Shoegaze album of the week: Wry - She Science

Not really a whole lot to say about this album, honestly. It's basically catchy, modern shoegaze with occasional little electronic flourishes on a track or two. It was released earlier this year, so you can add up another 2009 album to your list if you're keeping track of such things. Also, they're Brazilian, so you can win eclectic points for listening to them too. They sing in both Portuguese and English, so that's why you might hear non-English lyrics on a few songs. I like this one a lot myself. They do a good job of combining awesome, noisy shoegaze walls of sound with catchy songs and vocals. This would probably be a good starting point for someone who's new to shoegaze. Still good for those who are more versed in shoegaze, too. Highlights are "Disorder", "Beatriz" and "Dois Corações e o Sol".


To buy, see their myspace.
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Shoegaze album of the week: Ides of Space - Sleeping Fractures

In this day and age, indie/shoegaze bands are really easy to come by, but I like to think this band does it just a little bit better than their peers. Naturally, that makes them amazing. This release is an album of unreleased recordings that is finally seeing the light of day. I don't think this band is active anymore, which is a shame. This band gives Australians yet another reason to be proud of themselves. Recommended for fans of Air Formation, Airiel, and other bands out there making spacey, psychedelic shoegaze/indie.


last.fm
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Lots of Stuff

Haven't updated in a while, so there's a bunch of stuff here.

Album: Mental Vortex
Band: Coroner
Track Listing/Wiki:
Try: Link
Buy: Amazon

Album: The Dogmatics 1981-1985
Band: Dogmatics
Tracks Listing/Wiki: N/A
Try: Link
Buy: Amazon

Album: Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh
Band: Magma
Track Listing/Wiki: Link 
Try: Link
Buy: Amazon 



Album: Collection I or Misfits  
Band: Misfits
Track Listing/Wiki: Link 
Try: Link
 Buy: Amazon

Gnaw - This Face

The extreme / experimental / industrial metal scene has a potential new ruler here, with the doomic and disturbing debut of Gnaw. If you put this disc in your computer's iTunes, you'll see some joker has categorized their genre as "children's music". Ha, don't think so! Unless you want your kids to grow up to be like Alan Dubin, of OLD/Khanate infamy, who provides the blood curdling vokills here, ranging from throat-shredding yowls to creepy stage whispers. He's joined by former members of doomlords Burning Witch, psychfolk weirdos Enos Slaughter and cold, early '80s NYC post-punk Factory Records band Ike Yard (!) for this new project, which seems to take up where Dubin's previous bands left off, but in a direction much more deviant & eccentric.
The claustrophobic chaos of track one, "Haven Vault", ought to determine pretty quick if this is for you or not. Imagine a sped-up Khanate struggling through a windstorm, Dubin bawling wretchedly amidst the buzzing murk and the splatter of improv percussion... then distant, pretty piano notes fade in eerily, one by one... it's like Khanate meets Hazard meets Supersilent, in a nightmare. Extreme indeed, and all right with us! That leads to the next track, one that's calmer and more song-like, yet perhaps even more sinister-sounding, with Dubin's negative vibe lyrics more intelligible, everything backed by a springy-sprongy electronic rhythm. More of a tribal drumming pattern is exhibited on the deep rumble of the third song.
Each track seems to delve further and further into weirdness and woe, with drone and distortion and feedback given free range of the album. The jittery percussion effects a trance-like vibe at times, perhaps allowing Dubin's words deeper, subliminal access to your subconscious (uh oh). But as big fans of both OLD and Khanate, we're all for it, glad to now have Gnaw to push those same buttons, along with other ones we hadn't expected, like the way the singing on "Watcher" sounds almost like Eugene from Oxbow. Or how it sounds like maybe Dubin & Co. have been into some dubstep lately. Or how Gnaw's crunching head nodding heaviness is cracked like Humpty D. Yep, if you like some strange surprises in your grim glitchtronic avant-metal music, and moreover enjoy the varied vokill stylings of Mr. Dubin, you'll want Gnaw's Your Face at your place.

Click here to visit Aquarius Records, so that you may purchase this fine release.

Circle X - Prehistory

First proper full length from this mysterious seventies outfit, sometimes known as Circle X Internationale, who formed in Kentucky (some argue that Circle X were the first punk band from Louisville), the band eventually relocated to the Big Apple where they became a small part of the burgeoning no-wave underground, a scene at the time that consisted of bands like Mars and DNA, they would later graduate into the second wave of NYC noisemakers like Swans, Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, Live Skull and others.
Unlike the raw primal fury of their debut ep, 1983's prehistory is much more restrained and rhythmic, the drums tribal and trancelike, the arrangements less like songs and more like rituals, the guitar abstract and angular, the bass locked into mesmerizing loops, the vocals gloomy and emotive, the mood dark and depressing, the drums very reminiscent of Southern California tribalists Crash Worship, in fact, much of Prehistory references the ritualistic drum jams. But Circle X, due in no small part to the company they keep, injected plenty of moody miserablism into their decidedly gothic sprawl, a strange hybrid of chaotic post punk, junkyard crash and clatter, and dark depressing almost new wave. Jagged guitars are tossed about by frenzied percussion and buzzing low end synth drones, melodies are mostly angular and atonal, although here and there the band do inadvertently slip into something bordering on catchy and lovely, wild vocal caterwauls wrap themselves around, flurries of intense drumming, and long drawn out rhythms, Jandekian guitars surface and blurt out some strangled melody before sinking back into the mire, it's definitely a strange sonic miasma, a quick listen reveals mostly chaos, but beneath it all, the band had some strange twisted pop sense, which somehow holds the whole rickety thing together.

Buy from Forced Exposure