There is a feeling with classic shoegaze - ie. late '80s/early '90s psychedelic guitar rock, mainly from the UK - of soaring through the clouds, or perhaps staring out of rain soaked windows. It's beautiful, but it also tends to be distant, detached. Which makes it suitable for when you want to feel like you're floating, when your head is in the clouds and your eyes are full of stars. What do you reach for, however, when your head is in the stratosphere, but your guts are in a knot and you're up to your knees in blood?
Ottawa, Ontario's Destroy Clocks’ Reanimalize is a chthonic take on the classic shoegaze sound, bringing in elements of jazz, hardcore and electronic psychedelia to root the white-hot sheets of atmospheric sheets of sound to the soil. This is a relief, as the first wave of shoegaze could become a bit of a blur with everything mixed flat and featureless. It's like a permanent state that is beautiful to dip into, but hard to sing along with. A bit of arrangement goes along with it, as can be seen with the recent crop of stargazers, such as A Place To Bury Strangers and This Will Destroy You whose fans will flip for Reanimalize. The other contemporary touchstone, unsurprisingly, would be the blackgaze of Deafheaven, as Destroy Clocks occasionally bring the demonic rasp, like on "Snake," the doomiest song of the batch. I could rattle on and on about the colorful flying flanged guitars, the beastly throbbing bass, the plasticine production quality that still shines with fidelity - I want to, and I will, over time - but first, for the sake of clarity and brevity, I'd like you to imagine two movies (or look them up, if you've not seen). The first would be Sophia Coppola's master Lost In Translation with its story of drifting disassociated travelers in Tokyo for their own reasons, with an iconic shoegaze soundtrack, versus Lars Von Trier's equally masterful, but damned and disturbing, Antichrist, and its damned doomed enchanted forest. Reanimalize fluctuates between those polarities - between starry wisdom and blood guts dirt and rust. Reanimalize has a kind of a homespun quality to the recordings, which makes me greatly excited to see what they'll come up with in the near future. For those that like psychedelia, and the visions it brings, but also get angry, and want to feel their emotions, this is it. Get it, and listen obsessively!
Become A Fan
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Critique/insightWe are dedicated to informing the public about the different types of independent music that is available for your listening pleasure as well as giving the artist a professional critique from a seasoned music geek. We critique a wide variety of niche genres like experimental, IDM, electronic, ambient, shoegaze and much more.
Are you one of our faithful visitors who enjoys our website? Like us on Facebook
Archives
April 2024
|