At the beginning of 2015, Philadelphia’s The Soft Spots fused electronica, dream pop and a touch of ukulele twiddling on their debut EP ‘Gently Down The Stream’, resulting in a surprisingly enjoyable listen. Issued a few months later, their follow-up, ‘Life Is But a Dream’ brings more of the same – its five numbers clearly designed to compliment the earlier release.
Tag Archives: shoegaze
UMMAGMA – Frequency EP
Ummagma are a dream pop/shoegaze duo based in Canada. Despite gaining favourable press from the Russian edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, like so many bands of their style, they’re somewhat of an underground act. Their third release, ‘Frequency’ comes three years after their previous works and, if anything, is a far more chilled out affair. The five original tracks on this 2015 EP are slow burning, almost other worldly in their construction; tracks with a minimalism that really expects the listener to sit and lend a very close ear, for the tiny details are often where the magic lies.
MAFF – Maff EP
Aside from Slayer’s Tom Araya, there aren’t so many Chilean musicians who reach the ears of those farther afield, but for those who still hold 90s sounds very dear, alternative rock outfit Maff are definitely going to put South America’s long, skinny backbone on the musical map.
FOREVR – Demonstration EP
This debut EP by Australian-based duo FOREVR is one of those discs you’ll either love or hate within seconds of hitting the play button. With no time to warm up, the band have already shifted from silence to a complete wall of sound in a split second, as the intro ‘Yucatan’ crushes with a huge droning noise. Overdriven guitars with amplifiers turned up to twelve (one even louder) gleefully throw out distorted shapes as chief musician Donovan Miller hammers at an array of effects pedals. From somewhere within, vocalist Sam George-Allen melds her voice accordingly, a filtered sound rising and falling throughout, wisp-like and ghostly as if she’s channelling Elizabeth Fraser on a collaboration with the equally uncompromising A Place To Bury Strangers.
New Elastic Sleep video, ‘Slip’
In conjunction with their new single release ‘Slip’ (available for download below), Irish dream poppers Elastic Sleep present a new video.