TranscendNoise

In their previous album , Ones And Sixes Low laid much of the groundwork for Double Negative . Still, this records sounds fresh and like an unexpected move. Here the band abandons many tropes and their known modus operandi for a noise-heavy aural experience. A set of songs that shed simplistic forms and structures to build a haunting piece of music that points towards the capabilities of modern dream pop and rock that most bands will never fully embraces or consider. Writing the first draft for this review, I fell into the rabbit hole of analysis (read it below). Trying to actually tell something meaningful about the album ended up in a track by track description of the twists and turns Double Negative takes and the aural changes the whole experience entails. Rereading my own words, it felt like a telling failure in capturing the onslaught of sound. Listing in on Low´s previous work, Double Negative feels like a secret accusation and the breaking point of comprehensib...

Violet Cold – Desperate Dreams  Seeing the title "Desperate Dreams" and the tag "black metal", most minds will be set to the most normative standard of what black metal is supposed to be: A dark convulsion of feelings. Anger, frustration, ill-intent and whatever is considered to be negative. But, there is another side to this musical landscape that, for me, seems to come to fruition in newer bands and the iterations and mingling of different musical elements. Some annotate this kind with the denominator of "hipster", which in more considered and less visually inclined terms still is better said in the prefix of "post-" metal. Deafheaven might be one of the first and biggest name to fall under this newish category and rightfully so. They were the first band who’s piercing shrieking I found fitting and listenable by means of emotional depth and affective appeal.  In Violet Cold we find, what often times can be found in this field of music,...

Auburn Lull - Hiber Revisiting my heroes from the past, I sat down and listened to Begin Civil Twilight . Immediately I remembered the pain of getting a copy of this album and the whole catalogue from Auburn Lull. Living in Germany I could not mail-order those records from Darla, the record label, because I didn´t have a credit card. So I took to Amazon and ordered… and waited. After about two months I could say it, “I own everything from Auburn Lull” and none of the CD cases were intact. Fuck you, postage system from six years earlier!  Aside from this little anecdote, I remembered a quit and contemplative nature, which only this kinds of music could give me. I never thought about it as ambient or shoegaze, more like soundscape artists that happened to have singing included. If there is any time for their music it must be fall, swaying synths like fog rising or an early setting of the sun. Auburn Lull were pure distance for me, a taste of spiritual isolation from e...