California’s Central Valley project dilute_calico98 continue to build toward their sophomore album with mythra, a haunting dreampop track shaped by a distinctly shoegaze sensibility. Haze and melody move together throughout, creating an atmosphere that feels spectral and keeps its emotional warmth intact.
The song turns toward timeless questions of life and death, allowing those immense subjects to emerge through mood instead of grand declarations. Its dreamlike textures suggest something suspended between states like memory and disappearance, the living world and whatever may wait beyond it.
There is a sense of possibility inside the band's sound, another indication that the unusually named dilute_calico98 may be developing into one of underground shoegaze’s most promising new voices. Judging by the material revealed so far, their forthcoming second album is becoming increasingly difficult not to anticipate.
ZR