Saturday, March 28, 2015

Clustersun: The Italian Revolution



I really don’t have a convincing explanation to justify the reason why a southern European country like Italy has produced so many good post punk bands particularly shoegaze ones Metaphysics put aside Italy is definitely producing a varied and thrilling creative sonic reality which can easily compete with many of the very best that have been made in the UK during the glorious years of first shoegaze wave. Italian shoegaze offers a rich palette of bands pointing for new delightful dominions widening the sonic frontiers of the genre.


Hailing from the city of Catania in the east coast of Sicily (Italy) Marco Chisari (vocals and bass), Mario Lo Faro (guitars), Piergiorgio Campione (synthesizers, keyboards and backing vocals) and Andrea Conti (drums) long-time close friends are the core substance of CLUSTERSUN. These four friends started rehearsing by the early shrieks of 2013 but their strong human interconnection and common musical background worked out as the magic potion to get things done faster than the band could have ever expected.

Lucky enough to have muso parents listening to The Beatles and Pink Floyd rather than to the mainstream Italian music this true gang of four friends became curious about new music and this curiosity made them discover The Velvet Underground and further on a bunch of bands influenced by VU.

Suddenly the gang of four from Catania was listening to Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine and Ride but also Joy Division, New Order and The Cure. One easily understands that after all this intensive learning under the influence of such bands the gang of four friends would want to start a band with a crush for post-punk, psychedelia, krautrock, dream pop, noise rock and shoegaze.

So it is not surprising at all that once they emerged as CLUSTERSUN that their sound worked as an invitation to a sonic canvas in the shape of a wall of sound where brush strokes reverberate psychedelic dream pop shoegazed melodic textures. Soon after first rehearsals the band self produced what would be their debut single Be Vegetal included in the 2013 Summer Sampler post-punk, psych, garage and the indie alternative compilation released by Custom Made Music, the highly respected American indie label run by Dave Allison, which has an impressive artist catalogue where one can find among many others bands such like Ceremony, Ringo Deathstarr, Dead Leaf Echo and Peter Hook & The Light.


The year of 2013 proved to be quite crucial to the band since it marked their signing with Seahorse Recordings the Italian indie label run by the legendary Paolo Messere leader of seminal Italian underground band "Blessed Child Opera" who also mixed and masterly produced CLUSTERSUN highly acclaimed debut album “Out of Your Ego”.

The album features eight nicely crafted tracks: Hipgnosis, Meteors, Be Vegetal, Planar I, Nebula, Floating, Planar II and Clustersun. All the songs denote a simple, classic but effective dark drumming beat design, backed by cohesive syncopated bass lines sparing room for the edgy cold, glassy guitars and the fat analog synthetizers, all of this topped with melodic vocals perfectly fitting the overall urban post punk psychedelic mood of CLUSTERSUN.


“Out of Your Ego” offers the listener a very pleasant and stimulating aural experience because when you have years of music in your ear drums, it’s only inevitable to dig not for comparisons, but for influences and sometimes you find stuff that even the musicians do not perceive as an influence though that is not the case with CLUSTERSUN for they clearly acknowledge their sonic roots. We’d say they managed to fuse The Cure (their most notorious influence) with MBV and Ride adding to this recipe some aspects of Pink Floyd, and details of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Joy Division and even Faith No More (the synthesizer in Planar I is so Midlife Crisis).

CLUSTERSUN blend psychedelic soundscapes with shoegaze and post punk through noisy melodies going from chorus-delay atmospheric ambient to fuzzy-reverb-distortion this makes Out of Your Ego an ingenious, beautiful, poetic and excellently produced album. What a brilliant work! The year of 2014 was a landmark in CLUSTERSUN's career because of their brilliant debut album although 2015 has also begun quite well with their participation in the superb Revolution - The Shoegaze Revival curated by Shauna McLarnon (of Ummagma) and Marc Joy (of Lights That Change) who have teamed up with the UK’s Ear to Ear Records and Indonesian label Gerpfast Kolektif released last February.

Saturday, March 07, 2015

Jennie Vee: Post Punk Diva



Let's be clearly prejudiced about the fact that beautiful nostalgic blondes confessing that they are influenced by bands such as The Cure, Jesus and Mary Chain's, The Smiths, Sisters of Mercy or Echo and The Bunnymen at pre-adolescent age least with a crush on record labels such like Creation or 4AD are hard to find.




Jennie Vee the stunning Canadian musician born in a desolate mining town north of Ontario presently a New Yorker by adoption fits the profile perfectly.




Her gorgeous first EP titled Die Alone released last September demonstrates the ambition of redefining post punk through a bunch of guitar driven captivating songs in a honey dripping voice blasting painful melodies filled with words of melancholy and isolation.




Early this year she released the anthemic single Never Let You Down in anticipation of a most awaited debut album expected to be out throughout this year.




Check out Jennie Vee's music here and support her for a continuing successful career.


Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Pinkshinyultrablast: From Russia With Love



Almost of a sudden from St Petersburg tedious indie scene emerged a visionary noise gaze band, fronted by some sort of a russian Elizabeth Fraser.




The band members Igor, Lyubov, Sergey, Rustam, and Roman reunite under the name of Pinkshinyultrablast honouring the title of an Astrobrite's album.




Mostly influenced by the spirit of British bands like Ride and Lush their influences are much wider than that spanning from electronic to krautrock.




Last January marked the release of their awaited debut album Everything Else Matters.


Saturday, February 28, 2015

Benjamin Verdoes: Troubadour For The Modern Times



I usually stumble hazardously into musicians previously unknown to me for the simple motif that i either like the title of an album or the album cover or a song title which pushes me into imagining how the music would sound like.




I know this seems devoid of rational criteria but who cares if this pays off? After all i bought my first Echo and Bunnymen only because i got fond of the "Heaven Up Here" album cover. And the same happened with Husker Du "Candy Apple Grey" and with so many others. In a word I trust the fine art of finding awesome music intuitively.




This made me discover Benjamin Verdoes work. Who is the guy? He was part of Seattle indie rockers Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band and Iska Dhaaf before he made the decision to pursue a solo career. The Evil Eye released on Brick Lane Records in January 2014 is Benjamin Verdoes spell bounding début solo album. One of the best musical legacies from last year according to INDIEVOTION.




The Evil Eye delivers emotional smooth gentle moody indie pop ranging from luminous sunbathing sceneries and joyful open spaces to darker closed confrontational ones layered with edgy guitars and incisive drumming filled with nostalgic keyboarding and vocals calling for longingness.





The experience of listening to Benjamin Verdoes sonic proposal triggered my aural memory to the work of Mark Mulcahy and Miracle Legion. There are so many poetic and atmospheric similarities between Benjamin and Mark that I’ll outrageously dare say that “Me and Mr. Ray” Miracle Legion's album might have subconsciously inspired Benjamin Verdoes to make his stunningly solo album sound almost like a love poem.