Silver Screen (Shower Scene) - Felix da Housecat

[link] Another seminal electroclash single.  Pretty cool.  Seems highly influenced by industrial. Video is pretty interesting as well.

Feels Like Summer - Sing Sing

[link] Emma Anderson's band after Lush.  Different and not quite shoegazey, but you can hear some of the retro-ish styling that some of the later Lush material had.

Space Invaders - Are Smoking Grass - I-F

[link] Discovered the genre of electroclash when I was researching Lady Gaga, who Ru-Jun is starting to get into thanks to her dance class. This music came out in the late 1990s and the genre spanned the turn of the millennium. It's really atmospheric and has the abstractness that I really like.  This is the first of the genre I've listened to (and according to the Wikipedia entry was the first electroclash single).

Low Key - Pastel Blue

[link] Continuing with Japanese Shoegaze. Slow and spacey. A fuzzy throb of grayish color.

Sun House - Evil Daddy Dirt

[link] Continuing the Japanese shoegaze thread. More synthy and proggy than straightforward Shoegaze. I haven't ventured into much instrumental Shoegaze before. It's different, since the vocal is often part of the standard shoegaze layering.  But this is interesting; many layers and has narrative content.

Pirate Shows

One of Ru-Jun's favorite shows right now if Jake and the Never Land Pirates on Disney Jr. It's a pretty fun show with really good music, by two members of the band Captain Bogg and Salty (Loren Hoskins and Kevin Hendrickson) who are also depicted as Captain Hook's hapless crew members in the show. Meanwhile I continue to enjoy One Piece.  I am about to finish the Amazon Lily arc (episodes 408-421). Really good stuff.

Black coffee

I didn't really start drinking coffee until college.  At that time I couldn't drink it without cream and sugar.  I gave up sugar as part of a sort of unstated new years resolution about 10 years ago.  In the last year I started drinking it black. Now I prefer it that way (although Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream is still excellent).  Don't have to worry about keeping creamier around (which spoils quickly) or non dairy creamer (which is not food) or leaving space for cream at Starbucks (was always a pain). I always wondered why people liked it black.  This co-occurred with me starting to drink a lot of tea, which is now a daily habit.  I think the thing that did it was that tea has such a weak flavor, anything with strong flavor is a nice contrast to tea.  I like both.

Garden - Mash

[link] This sounds more western (I think it's in English).  Pretty good. Both more poppy and definitely more hard rockish than some of the other stuff I've been posting. Has some non-shoegaze in its bloodline.

See the Brightest Star - Clams

[link] Continuing to mine the Japanese Shoegaze vein. This is very smooth and sweet. The bubblegum pop aspect is quite a prominent part of the composition and production here.

Kisses Bloomed - Purple Bloom

[link] Another recent Japan shoegaze discovery.  Harder edged and more emphatic of the instrumenal sound than Bertoia.  But I like this song a lot.  The guitar and bass lines work together well.  I think the vocal could be turned up more; it's just an accent in this mix.

Some pics of Bertoia

Bertoia

I have fallen in love with this band.  They've been around for a few years in Japan and they do really sublime shoegaze.  And their videos are really fun and well made.

Here is all of there stuff that is on youtube

AnthRelax
Under Water (live) 2012 Tokyo Japan Shoegazer Festival
Under Water (live)
Snow Slide
Snow Slide (audio without cinematic video)
Monotone
Monotone (live)
Glass Bird
Color of Sound
Monotone ~ Glass Bird (live)
murmur/MONOTONE (Bertoia's cover)(2011/10/09 live)
1974 LAB./Under Water (live)
MODERN SYNTHESIS CM (not sure what this is intended to be; it's a 15 sec clip from Monotone)
MODERN SYNTHESIS Alubum Digest (previews of all the tracks from the Modern Synthesis album)
 
An interview with the band [in Japanese] (maybe not an interview; they are introducing their CD, it appears)

Madame Butterfly - Malcolm McLaren

[link] I don't know anything about the opera but always liked this pop version.  Jeff Gold used to play it quite a bit on Saturday mornings on WXDU.

Grandelinquent / Ritch in a Ditch - Klark Kent

[link] I love Stewart Copeland. Not only the drumming but the whole rhythm section and the way his songs are arranged.

Three alt dancefloor classics

Three alt dancefloor classics from back in the day (ca 1990)

There is No Love Between Us Anymore- Pop Will Eat Itself

Supposed to Have Sex with You - Tonio K.

People are Still Having Sex - LaTour

Def. Con. One - Pop Will Eat Itself

[link] A blast from the late 80s past (1988).  Pretty big alt pop hit. Referenced various pop emblems from the previous two decades. Sampling was pretty big at that time and being integrated into a lot of different genres, mostly of dance music.

Glittering Prize - Simple Minds

[link] One of my favorites from one of my favorite albums of all time (New Gold Dream 81.82.83.84).  Atmospheric and beaty in mid tempo.  The keyboard lines cascade down. The lyrics are abstract.  I never learned what this song was about but it doesn't matter. One of the main tracks on the soundtrack of my intensely self absorbed late teens in the mid 80s.

More on the nostalgia

That particular nostalgia has to do with the perception of being in an ideal situation and wanting time to freeze so that I can stay there.  The beginning of summer.  School year over.  Toward the end of my high school years I was very comfortable with my small circle of friends.  Looking back, it was only an ideal situation in that it was simple.  Nothing was required of me. I didn't have any particular cares, or any wisdom. I thought I did.  But the stuff I cared about was trivial.  The stuff I thought I knew something about I didn't.  I didn't know how to be a good friend or a good person.  I longed for romantic love but I had know idea how to love someone. So really in the end there is nothing to be nostalgic about. These days I cringe more than any other reaction to the way I was in those times.  It's a thought refuge for me, but I am alone there.  I take comfort in the fact that I am probably the only one who remembers anything about me in those days.

The nostalgia I was talking about

Here are two songs that are sort of emblems for me. Both by Seals and Crofts: Summer Breeze and We May Never Pass This Way Again. When I was in high school, on "Moving Up" day toward the end of the school year in June, there would be a slide show by the graduating seniors.  These two songs were frequently used as music.  It was the whole memories thing, summer coming, a great time but a completely ambiguous time in terms of who I thought I was (I was totally off, not even a person at that time; I don't know what or who I was; I wouldn't start to know or start to be a real, loving caring person, for another almost 15 years). Those two songs in particular are the pure essense, which is poison, of this feeling of paralyzing nostalgia. I avoid them.  I didn't listen to them (not for one second) just now when I was looking up the links.

Does Caroline Know - Talk Talk

A classic (starts with a line from Mirror Man, another classic). The dainty little keyboard riff defines the main line of this song. Great to see them doing this live from back in the day.  Wish the bass was turned up - it's a nice bouncy little line. Best atmospheric pop I've ever heard.

Nostalgia

I'm a really nostaligic person and maybe because of this I realize how lethal nostalgia, and nostalgic items, can be, to the psyche.  So in my latter adult life I have avoided engaging in too much specific nostalgia about my life, especially with items. It's weird why I am nostalgic about things from my childhood and young adulthood.  Maybe it's just innate.  But I wasn't the person then I am now.  I wasn't really even a person at all. I certainly wasn't worth remembering, and I am glad that most people don't remember stuff from back then.  It's a world that only really exists in my mind.  It never existed for anyone else.  They have their own version, if they have such a thing at all.

Right Time of the Night - Jennifer Warnes

A blast from the past (1977). I was 10 and this was about the time of my musical awakening.  Always liked this song a lot. The instrumentation and arrangement here are country but it's really a rock song.

Flowers - Galaxie 500

[link] These guys were huge on the 90s college rock scene. Shoegaze aficionados consider them in the genre. The sound has really good atmospherics and some things my own band here has done over the years approaches this texture.  It's good stuff.

Colourless Dream - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] From 1982.  Which puts them right with the Cure in the sort of quintessential, slightly goth (although not nearly as much as the Cure), post-punk alternative pop. They should have had as much success as the Cure as their sound is just as good. From their Wikipedia entry, it looks like they were only really known in Europe.  They were around (with varying lineups) in the early-mid 80s and then more recently after being mostly inactive in the 90s.  I need to get all of their stuff, I think.

Aquarian Angel - Blue Six

[link] I really like the groove of these guys. Jazz, soul, and house influenced. They took Sade's vibe and carried it forward (although she is still grooving as well; actually Sade is officially a band named after Sade Abu, the lead singer). The vocals here are done by Lysa Aya Trenier (Aya). Upon Googling, I see that a lot of people compare Aya and Sade.

Things We Never Did - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] I love everything about this song and this band's sound. Atmospheric, moody.  The guitar harmonics are really really cool. Beautiful use of keyboards.

To Live and Die in L.A.

[link] Great song. (Terrible movie).  Wang Chung deserves to be know from more than just their couple of big hits that everybody knows about. Interesting version of this song.  Good to see them still together recently.

Gunning for the Buddha - Shriekback

[link] Exotic, atmospheric, and very nice pop.  I've always liked these guys.

Prove - Ric Ocasek

[link] One of my favorites off his first solo album, Beatitude.  Summer of 85 I listened mainly to this album, Forever Now by the Psychedelic Furs, New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84, and Panorama by the Cars. All on cassette of course.

Crimson/Red - Prefab Sprout

[link] Quite a nice little song.  Hadn't heard it - from the more recent era.  Paddy McAloon has a wonderful, whispery pop voice and a terrific pop instinct.

We Came to Dance - Ultravox

[link] One of my favorites of theirs.  Atmospheric and even a little gothic around the edges.