Zer0

One thing that I'm guilty of in the past, not so much now since I started using Spotify, is downloading albums, listening to them and then forgetting about them. Quite a lot of albums fail to impress me on first listen and are banished to the depths of my external hard-drive rather than just deleting them. Other albums I enjoy briefly for a period, then just fall out of favour and are forgotten about while I move onto newer discoveries.

So now I've decided to root through my entire music collection and give some albums another chance and also to revisit some albums I used to enjoy but neglected in recent years. I will be posting my thoughts here.

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Zer0

This is an album that I've had for a number of years now, and I honestly can't remember the last time that I listened to it until now. For those of you wondering, this is a post-rock/slowcore type album with delicate vocals and a lush wash of instruments, including piano, strings and of course guitar. There's quite a lot of variety on this album and it doesn't cleanly fit into any particular genre. The beautiful and melancholic post-rock of the opening track 'The Wall of You' is heartbreaking to listen to, as does 'The Sound of Longing', which lives exactly up to it's name. There are also darker, moodier numbers such as 'Silence' and 'The Song of Hate', the latter vaguely reminding me of Nine Inch Nails or Trent Reznor for some reason.

This is a really good album I must say and I have criminally overlooked it in recent years. It's certainly not without it's weaknesses though. For starters it's not anything mind-blowing or boundary-pushing. Secondly it is a little bit over-long. I found my attention beginning to wane towards the latter parts of the album, and it could perhaps benefit from having a song or two shaved from the track listing. But what this is is a very haunting and moving album and one that sounds really good during the winter months.


What's in a name? Well for a start, what a terrible name for a band. It really hasn't done them any favours. You could argue that having a terrible band name has prevented these guys from being as big as they deserve to be, because this is actually a really good album. Actually this album is amazing. Why I have I neglected it though? Besides the band name the album cover itself isn't very inviting either, it doesn't scream "hey you, listen to me!" But it's the actual music on the album that should matter most here and I must say that this album can rival the likes of Sigur Ros and Hammock in the beautiful music stakes. I could even say that this is one of the best shoegaze/dream-pop albums of the past fifteen years and this isn't hyperbole by the way.

Just like the album title and one hour ten minute running time hint at, this is a very ambitious album. However they pull it off with spectacular results and you are left clinging onto every guitar melody and reverb-laden vocal hook, not wanting this album to end. Some of the influences are kind of obvious, early Slowdive, The Cure and A Storm in Heaven-era Verve. Hell, there's even a little hint of country in there somewhere. This album should be in more people's music collections and it's also a shame that I haven't given this more plays myself, because it's an amazing album.

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Goofle

Cool idea for a journal. Will be following.

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Zer0

Drone music can go either way with me. It can either pull me into a trance and blow my mind or it can bore the living hell out of me. This album falls into the latter. I don't quite recall how I acquired this album but it doesn't add anything to my music collection. While listening to this album I can't help but think "I can do this, anyone can do this." It sounds exactly what it is – one guy noodling around on an electric guitar in his bedroom, with a ton of effects pedals and some home recording equipment. Literally. And it goes on for an entire hour over the course of four tracks, each of them indistinguishable from each other and the whole thing just blends together into a mess of droning and feedback. The music is psychedelic, free-flowing and very much improvised. However there is just nothing for me to latch onto here, no interesting moods or textures, no interesting chord progressions or arrangements. Nothing that really appeals to me.

I find the back story of this artist far more interesting than the music on this album. Jason DiEmilio suffered a lot from depression as well as tinnitus and hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to sound) and he sadly committed suicide in 2006. His contemporaries are listed as Bardo Pond, Flying Saucer Attack and Jessica Bailiff, but those artists have so, so, so much more to offer in one single song than what the entire duration of this album does. Into the recycling bin it goes.


An album that I've had lurking in my music collection for two years now. It's definitely two years because I remember first listening to this album two Christmases ago. Back then I may have thought that this album was only okay at best and then shelved it, but listening to it now it doesn't sound half bad. It's hard to put my finger on what this is or where these guys are coming from though. I would describe this album as art-rock with a wide range of influences ranging from post-punk, indie rock, krautrock, house music and some general weirdness thrown in for good measure. Sometimes this album works and sometimes it doesn't. But when it does work, on tracks such as the dancefloor-friendly 'Arena' and the addictive weirdness of 'Up Past the Nursery' for example, it gets quite interesting. However there's other times where I'm slightly reminded as to why I dislike bands like Yeasayer and Alt-J, where artiness and trying to do something different in music just ends up sounding awkward, irritating and contrived.

I still can't make up my mind as to whether I like this album overall or think it's just okay. It definitely has some very good tracks but despite the relatively short running time of thirty-seven minutes it does manage to squeeze in a few filler tracks. Perhaps it's an album that requires more patience and I do see it as an album that has potential. However at the same time I get the impression that these guys are trying something which doesn't quite work.

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Zer0

A lot of people will probably remember that whole surfer vibe that briefly found it's way into indie around five years ago with bands like Surfer Blood, The Drums, Wavves, Best Coast etc. and then disappeared nearly as soon as it came. It felt quite strange listening to this album because of that and it feels slightly dated already. I enjoyed this album quite a lot when it was released I must say, but I'm not feeling the same love as I listen back on it after a few years. I must say that it isn't a bad album, but it's certainly nothing worth noting as we are about to enter 2015. It does have some good songs such as 'Swim' with it's huge, shout-along chorus, as well as the opening track 'Floating Vibes' with it's catchy guitar melodies. But this album certainly wasn't pushing the boundaries of indie rock when it was released.

When I listened back on this album I couldn't help but think that this album belongs in 2010, because it does sound like an album of it's time. I discovered this album during the peak of my Pitchfork period and it's no surprise to a lot of people that these guys were one of those bands who were 'in' for a brief period. I must hand it to them, they are better than most 'in' bands that have been spewed out over the past number of years. But listening to this album now doesn't do much for me and leaves me feeling hollow. There's been far better indie albums than this released in the past five years.


Keeping in theme with the whole surfer indie thing from around five years ago. I'm bending the rules slightly here as this is an EP and not an album. I was considering reviewing their self-titled debut album but this release was so much better. I wasn't quite sure what my reaction would be listening back on this. I was either going to cringe or enjoy the hell out of it. Thankfully it was closer to the latter, as this sounds pretty damn good after more than five years. Just like Surfer Blood there is nothing boundary-pushing going on here. But The Drums have (or at least had) something else and that was effortless pop hooks and a breezy, fun-loving feel to them. It's so obvious that these guys are fans of The Cure, Joy Division and English post-punk, you can hear it in their guitars and vocals melodies. But the strange thing is I associate the English post-punk and new wave of the 80's with gloomy industrial urban areas and hearing these guys inject it effortlessly into their summery indie pop sound is strangely impressive.

The main reason I reviewed this EP over any of their albums is because this was far their best release. Their self-titled debut album and follow-up Portamento had their moments but were very average. I see The Drums as a band who promised much but didn't deliver and they have certainly failed to release anything near as good as this EP.

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Zer0

There's a brilliant compilation called The World Comes to an End in the End of a Journey, which features some post-rock and post-black metal bands. The compilation does not feature Hypomanie but their music would probably not feel out of place on that record, as their sound is pretty much in the same ballpark and invokes a similar snow-covered winter feel. Hypomanie are from the Netherlands and started out as a depressive black metal band before gradually morphing into a post-rock outfit. Unfortunately they are not taking post-rock into new frontiers or creating an identity of their own here. The overall result is somewhat underwhelming, you get the impression that there's some potential here but the overall execution is somewhat lacking. A major let down on this album is the drumming, it sounds too simplistic and does not drive the music the way it should. Some black metal-style blastbeats or jazz-influenced drumming would have made this album so much more interesting.

The highlight of this album however is 'If Only the Seas Where Merciful', with it's dreamy, psychedelic glide-guitar lines and suitably-place crescendos. 'Lullaby for Ian' is a tribute to the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division. However the dialogue samples taken from the Ian Curtis biopic Control seem ill-advised and even a little bit cringe-worthy. The track feels like a squandered opportunity. The album does sound pretty and melancholic for the most part but then again so does a lot of post-rock, and there's plenty post-rock albums which can invoke these emotions far better than this album. Post-rock used to have an edge and offered tons of variety but here we end up with the cliqued version of the genre which has been done to death over the past decade or so.


I feel like I've discussed shoegaze to death at this stage, but it remains one of my favourite genres. While the media in general stopped giving a **** about shoegaze by the mid-90's it never really went away as such. And when a new crop of shoegaze bands started gaining some momentum in the 00's the awful term 'nu-gaze' was coined. The term was originally aimed at English alternative rock band My Vitriol, who have some shoegaze influences but personally I've never seen them as a shoegaze band. If there's one band who could be held responsible for this upsurge in shoegaze around the mid-00's that would probably be Amusement Parks on Fire. When I feel like listening to this band my album of choice is usually their sublime second album Out of the Angeles. However I feel like I have criminally neglected their self-titled debut, which is a shame because this album is nearly just as good. It's an album which updates the shoegaze sound for the 00's rather than rehashing what went before. I get the impression that they also have a 90's emo influence in their sound, in particular bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral, and this sets them apart from being another My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain or Slowdive clone.

'Venus in Cancer' is a fantastic tune I must say and it sums up what the band do so well. Meanwhile 'Smokescreen' sounds like a noisier, more overdriven, wall of sound version of 90's emo. It's an album which fits together nicely as a whole and the one-two punch of the final two tracks 'The Ramones Book' and 'Local Boy Makes Good' provide a great conclusion to the album. This album comes highly recommended and deserves to be played loud.

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DeadChannel

Yeah, this is a really excellent idea.

Zer0

Thanks guys

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Zer0

I was flicking though TV channels on Saturday night looking for something good to watch when I noticed that the film Into the Wild was on. I haven't watched this film since seeing it in the cinema when it was released here and it's a film that I really enjoy and highly recommend. Also enjoyable is the film's soundtrack, much of which was composed by Eddie Vedder on his acoustic guitar. I've had the soundtrack sitting in my CD collection for a number of years and after watching this film again I felt the urge to dig it out and pop it into the CD player.

Pearl Jam stopped being any way musically interesting after a couple of albums and should have packed it in long ago. But this album definitely stands apart from the mediocre music that Pearl Jam have released since and it's something that I wish Eddie would do more of. It's also a very short album, if you were to remove the silence between the last listed song and the hidden song this album would be under half an hour long. The album does a really good job of capturing a lone individual's outlook on the world and society, either through a sense of freedom and adventure ('Setting Forth'), or not wanting to be part of common society ('Society'). This soundtrack suits the theme and feel of the film superbly while also working very well as a standalone album. I'd definitely recommend hearing this if you enjoy the film.


It's funny that I'm writing about this album despite only downloading it a few months back. I only listened to the album once after downloading it and then moved onto other stuff and forgot about it. I know very little about this band, apart from them being from Australia and having a band name which doesn't make any sense to me. This album is probably far from being essential indie listening but if you're a fan of twee pop, C86 and Flying Nun Records you will more than likely get some enjoyment out of this.

As I said it's far from being essential. At times they sound like a second-rate Pastels or Beat Happening but this album does have a character of it's own. It's a shambling and sloppy affair, like the band honed their craft while drunk onstage in Australian bars or in friends bedrooms. But this kind of music has never been about musicianship and the band let the boy-girl melodies rip and their innocent charm shine through. It's an album worth checking out if you're curious and one which probably deserves a little more attention from myself.

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James

I've always loved that Cannanes album. A real hidden gem, and although there isn't much depth there some of those songs had a lot of replay value. I love everything in that kind of vein though.