Title Sequence is the final single revealed ahead of Kaz Mirblouk's new album, Careless by Contrast, which releases in its entirety on January 22nd, 2021 via Mock Records. Without sounding attached to a specific genre, the new song stands resolutely on its shoegaze foundation, while it also presents an intimate singer-songwriter side of the artist's sound, resembling a more distorted and spaced out Elliott Smith or a more psychedelic version of Sparklehorse.
Mirblouk and Louis Cohen's unreserved perspective on the album's production pays off, and Careless by Contrast is taking the shape of the artist's most consummated and accomplished work to date.
Swedish heavy rockers, Monolord, return with an outtake from their latest full length, No Comfort, showing once more their expertise at memorable, spellbinding stoner rock, and their ability to work out arresting guitar riffs.
I'm Staying Home was mixed and mastered by Monolord drummer, Esben Willems, and it is paired with a live recording of The Bastard Son off No Comfort, from the band's appearance at Freak Valley Festival in 2019. The title track also comes with a bold message. In the words of vocalist and guitarist, Thomas Jäger: "A leftover track from the No Comfort session with the lyrics re-recorded to suit our current state. Stay the fuck home."
In their thirty-plus year long career, shoegaze veterans, The Telescopes, have gone back and forth between the genre's more prevalent sound, and a rather expansive, experimental direction which defies styles and labels, and pulls anything remotely conventional apart.
The Telescopes will be releasing their new album, Songs Of Love And Revolution, on February 5th, 2021. Both tracks revealed off it thus far, the previously released as a single on Fuzz Club, Strange Waves, and the very much aptly titled, Mesmerized, seem to be balancing leisurely between those two worlds that the band has explored, and they conjure up strong memories of their earlier material.
Songs Of Love And Revolution will be the twelfth album by The Telescopes, and it already looks like a trusty successor to the celebrated body of work which has come before it.
The follow up to Mogwai's excellent Every Country's Sun from 2017 will be released on February 19th, 2021 through Temporary Residence Ltd. in the US and Canada, and Rock Action Records in Europe. As The Love Continues is the great band's tenth full length, and Ritchie Sacramento has become the second single and video unveiled off it after Dry Fantasy from last October.
Although initially praised for their atmospheric post rock instrumentals and their cinematic soundscapes, since 2001's Rock Action Mogwai have repeatedly proven that they can also be excellent at coming up with compelling vocal tracks, and at devising more traditionally structured songs. Quite more melancholic in nature, Ritchie Sacramento sounds like an equivalent to the previous album's art pop tour de force, Party In The Dark.
"Ritchie Sacramento's title came from a misunderstanding a friend of ours had about how to say Ryuichi Sakamoto," Stuart Braithwaite explains the song's background and concept. "The lyrics were inspired by a story Bob Nastanovich shared about his friend and bandmate David Berman who proclaimed 'Rise Crystal Spear' as he threw a shovel at a sports car. The song is dedicated to all the musician friends we’ve lost over the years."
Ritchie Sacramento comes with a captivating, fantasy-themed animated video created by director Sam Wiehl.
Coming from Indianapolis and Louisville, the oddly named Karate, Guns & Tanning are the result of the songwriting alliance and longtime creative partnership between Valerie Green and Paige Shedletsky who met in in Colorado in 2005 while working together at a creepy diner. The two artists kept writing together over the years through long distance collaboration, and rounded out their band with friends from the Indianapolis music scene, guitarist Joy Caroline Mills and drummer Daniel Guajardo. Their coming debut album, Concrete Beach, was recorded entirely remotely, and it's coming out on March 26th, 2021, expected to be hitting hard through its genre fusing properties, presenting a shoegaze and post punk groundwork which is being further explored with elements from new wave and dreampop sounds.
The band took their unique name from a sign above a strip mall in Plainfield, IN, but their distinctive approach isn't limited to their moniker. The first example of their sound, Fire, surfaces with a vigorous and magnetic punk rock ethos, while the fine merger of the styles they bring together seems absolutely seamless.
Fire, whose lyrics draw inspiration from the paintings of Marc Chagall and Grotesque art, comes with a mad visual which perfectly encapsulates the music's psychedelic attributes, and was created by visual artist Andrew Knives.
Differentiated from his work as The Soft Moon due to its distinct nature, A Body Of Errors is the new album by Luis Vasquez and the first under his own name.
The new album is an exercise on cinematic music, drawing from the familiar post punk, industrial and EBM properties in which Vasquez excels. The majority of the album is instrumental except for one vocal track, and it's collectively described by Vasquez as "a collection of themes to living in the human body."
Three of the album's tracks come with videos which further explore the existential unease in Vasquez's art. Poison Mouth, Surgery and This Guilt, all feel like disparate The Soft Moon pieces, and give a demonstration of Vasquez's ideation through a whole different lens.
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Tokyo's Oeil have been around since 2007, with their releases having been sparse since then, counting a pair of EPs and an individual single. The band has recently returned with another standalone track of concise, noisy shoegaze pop beauty.
Perfect finds the songwriting union of singer Mitsuko Hoshino and producer/guitarist Takafumi Hibino pivoting on classic shoegaze areas and sounds, reminiscent of the spirit of the early nineties, and the shrewd distortion of acts like My Bloody Valentine.
The band is slowly, yet, consistently rising and gaining attention, becoming a dependable representation if Asian shoegaze.
Profuse with extreme distortion and profound darkness, Tied Up and Locked In, is the newest track unveiled off the anticipated next album by the great The Body. I've Seen All I Need To See releases in its entirety on January 29th, 2021, and everything about it thus far suggest a solid record of genre defying excellence, akin to the brilliance and decadence found in all of the band's previous offerings.
The striking new track once again showcases the band's mastery on edgy cacophony, while at the same time it presents a type of compositional complexity which feels oddly approachable and exciting. Together with acclaimed engineer, Seth Manchester, The Body seem to have taken firm control of the strange perplexity between sharpness and discordance, and remain consistently artful, as well as slyly methodized and coherent in all the intricacy which defines the duo's sound.
Dallas-based musician and visual artist, Nicole Marxen, aklso of the avant-garde pop act, Midnight Opera, prepares for the release of her debut solo EP, and introduces it with the opening number and title track, Tether.
A showcase of sincerity and human emotion in connection to grief, Tether finds Marxen going through distress and sorrow following the passing of her mother, and it pours forth a kind of dark dynamism which feels both vulnerable and undeterred.
"I used to think that my life wasn’t worth writing about," Marxen admits. "I hid behind the characters I created, the haven of the stage, the armor of costume. My art was elaborate escapism."
The coming four song EP was recorded at John Congleton’s studio, Elmwood, with Alex Bhore, formerly of This Will Destroy You, and it releases on February 26th, 2021.
"Tether is about navigating the vast landscape of loss," Nicole says of the new song. "In many ways, it was a crucial first step in my own grieving process and self-discovery as a songwriter. Being so rooted in showmanship, I hadn’t explored such vulnerability in my work before. When I began to shift my efforts inward, I found that my truth very much needed to be expressed. The song serves as a reminder to hold space for myself."
Multi-instrumentalist, F., formerly of Deeply Confused and Tears for the Dead Gods, and currently head of the prog/thrash metal band, Trinity Blast, is also the one-man black/thrash metal act, Maudiir, which put out the solid debut that was Le Temps Peste, a five-song release from early last year.
Maudiir returns with brand new cut, The Slumber, the first piece off the coming EP, La Part du Diable, expected out on February 19th, 2021.
Through an intricate composition which impacts rather harder than a typical thrash metal piece, The Slumber slants heavily on progressive metal, bringing together direct riffs and resplendent solos, while keeping a tough punk edge, resembling something close to the gritty darkness and the technical aptitude of bands like early Celtic Frost, Voivod and Coroner.
