Stream and Download the Deep Cut Insanity Remix of The Megaphonic Thrift's track "Tune Your Mind"

You can now stream and download via Soundcloud The Megathonic Thrift's track "Tune Your Mind" (Deep Cut Insanity Remix)! You should probably go do that.

CLICK HERE TO STREAM OR DOWNLOAD TRACK

Pre-Order Drowner's Upcoming Self Titled LP via Saint Marie Records + awesome Drowner merch available!

Drowner's highly anticipated upcoming self-titled LP is now available for pre-order via Saint Marie Records. The release date is 3/13/2012, but if you pre-order, your disc will be shipped prior to the release date. Win.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER

Pre-Orders are now being taken for awesome bundles of Drowner merch to accompany the release of the 4 panel digipak cd of their upcoming self-titled LP via Saint Marie Records. I don't know about you, but I seriously want a Drowner t-shirt. As above, the release date for the album is 3/13/2012, but if you pre-order your bundle will be shipped prior to release date. Sweet.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER DROWNER BUNDLE

Tonight! When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Hosted by DJ Amber Crain.

Come join me this Wednesday for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. When The Sun Hits is one full hour of distilled shoegazey goodness, so black out the windows, grab your headphones, and go down the rabbit hole this Wednesday night on Strangeways Radio.

Don't forget to log in to the Strangeways chatroom during the show to hang out with me and many other awesome people while we talk about the music that is airing in real time and god knows what else...

Tune in live every Wednesday, 10pm-11pm (EST), for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Join us in the Strangeways chat room for additional entertainment!

Stream it here: http://www.strangewaysradio.com/

Strangeways Radio Blog: Shoegaze Spotlight. This Week: lovesliescrushing.

When The Sun Hits and Strangeways Radio are uniting on yet another level - activate the weekly Shoegaze Spotlight! Every week WTSH will present a shoegaze/dream pop band on Strangeways' blog, highlighting 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.

The second edition went up today, and the focus is on WTSH faves lovesliescrushing. We at WTSH adore lovesliescrushing and after reading this, so will you.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE STRANGEWAYS RADIO BLOG

Pre-Order Elika's Upcoming LP, Always the Light, via Saint Marie Records!

Elika's Always the Light will be released in a mere couple of weeks, but we recommend checking out the Saint Marie Records website to PRE-ORDER this amazing new album, as well as check out several bundle options you can choose from that have some sweet swag in them!

Elika. Always the Light.

PRE-ORDER NOW!

(Vinyl will be mailed to you prior to release date.)

Release Date: 3/6/12

180 GM Gatefold Vinyl

Alternate Artwork

Limited Edition! - Pink Haze On Clear Vinyl

Digital Download Card

Pre-Order Always the Light: Bundle One

(Bundle will be mailed to you prior to release date.)
Release Date: 3/6/12

You are looking at the TOP bundle for Elika's Always The Light! You are wise beyond your years.

180 GM Gatefold Vinyl
Alternate Artwork
Limited Edition! - Pink Haze On Clear Vinyl
Digital Download Card
6 Panel Digipak CD
Elika T-Shirt
Elika Sticker
Elika Limited Mini Card

Live Video: Resplandor. Oeste. Venue: Nebula Club 2011.

Album Review: Airs. Gloomlights.

When The Sun Hits Reviews Airs – Gloomlights (2011)
Review by: Lee Vincent

Artist: Airs
Record Title: Gloomlights
Record Label: Music Ruins Lives
Release Date: October 2011
Stream It/ Buy It: Bandcamp

On Airs's first release, the 2010 EP Joyless, the San Francisco-based duo showed us a world of sound far different from their previous black metal instrumentals. In just five tracks, from the the poppy shoegaze of “Joyless” to the blissed-out metal of “Ende der Ewigkeit kommt in der Nacht,” Joyless threw us into a storm of emotions. We were tossed between introspective sensitivity and roaring aggression, hushed beauty and staggering power. But as the group further explored this affinity for juxtaposition on their debut full-length, Rainclouds Over the Remains of Hope, the reasoning behind this stern aesthetic choice became much more clear. We saw how the often dizzying shift between genres is not meant to confuse; in fact, it's meant to do the exact opposite. Airs's motive is merely to elucidate the emotions spurred by different styles of music, to illuminate their own peculiar beauties through stark contrast.

Listening to their new double-album, Gloomlights, Airs's chosen mediums to convey this message – pop and black metal – are stronger than ever. What we encounter on eighteen tracks clocking up to nearly two-hours is an evolution of the formula calculated on Joyless. The album opens with the epic track, “Harvest Moon,” that in nine minutes splices through the tones and tonalities of post-rock, shoegaze, and black metal. Layers of guitars lead the song into a territory of calming beauty until spectral singing and effect-laden guitars build up a wall of feedback, ushering in an interlude of pummeling drums and rapid riffs so loud it gives you a headache.

On the rest of the album the band shows no shame in embracing their influences. Listen to “Scott Pilgrim vs. You,”and the deafening feedback, grunge-like chords, and scratchy vocals sound like the sonic child of Dinosaur Jr. and Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Listen to “Hollow,” and the catchy riffs, processed drums, and hallucinatory fuzzed-out synths scream early Depeche Mode. But if synth pop and alternative rock doesn't satisfy your pop craving, listen to “Knee In the Dead”'s early Jesus & Mary Chain-like noisy, foot-stomping melodies and you'll be guaranteed satisfaction.

The second half of Gloomlights, however, abandons Airs's leanings for nostalgic pop. Most of the tracks are of a similar vein to “Harvest Moon” – epic songs built upon Alcest-like classical arrangements and waves of feedback. “Ghost” takes us into a wonderland of metronomic drums, blurring reverb, and simple guitar phrases ebbing through the noise. “Velvet” opens with slow doom metal chords that break into arguably the album's most powerful chorus yet. Its hypnotic guitars and shuffling beats underpin Aaron's whispered vocals that, despite spurring our lyrics like “The can destroy us/ Then can eat us alive,” still radiate beauty from every pore.

Gloomlights has many flaws. It adds few new sounds to Airs's repertoire, and too often its tracks come off as only hyper-loaded genre deconstructions. But despite such shortcomings, there's still something oddly intriguing about Airs's new album. Its tactic of moving through half-sequenced movements in each song creates an uncommon alertness, a slight sense of disorientation as if wandering through someone else's dream. We listeners feel as if we're gaining access to a world that is secret and unique to the songwriters –an intimate setting where even though the trials and tribulations of suffering linger, beauty is the true running force behind it all.

Tonight! When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Hosted by DJ Amber Crain.

Heads up, local folks, that's 9pm-10pm CST! Tonight!

Come join me this Wednesday for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. When The Sun Hits is one full hour of distilled shoegazey goodness, so black out the windows, grab your headphones, and go down the rabbit hole this Wednesday night on Strangeways Radio.

Don't forget to log in to the Strangeways chatroom during the show to hang out with me and many other awesome people while we talk about the music that is airing in real time and god knows what else...

Tune in live every Wednesday, 10pm-11pm (EST), for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Join us in the Strangeways chat room for additional entertainment!

Stream it here: http://www.strangewaysradio.com/

Album Review: Sun Devoured Earth. The Sunshine Always Fades.

Artist: Sun Devoured Earth.
Album Title: The Sunshine Always Fades.
Release Date: April 2011.
Stream it / Buy It: Bandcamp.

Review by: Lee Vincent.

Sun Devoured Earth. It's hard to imagine art capable of living up to such a strong, enigmatic title. But somehow with a peculiar breed of “black metal shoegaze,” Vadim Vasilyev's music does exactly so. Ever since he gave birth to the project which would dominate his life, his aesthetic has never fallen short. His work may traverse through different genres and styles, but the voices of the two muses who guide his vision – sadness and nostalgia – are always there.

Without a doubt the muses' voices ring louder than ever on the 2011 full-length, The Sunshine Always Fades. All of the song titles from “I'm Bored of Living” to “Melancholy” are portraits of his undying demons and unyielding pain. Take the opening track: “The Wind.” Rapid tremolo pickings are paired against reverb-trailed arpeggios. There are no vocals, no discernible rhythms, no melodies. Yet even in this abstract two-minute opener, depression engulfs us. We are pulled into Vasilyev's inner suffering as he paints an image of the sun fading into an impenetrable mist, the album title's meaning coming full circle.

However, by no means does this album wholly depend upon abstract imagery; plenty of tracks teem with a discernible beauty and power. “Emptiness” throws us into the dark alleyways of Latvia with echoing thunders, ambient touches, and a wall of distorted feedback which reminds us of Sun Devoured Earth's “black-metal shoegaze” title. “Crashes Down” continues the fashion of metal surely more fit for daydreaming than headbanging. The song features subtle washes of white noise, simple drum patterns, and post-rock guitar lines, over which Vasilyev whispers nihilistic lyrics like: “God please give me a sign/ I can't handle this life on my own” that resonate like an arrow to the heart.

The songs of The Sunshine Always Fades have no end and no beginning. The album as a whole merely throws us into some inescapable dark Eastern European world. This sense of infinity induces a seemingly everlasting trance while somehow still allowing room for each track to build a startling allure all its own. Vadim Vasilyev's music may conjure the title of black-metal shoegaze, but no artist supplements the power of black metal with the beauty of shoegaze as well as Sun Devoured Earth. A formula he may grow off of, but a formula he does not fall victim to.

Strangeways Radio Blog: Shoegaze Spotlight - A Weekly Gaze. This Week: Ceremony.

When The Sun Hits and Strangeways Radio are uniting on yet another level - activate the weekly Shoegaze Spotlight! Every weekWTSH will present a shoegaze/dream pop band on Strangeways' blog, highlighting 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.

The second edition went up today, and the focus is on WTSH faves Ceremony. We at WTSH adore Sway and after reading this, so will you.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE STRANGEWAYS RADIO BLOG

Tonight! When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Hosted by DJ Amber Crain.

Heads up, local folks, that's 9pm-10pm CST! Tonight!

Come join me this Wednesday for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. When The Sun Hits is one full hour of distilled shoegazey goodness, so black out the windows, grab your headphones, and go down the rabbit hole this Wednesday night on Strangeways Radio.

Expect to hear The Rainy Saturdays, Skylight, Engineers...! And much more.

Don't forget to log in to the Strangeways chatroom during the show to hang out with me and many other awesome people while we talk about the music that is airing in real time and god knows what else...

Tune in live every Wednesday, 10pm-11pm (EST), for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Join us in the Strangeways chat room for additional entertainment!

Stream it here: http://www.strangewaysradio.com/

Album Review: Windy & Carl. We Will Always Be.

Artist: Windy & Carl
Album: We Will Always Be (2012)
Record Label: Kranky Records
Release Date: February 14th, 2012

Click HERE to Pre-Order the Album

Album Review by Lee,
Guest Writer

Over two decades have passed, but Windy & Carl still reign as one of the ambient scene's leading stars. The duo's career arose in the early nineties out of shoegaze's golden age and of Michigan's humble origins as a space rock oasis. But despite being linked to such a collective period, Windy & Carl emerged from the hype with a sound all their own. No band has yet to match their shivering, glittering guitars; no band probably ever will. Because in the sixteen years since their debut, Portals, the couple's vision has not changed. It has only evolved within itself, exploring its peripherals, constantly self reflecting.

From the first moments of their eighth album, We Will Always Be, the couple's maturity resonates loud and clear. The whirlwind of a song, “For Rosa,” opens with bands of static lost in a decayed hiss, out of which emerges the strumming of an acoustic guitar. This fusion of the natural and otherworldly continues with “Remember” . A glistening guitar carries out a droning riff, while Windy's spectral voice guides the song into a realm of pure beauty. However, no track displays the couple's abilities more than “Nature of Memory.” It opens with a tide of delay, over which a wavering, pulsing bass surfaces. As more and more layers of guitars unravel, a spoken word segment by Windy begins. Cryptic lines like “Trees with a story, there is sound,” alongside clicks of telephones and other bizarre noises, give the song a strange feeling. You imagine some familiar place – a field blanketed in snow, a lake shielded in ice – but the electronics and processed guitars keep you levitated in some heavenly dimension. It's this paradox which defines the duo's work, and reveals them at an artistic peak few reach.

A couple of months ago, Windy & Carl posted on Facebook that the driving force behind their musical explorations is how: “Together we have a world no one else really knows... And of course, at the heart of it all, is music. Making music. Creating this other world.” Listening to their newest release, this sentimentality shines brighter than ever. The album's artwork, lyrics, and strangely organic tones all have their place. Just view the theme of nature's eternality as a platform for the couple's boundless expression of their love, and the album echos with new found meaning. Nature will always be; we will always be.

While We Will Always Be pays tribute to the flowers of their relationship, Windy & Carl's ethereal and loose songwriting leaves space for a universally personal experience. Their work demands so little from the listener – something which constantly amazes me about their work. You can keep yourself grounded, letting the sounds flow into the background. It can be the soundtrack for your morning commute, it can open the door to your daydreams. But if you dare to stick your head into the clouds, breath in every note and sound, a world of surreal beauty and subtle complexities will reel you in, releasing a host of angels onto this earthly plane.

Tonight! When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Hosted by DJ Amber Crain.

Heads up, local folks, that's 9pm-10pm CST! Tonight!

Come join me this Wednesday for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. When The Sun Hits is one full hour of distilled shoegazey goodness, so black out the windows, grab your headphones, and go down the rabbit hole this Wednesday night on Strangeways Radio.

Expect to hear something new from Wild Nothing tonight! And much more.

Don't forget to log in to the Strangeways chatroom during the show to hang out with me and many other awesome people while we talk about the music that is airing in real time and god knows what else...

Tune in live every Wednesday, 10pm-11pm (EST), for When The Sun Hits on Strangeways Radio. Join us in the Strangeways chat room for additional entertainment!

Stream it here: http://www.strangewaysradio.com/

Strangeways Radio Blog: Shoegaze Spotlight - A Weekly Gaze. This Week: Sway.

When The Sun Hits and Strangeways Radio are uniting on yet another level - activate the weekly Shoegaze Spotlight! Every week WTSH will present a shoegaze/dream pop band on Strangeways' blog, highlighting 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.

The second edition went up today, and the focus is on WTSH faves Sway. We at WTSH adore Sway and after reading this, so will you.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE STRANGEWAYS RADIO BLOG

Strangeways Radio Blog: Shoegaze Spotlight - A Weekly Gaze. This Week: Screen Vinyl Image.

When The Sun Hits and Strangeways Radio are uniting on yet another level - activate the weekly Shoegaze Spotlight! Every week WTSH will present a shoegaze/dream pop band on Strangeways' blog, highlighting 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.

The second edition went up today, and the focus is on WTSH faves Screen Vinyl Image. We at WTSH adore SVI and all of their projects, past and present, and after reading this, so will you.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE STRANGEWAYS RADIO BLOG