Black Box - Ride on Time

[link]
I love the exuberance of Italo house.  Great stuff.

Two voices that by themselves create atmosphere

(and in the same atmospheric direction, i.e. dread)
Gary Numan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu6MDdxBork
Ivan Doroschuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZM7pi4ICjk

Slowdive - When the Sun Hits

[link] Which leads us to this classic. Goes from quiet slowgaze into really deeply digging near-dreadnaught gaze.

Slowdive - Crazy For You

[link] Very atmospheric.  Quiet-gaze even. Slowdive covers this parameter space of Shoegaze very well.  Linked in Youtube from the Ride video in the previous post.

Ride - Like a Daydream

[link]
Let's get back to some Shoegaze. On the poppy end of Shoegaze with some jangly guitar work.

been a while

Had to take a break.  Things are OK but work and life got too busy.  They are still too busy but I will try to post at least sporadically.
Here's a new one from Cheatahs
The chorusy vocals I guess are a signature of theirs.  But not my favorite...

Above the Vines - Glasswort

Here is a recent practice version of this song.

Here are the lyrics.
white stones
some kind of rubble piled over there
a river washed out a bridge
back in the day
when you weren’t here

among the ruins
fertile soil for your fingernails
every kind of seed
will grow for you

farm skin
not as dark as the soil
that’s as dark as your hair
you mostly keep to this down
city dreams are off somewhere
where school friends
glided to when you said good bye
in their cubicles
no one can see them cry

platform good byes
museum cafe smiles
liquid crystal skies

two winter melons
fit on your scooter back to town
a good day’s harvest
for grandma’s soup
on these trellises
hang a bounty that provides
a simple thing
don’t have to - there is no why

and they speed by
never surprised
above the vines
across your eyes

platform good byes
museum cafe smiles
liquid crystal skies

and they speed by
never surprised
above the vines
across your eyes

Bluestar - Seaside

[link] This album cover (pic below)

captures a theme that I've been wanting to work on with Glasswort, my new band. The aesthetics of industrial and post-industrial urban outskirts.  These are some of the settings that have affected me most deeply from my travels in Taiwan and my one trip to Japan.
 My song, Above the Vines is in this vein.

Silent Girl - Seaside

[link] These guys (and girls) have mastered the form. One of the signature motifs of this brand of SG is the contrast of the breathy high female vocals and the machine-coarse whirr of the guitar tracks.

Giggle and Blush - Seaside

[link] Great SG band from Indonesia.  I'll try to post more from them.

was gone for a while

Work and home stuff.  Things are OK.  But still busy.  So there will be a bit of a hole. I'll try to get back into it soon.
Thought for now: I find myself not wanting to have my consciousness taken over by a strong, serious movie.  Certainly not in a theater but for most stories, not anywhere right now. I need to keep it light and stay in control of the stories I consume.

a few more nine posts days

and I'll have made up for all the days I missed in the last month or so

a binge coming on

I think it's about time for me to pick up all of the Cocteau Twins CDs (used on amazon) and listen to them a lot for a month or so. If there was nothing else going on.  That's what I would do...

Ivo - Cocteau Twins

[link] Siouxsie and the Banshee were one of the Cocteau Twins influences and it really shows in some of the songs on their 1984 album "Treasure", including this song and Persephone.

Simple Minds - No Cure

[link] Amazing story I just read about.  This song was originally called "The Cocteau Twins" and the Simple Minds' (then called Johnny and the Self Abusers) fellow Scots named themselves after this song.  That's really really cool.

Cocteau Twins - The Itchy Glowbo Blow

[link] No one does arch-atmosphere like Cocteau Twins. It's sort of like Tolkein did for the genre of fantasy.  The Cocteau Twins invented the entirety of the "ethereal sound" that because such a huge pursuit in Shoegaze, lock, stock, and barrell, the beginning, the end, all of it.  This song is a superb example of this, but also, especially in the fade out figure at the end, there is pop in here.

Two other producers of the soundtrack of my youth

Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain.  These guys touched a whole lot of rock and pop that made it into my brain.

Psychedelic Furs - The Ghost in You

[link] 1984's "Mirror Moves" finds the Furs forging the smoothest and most sophisticated pop that they would probably ever make. The differences from their origins are on the same scale (to use an example from almost the same genre) as Bryan Ferry's Bete Noire era solo stuff compared to early Roxy Music. Instead of a xylophone, a synth provides the driving figure.  The vocals are more conventionally produced (but still signature Butler, the lyrics as well). The Furs of this era have an ability to evoke offbeat romantic desolation on a par with Ric Ocasek's best work the the Cars. Keith Forsey produces them here (after Todd Rundgren's trenchant production on the breakthrough Forever Now), placing them into the 80s pop Olympus alongside other Forsey Productions like Billy Idol and Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me". I gotta say that Forsey certainly produced the soundtrack of my coming of age.

Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way

[link] This was the one.  The piece of pure alt.pop genius (before alt existed) that made the Furs a worldwide recognizable sound.  Probably the best use of xylophone in the history of pop. The chord structure is simple.  The genius is to mine such deep hooks out of pure simplicity in the chord progression and vocal line.  Butler's vocals actually become sort of velvety on top of the synthesizers here.  The atmosphere and very tightly focused signature emotiveness are also major achievements.

not much time for blogging

Things have been crazy busy, but I'll try to catch up.