shoegaze, dream pop & more

January 2021 Discoveries.

Many people simply want to hear and enjoy some great new music without having to waste time searching for hours. These Musical Discoveries collections aim to fulfil those needs. At least, we hope so! :)

This playlist is a compilation of the favourite musical discoveries of the Wud Records team from everything they heard at SoundCloud during January 2021.

Tracks have been arranged according to the number of plays at the precise moment of publishing, starting with the fewest. Tracks that are early in playlists tend to receive more plays than later tracks, and we feel that the ones with fewer plays need the best chance of exposure.

This playlist is extremely eclectic, so if the track you are playing isn't quite doing it for you, try the next one. It will probably be completely different.

If you enjoyed listening to something here, please give it a like and a repost. Follow the artist. Give them a shoutout on social media. Check out some of their other tracks. Buy something from them and your support will help them to keep going. Doing any of this will help raise their profile. At the very least you might make their day. :)

If you happen to be on this playlist, please share, and give us a shoutout on your social media feeds - because if we spot it, it gives us another opportunity to repost you and big you up. Please listen to as many tracks by the other great bands as you can, and... enjoy!

See also:
* this playlist at Wud Records: http://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/musical-discoveries/january-2021-musical-discoveries
* all Musical Discoveries compilations: http://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/musical-discoveries/
* news about this playlist: http://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/wud-records-january-2021-musical-discoveries

Downloads help us! :)

January 2021 Discoveries

🪲shoegaze dreampop shit🪲

Shoegaze

SHOEGAZE II

Shoegaze // Dream Pop



GRAVE118 - Whirr 'Sway' out 9/23/14 on CD/LP/Tape/Digital (pre-order here: www.graveface.com/graveface-catalog.html)

When Sway begins, you might at first press pause, reaching for your headphone wire or peeking behind your speaker cables to make sure nothing has come undone. The blister of distorted guitar that opens the album comes only from the right channel, howling and hanging there in irascible isolation until it seems that something must be wrong.
But be patient: After a dozen seconds, the rest of Whirr—a five-piece of blanketing rock focus and comforting pop finesse—pours in from the left channel. They meet the guitar in the middle, together racing headlong into a short section that’s heavy as metal but pliable enough to be the springboard for the galloping shoegaze beauty that soon arrives.
For the next 36 minutes, you need not worry again about lost connections, split channels or anything else, really. More than any Whirr release to date, Sway creates a definitive sense of immersion, sculpting an environment that breathes you in instantly and breathes you out only when the record snaps into silence.
That bifurcated start is an appropriate image for Whirr in 2014. Last year, the band headlined a tour with the Philadelphia group and fellow admirers of heaviness and harmony, Nothing. Not only did the crews become fast friends, but their respective founders—Whirr’s Nick Bassett and Nothing’s Dominic Palermo—decided to start a group of their own, Death of Lovers. When the shared tour was finished, Bassett headed to Philadelphia for a month of writing and recording. He’s never really left. He calls Philadelphia home now, so Whirr has become a bicoastal band.
In Philadelphia, Bassett worked on Death of Lovers’ debut for Deathwish Inc., toured as the bassist for Nothing and steadily composed new material for the next Whirr album, their first full-length for Graveface. Back in Oakland, the rest of Whirr had committed to the project full-time, too, so the West Coast contingent wrote and rehearsed new material without Bassett. Joey Bautista took the lead on two songs, Loren Rivera on three.
Indeed, against most odds, Bassett’s move made for a more democratic Whirr. In their salad days, Bassett had written most of the material and built the bulk of the arrangements, too, using the support only to enrich and enliven them. After a slew of splits and singles and EPs, Sway is the second Whirr LP, but it is only the first to be rendered by a fully functional rock band, having shaped the songs slowly and over some distance.
Before the quintet entered Oakland’s Atomic Garden to work with longtime producer and collaborator Jack Shirley, they reworked the contributions of all three writers, massaging the material into a cohesive dynamo. Rivera, for instance, rewrote the words for Bassett’s material, folding his songs into the album’s presiding sense of dusky melancholy.
“It’s not conceptual, entirely, but it’s intended to ebb and flow in a certain way—one song being aggressive, then dropping out and being pretty but devastating,” Bassett says. “We tried to create an atmosphere, where you listen and get vibed into one tone. ”
That rhythm presides over Sway, tying its distinct parts into a seamless unit. The restless “Heavy” churns somewhere between Godflesh and Gish, its lumbering beat and foreboding guitar buoyed by a melody that feels like a secret hymn for which you’ve long searched. Gorgeous and sprawling, “Sway” floats through luxuriating guitars and pillowed vocals, offering an impressionistic but intoxicating inversion of Whirr’s typical propulsion. Even here, during the record’s prettiest moment, Whirr maintains a righteous minimalism, emblematic of members who met one another as skateboarding high-school kids.
“The aesthetic of the band is more aimed at mature punk rather than alternative rock,” Bassett confirms. “There are these more aggressive punk elements—noisy feedback, a snare roll that just goes into super-punchy, driving songs.”
“Clear” brilliantly paints its lyrical quest for lucid communication—“I want words/to understand you,” runs one plaintive, surging bit—in music that takes up the same challenge. Whirr pushes past a pastel instrumental haze into a hangdog march, with near-whispered vocals bruised by Devin Nunes’ drums and Eddie Saldago’s orotund bass line. But as the end approaches, the band builds together, the riffs and the rhythm colliding into one triumphant, redemptive crest.
And that’s the victory of Sway, too, an album written by five people on two coasts but executed with the force and splendor of, at last, a fully unified Whirr.
Graveface will release Sway on CD, LP and digitally September 23.


Whirr - Lines

Mirror Days new single for the upcoming EP titled Solstice

OUT OCTOBER 30th 2014

Window ( Official Single )

Pinkshinyultrablast | ‘Umi’ | Club AC30

•	“Excessively impressive, unexpectedly fast-paced shoegaze from these Russian peeps.” Drowned In Sound

•	“It's one of those records that make you want to listen all day long. It's all there: guitar waves, distant voices, melodies and electrostatic. It's impossible not to play this on repeat." Sinewave

•	“In our minds, they’re the most interesting shoegaze band in the world right now.” The Dumbing Of America

‘Umi’ – first single to be taken from ‘Everything Else Matters’ due out in January.

Pinkshinyultrablast, are a five-piece band from Saint-Petersburg in Russia. The first single ‘Umi’ is due for release on November 10th. The song is indicative of an album full of melodic gems. Umi is rich with complexity, while underpinned with a beauty that both beguiles and entrances. The song evokes the spirit of bands like Slowdive and The Cocteau Twins, but at the same time remaining undeniably modern.

Hailing from a city more synonymous with the State Conservatory rather than a gang of shoegaze addicts, they’ve been compared to Lush. But this is no mere throwback tribute - due to their sharp, icy electronics and ability to subvert the genre, bringing something new to the table. They possess not only the spirit of late 80s/early 90s British bands like Ride, but also machine-made sounds of the same era from Sabres Of Paradise or Global Communication, not to mention wider vibrations like Cluster, Popul Vuh, Terry Riley and Philip Glass.

Disdain for a stagnant scene can often be a driving force of creativity; the band say of St Petersburg that, “we realised the local indie scene was totally boring and wanted to play something radically different”. That vision has been realised – this is a sound brimming with playful melody and finely-crafted songwriting. Imagine the scope of a Caribou record, fronted by Elizabeth Fraser soundtracking a grizzly Raskolnikov crime.

The band take their name from an Astrobrite album, an act who were, according to the band, instrumental in how they “researched spaces between ambient, heavy guitar and pop music” .The spaces are what stand out, the production creates a dream-like affair, while space to breathe and reflect on the beauty of the music is accommodated. There exists a sparseness to their sound, that, in turn gives spaciousness, even expansiveness.

Welcome to your new favourite Russian band.

Pinkshinyultrablast are Igor - bass, Lyubov - vocals, Sergey - drums, Rustam - synths and electronics and Roman – guitars.

For all UK print inquiries contact Jenna at 9PR and for all online inquiries contract Dan McCormick: jenna@9pr.co.uk / dan@9pr.co.uk . 0207 375 2725. www.9pr.co.uk

Pinkshinyultrablast - Umi

Summer Tour Calendar: https://www.facebook.com/events/1809468975950721/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poshlostband/
Mirror Universe Tapes: https://mirroruniversetapes.bandcamp.com

Posh Lost

Limerence

Nowhere E.P

PRE ORDER YOUR CASSETTE HERE: https://leavetheplanet.bandcamp.com/album/nowhere-e-p
Very Limited edition
x

Forever

Written and Performed by : Graham Harrington

Endless

Lonely Moon

From the Big Swell EP. Find the rest of the tracks at https://visitingdiplomats.bandcamp.com

Music and Lyrics by Sarah Van Horn and Michael Lynch 

Sarah Van Horn: Vocals 
Michael Lynch: Guitar, Bass, Trumpet, Vocals 
Andrew Sherbondy: Drums 

Mixed by Colin Christian @ Wires and Noise 
Mastered by Justin Weis at Trakworx

Big Swell

Buy on

Let Go

M B V

Only Tomorrow - My Bloody Valentine

Second song of our upcoming production, Islands.

Berna Cruz - Vocals
Gardy Perez-Ruiz - Guitars
Hector Caolo - Bass
Eden Cruz - Drums

Recorded at Little Big Audio by Nicolas Linares, PR.
Mastered at Sterling Sound by Joe LaPorta, NYC.

3 Robots Records, 2017. ©®

ISLANDS

Blue Garden

Soft Beach

You Will Never Know Why

Acting

Air Supply

Your World is Eternally Complete

Ultrasonic

After releasing a string of singles starting in 2016, Pia Fraus are now releasing their first full-length album entitled Field Ceremony in almost a decade. Both the "Autumn Winds" and "That's Not All" singles have been met with critical acclaim, creating anticipation for the forthcoming new album. On October 12th in the U.S. and Oct 16th in Europe and Japan, the decade long wait for a new Pia Fraus album will be over. Released on Seksound (Europe), Shelflife (U.S.), and Vinyl-Junkie Records (Japan), Field Ceremony is a triumphant return for the band, bringing back their signature dreampop sounds alongside fresh takes on pop structures. From the beautifully composed pop delicacies of "No Filters Needed" to the almost slowcore dreaminess of "Don't Tell Me How" to the explosive pop of "Sugar High of the Year", Pia Fraus bring to the table a dreampop brightness tinged with the more somber elements of life. 

Eve Komp (vocals, synths, metallophone), Kärt Ojavee (synths), Rein Fuks (guitars, vocals, percussion), Reijo Tagapere (bass), and Margus Voolpriit (drums) come together once again to produce Field Ceremony. Former member Kristel Eplik returns to record backing vocals and Pia Fraus' former drummer, Joosep Volk, also returned to direct the video for "That's Not All". The album has been mixed and mastered on analog desk by the band's longtime friend Lauri Liilvak. 

The dreampop veterans in Pia Fraus are back after over a decade. Field Ceremony is a demonstration of the band's continued contribution to the dreampop genre. Fans will be pleased with the results and new listeners will be in for a treat as they encounter this long awaited new work from the dreampop masters.

http://www.shelflife.com/catalogue/LIFE157.html

Field Ceremony

Pia Fraus - It's Over Now

Weak

Hidden Places

GREY

Colour of Spring - Grey

Dead Vibrations - On A Sunday Morning

Tears In Rain

Originally the lead track on the Play EP in April 1990, this track is now available on the Smile album - a compilation of all the tracks from the Ride EP and the Play EP.

CD available from OxfordMusic.net

Like A Daydream

Big Blue (2019 version) composed, performed and produced by Dayflower . . . 
Official Video: https://youtu.be/yd7ftKR33PM

Alex Clemence: vocals, acoustic guitar
David Dhonau: bass, electric guitar, percussion, slide
Chris Merriman: electric guitar

additional musicians . . . 
Euan Rodger: drums
Matt Flint: electric guitar
Ola Szmidt: vocals

engineered by Jamie Ward
mastered by Neil Segrott at Tiny Studios

Big Blue

Wishful

Distant Minds, the debut album from Xilla

Let Me Breathe

Beach House's "Master of None" off of their 1st album Beach House on Carpark Records.

Master of None

Velocity: Design: Comfort.

Pro: Lov: Ad

Dsco

Making Movies[1]

Unknown album (12/28/2011 12:58:05 PM)

trippin on mars

I wrote this song as a tribute to one of my most inspiring guitar heroes: Pat Metheny.  Its the 6th song off of my 2nd Instrumental album.  :)

Colour of Spring - Grey

Axel Mendicuti