm watching DEXTER while writing. lol butts lol.

TAMARYN


how did this thing called neo-gaze start anyway? without really doing much research (sorry) i kind of point this at the my-bloody-valentine-channeling electronic wash of M83 and the dirge-y alt.rock of AMUSEMENT PARKS ON FIRE. at least those were the first things i heard tagged neo-gaze. regardless of how it started, nowadays the interwebs are flooded with so-so bands dubbing themselves some form of shoegaze, very few bringing something new or exciting. most sound entirely different to each other which kind of makes this crappy sounding term entirely useless.
to be fair, "shoegaze" is a loosely defined term that "historically" could mean anything from the fat guitars of STARFLYER59 or SWERVEDRIVER to the soft sparkle and twinkle of LUSH or SLOWDIVE. except for a kind of washed out sound and a certain dreaminess (and the use of guitars) most bands have nothing really in common. additionally a lot of surrounding and equally loose genres like twee, ethereal or lo-fi feature tons of bands with "gaze"-influences. so much, that the term has come to mean pretty much everything with a reverb or delay pedal or -if people really talking out of their arse- anything with loud guitars and softly sung vocals. so that's where we stand with this large fucking umbrella term called "shoegaze". any confusion as to what it means is fully understandable as it's -like i stated- so loosely defined and to fully encompass what the genre can mean you'll need to listen to at least twelve record or so. and, yhea not everyone want's to do that much "research" just to have the proper context for some hip new record.
now to come back to the actual record i wanted to write about, this one has its shoegaze influences right in the middle of their sound. seriously, "the waves" - the second record by whoever TAMARYN is, i don't really care - has written "loveless" all over it. at times it can get a bit much. seriously, if this aped MBV any more it'd be extremely obnoxious. but this band treads the fine line between taking influences and downright stealing like a tightrope walker. the songs are elegant and weaving, with just the right amount of wash in the sound to make it feel really really authentic, something that a lot of the neo-gaze bands fail at (or, the uniquer ones just don't care about).
what really sells me to this is that this record finds its own little spaces in the tradition. a perfect example is "choirs of winter", the second song on the album, a lovely mid-tempo porridge of who knows (and who cares) how many layers of guitar that sounds like a missing piece on (again) "loveless", just a little slower and with a more pronounced BANSHEES influence. all in all, "the waves" caught me out of nowhere and i kind of like that and that's also the reason why i chose not to do any research on this band. i'm already regretting knowing that this came out on kemado records, home of hype stuff like ELEFANT or MARISSA NADLER that i really can't care about. the fact, that this has connections to the regular non-exciting music world is just, well... too boring.
that's not too say you shouldn't support the label by buying the record. after all, they financed this and that's a good thing. they deserve your money.

SALEM

well, ok. this one makes no sense at all. as in: no sense in any way.
first up, this is kind of a mix between ethereal, dirty south hip-hop (or some subgenre thereof, i must admit i have a hard time differentiating all those subgenres) and power electronics and it walks a line i never actually thought i'd witness in a record that is hyped this much: the line between extremely camp and honestly sickening and frightening.
lyrics like "gonna tie up your hands and feet / shhh, don't make a peep" are annoyingly corny and amateurish. and the fact that when these words are rapped, you feel the shivers rundown your spine, means there's something awfully wrong with "king night".
all of this isn't supposed to work. either a bunch of scraggy hipsters rapping badly or a clear voice singing no discernable stuff over a slowed down hip-hop beat with a dirge of soundscapes over it, that doesn't sound too exciting. more like a bad idea at a hipster party where someone decided to think up silly genre combinations. but it works, and my g'd, it sounds entirely inhumane. the slow, slooow beats pound along with twirling washed-out synth floats (people have found a "shoegaze" influence in that as well, by the way) creating a deep dark mist, relatively harmony-less and always more akin to an illbient-track then an actual song. and the fact that most of the time you can't make up any actual lyrics just adds to the vagueness of the entire thing. you can imagine any kind of horrible shit being sung, any kind of vile stuff happening, just like you can only imagine what ghastly things happen on the other side of erich zann's window in the famous story of h.p. lovecraft. yes, i pulled a lovecraft-reference on this.
and i will probably regret this in at least two weeks or so, when all the indiedisco-hipsters go apeshit over it, which is already starting right now. and the number of cheap knock-offs are already pretty fucking annoying and in maybe two months or so this will probably only sound like the other side of the line: camp, cartoonish and boring. but right now, while it is still sort of new, this shit is vile and brutal. and it is fucking brilliant.
if this record isn't sold-out it'll probably soon be, so if you want this you'd probably have to be quick. it is out on some sort of a major-label-distributed (faux-?)indie label so you'll probably get it at any of the bigger chains and at your favorite indie store.

also, i refuse to use the term "witch house" here. preset-wank shite like MASTER SUSPIRIA VISION compares to "king night" like fucking HOT ACTION COP to the COCTEAU TWINS. "tumblrcore" is the appropriate term for every horndog with a macbook who found out how to use charmap or just copy-pasted a "▲" on his desktop.

ehrm yhea. that was tangent. sry for taking up your time. maybe it was worth reading anyway. coming up next some reviews that focus more on the records and waaay less on whatever is going on around it. cause i'm sick of it myself already.

"mang, i wish i had heard of the 'yes i smoke crack' EP when i did my list of favorite album titles"