WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight
on the Strangeways Radio Blog
About this week's spotlight:
Who: Black Hearted Brother
What: WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight feature
Where: Strangeways Radio blog
About this week's spotlight:
Who: Black Hearted Brother
What: WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight feature
Where: Strangeways Radio blog
WTSH frequently contributes an article to the Strangeway's blog called Shoegaze Spotlight, which features one shoegaze/dream pop band & highlights
how very awesome the band is and how you should be listening to them and
buying their music and supporting them because they deserve it. That was a long sentence.
This week's focus:
Genre-wise,
the double LP has been called everything from space-rock, to shoegaze, and even
“post-everything”, which is a testament to the wide-ranging scope of the album.
Exquisite textures and experimental sounds combine to create a vibrant psychedelic
listening experience. Stars Are Our Home is a well-crafted, exciting and
imaginative LP that is already experiencing critical acclaim. Considering how
musically gifted each band member is in his own right, this doesn’t come as
much of a surprise. Each of their past projects had an enormous impact on the
independent musical landscape of the early 90’s up through to the present.
Guitarist/vocalist
Neil Halstead was a founding member of Slowdive, a band often cited as one of
the genre-defining acts of what would become known in the late 80s/early 90s as
Shoegaze. Slowdive released 3 essential shoegaze albums via Creation Records (a
crucial record label in the fledgling days of Shoegaze) before disbanding in
1995. Following Slowdive, Halstead formed Mojave 3 with ex-Slowdive members
Rachel Goswell and Ian McCutcheon. Between 1995 and 2006 Mojave 3 released 5
LPs to critical acclaim. Mojave 3’s sound was distinctly different from
Slowdive; this new musical direction found the band experimenting with a more
acoustic, country-influenced sound, often referred to as British country/folk. Halstead
also released 3 respected solo albums between the years 2002 and 2012. He has
been described as "one of Britain's most respected songwriters" by Allmusic.
London-born
electronic artist Mark Van Hoen is best known for his work with 3 particular
musical projects: Seefeel, Locust and Autocreation (he has also released music
under his own name). In 1982, at the age of 16, Van Hoen gave his first live
performance using a vintage analog synthesizer and tape. Influenced by early
electronic pioneers like Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, Van Hoen began releasing music
under the name Locust in 1983, continuing his experimentation with vintage
analogue synthesizers and tape recorders. As the Locust sound moved towards an
increasingly more vocal oriented approach in the late 1990s, Van Hoen also
began to release music under his own name. Between the years 1993-2013, Van
Hoen released 14 LPs under both Locust and his own name. He also briefly joined
Seefeel in 1991. Another quintessential band from the early shoegaze movement,
Seefeel occupied the stylistically unique intersection of dream pop/shoegaze
and ambient techno/IDM. Van Hoen is considered to be a talented innovator and
pioneer of important musical genres as wide-ranging as experimental electronic,
drone, ambient, glitch, IDM and noise…
via the Strangeways Radio blog
