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shoegaze

A Place To Bury Strangers – See Through You (2022)

  • shoegaze

I have said it in my latest reviews, every new album APTBS seems to get softer. I thought there had again be line-up changes, so I was curious what the latest attempt would sound like.

“See Through You” opens with a bit of an ‘old style’ track. Nice, not too loud, steady rhythm and screeching guitars. The next track sounds less interesting to me. After this the tempo seems to rise a bit, but in “Let’s See Each Other” this is mostly the suggestion that this may happen. Fortunately, with “So Low” we are finally off with the more energetic side of APTBS. Nothing too extreme yet, but a nice rhythm and a typically structured song for the band.

What follows are mostly fairly up-tempo tracks with steady rhythms, screeching guitars, but not as loud as the band used to be. Sometimes a bit more ‘surf’, sometimes more ‘shoegaze’ and sometimes more APTBS.

I still prefer the older albums of the band, but “See Through You” is a fairly good album in general.

Link: A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers – Hologram (2021)

I discovered this Brooklyn band when their 2012 album “Worship” was released. ‘Shoegaze overload’. The music was noisy, chaotic, at times energetic and great. I listened to their back catalogue and APTBS became one of my favourite ‘pop’ bands (perhaps even the).

As with (1980’ies) shoegaze, the music has a ‘wavey’ touch, drumcomputers, feedback, screeching guitars. There are loud and softer tracks. I prefer the wilder tracks, but most of the softer tracks are great too.

With more recent albums the softer tracks appeared to have gotten the upper hand. The wild tracks are still great, the other tracks became less of my interest. So I made a playlist with tracks that I want to listen to more often and I play that list more often than I do the albums. With every new album, there were fewer tracks that I put in the playlist.

Then the opening track of “Hologram”, called “End Of The Night” was made available and again it is a fairly soft track. Nice though. A bit ‘surf noise’ of The Vandelles type. When the mini album came out, the second track “I Might Have” positively surprised me. Lots of feedback, lots of noise and some energy. But it again is the only track that went to my APTBS playlist. Not that the other tracks are bad, but they are simply not in the APTBS style that I prefer.

2021 Dedstrange

A Place To Bury Strangers – Rare Meat (2017 / 2020)

Earlier this week somebody posted a live photo of APTBS on an industrial forum and I replied saying that they are my favourite popband, which was not received well. I found APTBS when I was looking for more uptempo “shoegaze” many years ago and I still see the band that way.

In basis the style of the band is shoegaze, so wave-type rhythms, screeching guitars and soft vocals. The band has two sides. On one end of their spectrum they make soft songs that are well described as “shoegaze”. On the other end they go way off track with extremely noisy rock with massive feedback walls of guitar noise. Unfortunately, the latter style seems to become thinner as new releases are put out.

Somehow I missed the tape from 2017 on which “demos and rarities 2003 – 2017” were released. Due to everybody having to stay at home because of the Corona virus, the band decided to release the “Rare Meat” through their Bandcamp page. A great idea!

“Rare Meat” opens with two magnificently noisy tracks, “I Walk Away” and “Hit The Ground”. Then follows a less interesting soft song, but we are soon back to guitar noise again.

Some tracks are earlier version of songs that appeared on albums. Most tracks were new to me. There are great energetic tracks, but I do not like most of the softer songs here (sometimes they are better), but over all “Rare Meat” is an excellent album that brings back the old days of this great band from Brooklyn.

Link: A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers – Pinned (2018)

Even though the band still has the line “total sonic annihilation” on their website, “Pinned” is again softer than its predecessor “Transfixion” of 2015.

As before, some tracks of the new album have been made available earlier as singles. These tracks already gave the idea that the band again took a step away from “total sonic annihilation”. The same was true in 2015, but “Transfixion” still contains some descent mayhem. Not so on “Pinned”…

The album opens with the downtempo track “Never Coming Back” that was one of the singles. It is a good song with a nice noisy middle piece. Also “Execution” reminds of older days, a minimalistic song with noisy out-of-tone guitars, but again, on an earlier album this would have been one of the soft songs. Then follows a very soft song with the “wavey” sound that the band has played with before.
The album develops towards slightly noisy tracks that are somewhat “poppy”. Most tracks are nice, but as I previously preferred older material over “Transfixion”, I think I will play “Pinned” even less.

And then comes something weird. The album lasts for only about 35 minutes (12 tracks). This is the album that is available on ‘normal’ cd. There is also a “Brainwash Machine” version which has an extra cd with 8 extra tracks and a running time of about half an hour. These two would have easily fitted on one cd to make an album with a proper length. This double cd version can only be bought as part of a box set which has thrice the price of the cd. The extra tracks are available on digital music sources though…

This cd opens with a drilling machine and guitar noise and the tracks here are more wickedly experimental and noisy. I suppose this cd is the side of the band that is (now) regarded as ‘less suitable for the general public’. It is not that here we only get the “total sonic annihilation” that we were waiting for, but there are some new style-experiments with little coherence, possibly songs that were recorded, but which the label did not find fitting for the album itself. Looking over this cd, in general the tracks are not better than on the album itself, but the more interesting material is to be found here.

A thing that I noted -by the way- is the prominent place of female vocals. Is Lia Braswell a new member or was she pushed ‘forward’ more? In any case, according to Discogs the band has had some line-up changes with four members no longer present. I have no idea if these changes are recent and perhaps explain to more ‘accessible’ (relatively speaking of course) style, but just something I noticed.

So to wrap things up. “Pinned” makes a nice album. Be sure to get the double cd when you liked the band before. Again the band seems to be drifting away from my musical preferences, so my guess is that when I feel like listening to “total sonic annihilation” I will keep going back to older albums.

Links: A Place To Bury Strangers, Dead Oceans

The KVB * Of Desire (cd 2016)

I have known this band for a while. I ran into them when digging through the ‘minimal wave scene’, but this scene is a bit wider concerning musical styles. The same can be said about The KVB, because they do not really make ‘minimal wave’, but rather some sort of ‘shoegaze’. Over the years I have read all kinds of descriptions for music from that corner. “Ghostwave”, “witch-wave” and whatnot.

Basically the music of The KVB is electronics and a (bass) guitar. What you see more often from this angle of music, it is a boy/girl duo. Music-wise you may think of The Soft Moon and in a far distance A Place To Bury Strangers. More comparable is some of the music released by Aufnahme + Wiedergabe.

“Of Desire” is an alright album. The same I can say about many releases from this ‘scene’. It is currently a type of music that I listen to quite a bit, but there is not a whole lot that I think is completely brilliant. Since it is easy music to listen to, it goes well as background music.

Should all this be new to you, The KVB is not the worst band to start your explorations with. They are big enough for this album to appear on Spotify and Deezer, so it is not difficult to give them a try.

Links: The KVB, Invada

The Soft Moon * Deeper (cd 2015)

A couple of years ago I discovered The Soft Moon when I was looking for A Place To Bury Strangers-like shoegaze-rock style bands. The Soft Moon is a descent band in that ‘genre’, but when I saw them at the 2013 Summer Darkness festival, they proved to be much more energetic on stage than on their albums which made their show more interesting than their albums.

While at the gothic Summer Darkness festival the band probably did not have their usual audience, yesterday the band played at the Psych Lab Eindhoven festival with a whole range of different-style psychedelic bands; more their scene I think. Their show was with quite a distance the most interesting of the evening. Whereas many band were slow and… psychedelic, The Soft Moon were noisy, uptempo and very energetic. Judging my review of the “Zeros” album, that also was true for the Utrecht show. The band played quite a few tracks that I did not know, so I figured they might have a new album out and indeed, their merchandise stand had “Deeper”.

The cd opens in a promising way with the uptempo “Inward”. Just as in my previous review, I can say that “Deeper” is not as continuously energetic as the live performance. There are also slower and even soft songs to be found on the album. Like in my previous review I can say that there are great and alright tracks on the cd and again I prefer the faster tracks. There seems to be more focus on electronics this time with some beat-driven tracks, but in basis the sound of The Soft Moon is shoegazish, slightly psychedelic rock, somewhat reminding of the sound of A Place To Bury Strangers; so: noisy with high-pitched guitars.

A nice album, but perhaps a live album would be even nicer.

Links: The Soft Moon, Captured Tracks

A Place To Bury Strangers * Transfixion (cd 2015)

A little over two years I discovered A Place To Bury Strangers from Brooklyn, NY. They have grown to be my most favourite popband. What I did not know back then is that this band somehow seems not too far from the scene where much of my music comes from. A Place To Bury Strangers is often named in a line with The Lost Rivers, The Soft Moon or The KVB, bands that are scheduled on festivals such as the Wave Gotik Treffen. There are even people drawing lines towards the ‘minimal wave scene’ (under whichever name) calling the musical style “ghost wave” or “witch wave” which includes bands like Agent Side Grinder who do not sound anything near similar in my ears.

In any case, today “Transfixion” was unleashed unto the masses. I am now playing the album through Deezer and have already ordered my physical copy. In April the band is coming to my country. Since I got to know them, they visited my country twice and both times I was abroad. This time I got my tickets the day they were available, so I am not going to miss them again (lest someting unexpected happens of course). The new album does not have the flying start of previous albums. The band is at its best (to me) in their uptempo tracks which until now included the opening tracks of their albums. Not so on “Transfixion”. “Supermaster” makes a nice opener to get in the mood, but the mood is yet relatively soft; calm before the storm so to say. After this we are off with one of the two songs that have been available earlier, the uptempo track “Straight”. Some softer tracks follow and just when I started to wonder if APTBS took a step back in energy the other track that we already knew is up, the great “We’ve Come So Far”. But it gets even better with the great, dirty track “I’m So Clean” and “Fill The Void”.

Like before, the band goes from a rather wavey sound (in the 1980’ies gothic style) to shoegaze to downright noise-rock. Some tracks are slow, some are explosive and great. The band also likes a joke; sometimes the distortion is so heavy that it sounds like they blew up the studio (or my speakers). I am very curious what this is going to sound like live. “Transfixion” is not as good as “Worship”, but is certainly is another great album.

Links: A Place To Bury Strangers, Dead Oceans

The Vandelles * Strange Girls Don’t Cry

Aha, so there are bands that are almost as noisy and ‘rocky’ as A Place To Bury Strangers! The Vandelles make some nice sleazy rock music with a lot of feedback. They are not always as fast as APTBS, but the music is mostly nicely uptempo. Also here are the wave-like vocals, so I guess I can also tag this release ‘shoegaze’ however, just as with APTBS, the term does not entirely cover the music. In any case, great popmusic!
Links: The Vandelles, Moon Sound Records

The KVB * Immaterial Visions (lp 2013)

I am glad that when I heard about “Minus One” I also noticed that there is new material available (the music for “Minus One” is from 2011). “Immaterial Visions” contains more lively, more noisy, more pushing electronically music. Not that it comes anywhere near the raw shoegaze rock of A Place To Bury Strangers, but this lp is in sound closer to The Soft Moon than the other release. Still somewhat soft, but more lively and generally quite a bit better. If you like the wave/shoegaze sound of the bands that I mentioned and/or just the 1980’ies type of wave, The KVB might be a band to listen to.
Links: The KVB, Cititrax

The KVB * Minus One (cd 2013)

  • shoegaze

I had ran into The KVB on my hunt for shoegaze and to my surprise they played at last year’s (2013) Wave Gotik Treffen. Listening to “Minus One” the latter may not be so strange, because The KVB’s sound on this album may have shoegaze elements, but it is more wave than shoegaze. Soft rock with electronics (mostly for the rhythm), sometimes going a bit in a Suicide direction. The album is rather soft, it could have used a little more energy. The material for this cd was first released in 2011 and another album has been released together with it and it contains a sound that I prefer.
Link: The KVB