Pinkshinyultrablast - Astrobrite

Here is a link to the entire Pinkshinyultrablast album by Astrobrite. This (haven't listened to it all yet) goes off pretty far into the noise channel of SG. As I think about making some of this music myself with my ukes + amp effects and synths, I'll need to choose a path between noise and melodicism.  It's a set of decisions that will probably be made when the music is emanating.  It can't really be planned.

Blaster - Pinkshinyultrablast

[link] Pinkshinyultrablast is also the name of an album by Shoegaze supergroup Astrobrite (another story for another day).  This is heavy stuff with the noise turned up, the rhythm turned down (but churning uptempo) and the vocal spread like mayo above and through it all. SG is ubiquitous, is what I am discovering.  Since the 90s it has literally become the world that many people are standing on. It's a medium like the earth is a medium for agriculture.

Hang On - Yukari

[link] More synth-gaze (I just thought of this but I bet I'm not the first to use this term) from Yukari. This is really amazing in its textures and the contrast between the heaviness of the bottom and her voice gliding above.

Automatic - the Pointer Sisters

[link] This is a hell of song.  From 1984. It's the arrangement and production that really does it.  This was the peak of synth pop.  The verse is so restrained and the thing just explodes in the chorus.  The chorus is the same music as the verse but it adds the high harmony and the over the top juiciness of the keyboards. The instrumental part I could do without. Brock Walsh co-wrote and co-produced the song and must have been the main force behind it, from what I read.  Genius pop. I love the old Soul Train footage as well.

Myrrh - The Church

[link] The Church are not a shoegaze band but in many ways the atmosphere of their sound is similar to that evoked by SG. Especially this song and others from the Heydey and Reptile. They are describing the same landscape as SG, in my mind. A gray, not quite apocalyptic place.

Tralfaz Christmas Song Playlist

Here is a link to my entire playlist of 34 Christmas songs. There are still a lot of Christmas songs that I'd like to try to learn. Not sure if I'll get to that this year. In the future, I'm thinking about volunteering to lead holiday sing alongs at local nursing homes.  We'll see if I have time to pursue that.

A Tralfaz Christmas - Part IV

Here Comes Santa Claus
White Christmas
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
I'll Be Home For Christmas
Feliz Navidad
Ding Dong Merrily on High
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
What Child is This?
Do You Hear What I Hear?
We Three Kings
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Silent Night
Here We Come A-Wassailing
The 12 Days of Christmas
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Sleeper - Malory

[link] Shoegaze (Nu-Gaze) from Germany. Pretty controlled compared to some of the other current stuff. The high female vocal on top of the miasma is almost a requirement it seems. That goes back to founders of the sound Cocteau Twins and to some extent My Bloody Valentine.  Even in the bands without a female vocal, there's a cloudy, blurry quality to the vocal track (and a lot of effects and track duplication, as well as multiple vocalist tracks in unison).

Happy - Sugar Plant

[link] On the mainstream (Asian) pop side of Japanese SG, which makes it an interesting fusion. The vocalist has an almost English accent and sings in English. Very smooth and sweet. Definitely channeling Cocteau Twins, but to capture the sweetness of CT, not their complexity.

Leech - Alison's Halo

Really really enjoying this stuff.
Leech

The cover art for the eyedazzler 1992-1996 album I believe is a trace from a particle accelerator collision.  Really beautiful.

Bittersweet - New Model Army

[link] I've had this song on a gothic rock CD compilation. It's a really great song.  The bass and guitar are superb, driving, and precise.  The vocal adds a lot of the goth component. I should investigate the full oeuvre of this UK band who have been around since the punk era and are still cranking.

Dozen - Alison's Halo

[link] From back in 1995, the late golden age of shoegaze in the West (it could be argued that the golden age of shoegaze in Japan is now). That sparkling female vocal like the matron deity Cocteau Twins. Full, fulsome even, noise-juice in the guitar track. The pacing, the atmosphere, all there.

Loved - Cruyff in the Bedroom

[link] A pretty conventional heavy shoegaze sound from Japan.  Most of the major influences are in here. The tempo is too fast IMHO to have the impact the genre typically goes for. Just a bit too bouncy for the rest of it.

Common Reactor - Silversun Pickups

[link] Here's a different take on nu gaze.  Upbeat and more minimal. Again, not much hookiness here.  The vocal is also pretty far off from SG. I don't need to hear this particular track again.

Hearts - I Break Horses

[link] A nu gaze band. Which I think is newer bands trying to do shoegaze and adding their own signatures.  This is sleek and heavy, piercing in spots. Doesn't have the hooks that my favorite SG has.  Rhythmically, it's very machine like, in the sense of whirring motors.

Halcyon - Lemon's Chair

[link] This band goes for it with a wall of raw sound.  A howling, plodding bludgeon.

Fake Lights in the Sky - Last Leaf Down

[link] Downtempo atmosphere.  I really like the grinding baselines of the bridge. Very haunting keyboard lilting through it all.  This song has some power. Great band name too.

Flirtation - Burrrn

[link] On the punk side of shoegaze but not gratingly so.  The real SG element is the bass/chord combination in the 2nd phrase of the verse.  That is a signature with a lot of narrative content. I'm beginning to be convinced that the poetics of these simple musical elements set the entire atmospheric for SG.  It's not post-apocalyptic.  But it's a spent, urban, suburban, or heavily disturbed rural landscape.  It's bleak.  But as with gothic poetics, there is extreme romanticism present.  Still working articulating this...

Pastel Blue - Ariel

[link] Here's some deeply atmospheric Japanese shoegaze. The hook grind of some of the other songs I've been posting doesn't quite arrive here. The far-away-ness is good though.

Yukari - Yule

[link] Fantastic shoegazish pop.  And I love watching her lay down the vocal and keyboards in this video.  Mesmerizing.

A Tralfaz Christmas part III

Holly Jolly Christmas

I Saw Three Ships

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Let it Snow!

The Christmas Song

O Christmas Tree

A Tralfaz Christmas part II

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Up on the Rooftop

Good King Wenceslas

Silver Bells

We Wish You a Merry Cristmas

Blue Christmas

Found a shoegaze internet radio station

DKFM from Fresno, CA.  Good stuff from current bands and classics. Only listened to a little while before but it sounds really good.  Will be spending a lot of time with this station from now on...

Away - Maikotobranco

[link] Anthemic.  Bombastic, even, for shoegaze.  Pretty heavy stuff.  But also seems to bounce off the surface.  Doesn't go deep.

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
Deck the Halls
Jingle Bells
Silver and Gold
Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer

Flipper - Pasteboard

[link] The laid back side of shoegaze from Japan.  Wistful. Could accompany a romantic montage. Very listenable.

Brownsugar/Love Scene - Sugardrop

[link] Uptempo, hooky shoegaze.  Fuzzy guitar phasing in and out. High narrative content, even without the vocal.  But the vocal is a nice addition. I like this whole thing a lot.

Dracaena Sanderiana - Oell

[link] More Japan Shoegaze.  This one is delicate, sounds a bit like the Pale Saints.  Has some complex interweaving vocals and has some quaint, amateurish production/arrangement, which doesn't detract from the artistry.  The guitar work borders on prog. Interesting.

Rosoku - Civic

[link] A lot of things going on in this one.  Very free, noisy guitar, kind of like windy rain hitting your window.  Both low and high female vocals coming and going in and out of the rain. Emphasizing some of the creative possibilities that exist in the genre.  Nice stuff. And I like a band named after a car ;-)

My Dead Girlfriend - Kinoshita Fuyou

[link] Very My Bloody Valentine intro and break with a breathy high vocal. Two shoegaze staples. For some reason, the SG idiom has taken on really well in Japan.