Magic Wands is a dark pop duo originally formed in Nashville by guitarists and vocalists Dexy and Chris Valentine. Now based in Los Angeles, they are known for their shimmering and dreamy sound, which incorporates elements of shoegaze, dream pop, post-punk and goth. Heavily textured guitars, synth drones and ethereal vocals are combined in their songs to conjure an otherworldly atmosphere.
‘Moonshadow’ is the title track of a forthcoming album due out in the early summer on Metropolis Records. “It is a raw and introspective song about travelling at night on an underground train and how you can’t escape yourself or your own shadow,” explains Dexy Valentine.
‘Moonshadow’ follows ‘Hide’ and ‘Armour’ (both issued in 2024) as the third song to be lifted from the new album.
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Magic Wands will be supporting labelmates The Birthday Massacre on a North American tour prior to the release of the ‘Moonshadow’ album. Dates are as follows:
28th March NEW YORK CITY, NY (le) Poisson Rouge 29th March PITTSBURGH, PA Crafthouse 30th March DETROIT, MI Small’s 31st March CHICAGO, IL Reggies 2nd April MINNEAPOLIS, MN Fine Line Music Hall 3rd April KANSAS CITY, MO RecordBar 4th April DENVER, CO The Oriental Theater 5th April SALT LAKE CITY, UT Metro Music Hall 7th April SEATTLE, WA El Corazon 8th April PORTLAND, OR Dante’s 10th April SAN FRANCISCO, CA Bottom Of The Hill 11th April LOS ANGELES, CA EchoPlex 14th April SAN DIEGO, CA Brick By Brick 15th April MESA, AZ Nile Theater 17th April HOUSTON, TX Warehouse Live 18th April DALLAS, TX Granada Theater 19th April AUSTIN, TX Come And Take It Live 21st April TAMPA, FL Orpheum 22nd April ATLANTA, GA Masquerade 23rd April ASHEVILLE, NC The Orange Peel 25th April VIRGINIA BEACH, VA Elevation 27 26th April BALTIMORE, MD Soundstage 28th April WASHINGTON, DC Union Stage 29th April MECHANICSBURG, PA Lovedrafts Brewing 1st May BOSTON, MA Paradise Rock Club 3rd May TORINTO, ON Velvet Underground 4th May MONTREAL, QC Foufounes
Just over a decade on from their debut album, and just shy of seven years after their last release, purveyors of ethereal goth, Mercury’s Antennae mark their return with a new single in the form of ‘The Reflecting Skin’. The trio comprises Dru Allen and Cindy Coulter of This Ascension, and Erick R. Scheid of The Palace of Tears, and the fact they’re currently based between Switzerland and the US is a possible factor in their time away (not to mention the fact a lot of musical artists, especially those who are geographically disparate lost a lot of time and progress to a global pandemic).
As their Bandcamp page states, ‘Their sound incorporates influences from shoegaze pop, ethereal darkwave, and unadorned acoustic beauty, while also drawing inspiration from ambient and modern electronica’.
‘The Reflecting Skin’ brings pretty much all of this in a near-perfect three-and-a-half minutes. Starting out with a dense, chorus-soaked bass, loping drums and chilly synths conjure a dark yet dreamy atmosphere that’s quintessentially gothy but without being cliché. Dru Allen’s layered vocals spin evocative and mystical words gracefully through it all, to mesmerising, almost spiritual effect.
B-side, ‘AGALIA MMXXV’, is, as one might expect, a rerecording of the song from their debut album, A Waking Ghost Inside. It’s different enough to justify the effort: it has a more muscular, denser feel, altogether less brittle and cloud-like, with the bass and drums being sturdier and more pronounced, while still retaining the expansive shoegaze magnificence of the original. This, I suppose is telling in terms of reflecting the evolution of their sound.
That this single release is remixed by William Faith, ex-Faith and the Muse, suggests there’s an original version, which is – one would hope – going to feature on the forthcoming album, due for release in the spring.
Pale Blue Eyes have announced details of their third studio album. New Place will be released on the band’s Broadcast Recordings label on 7th March. The latest single, ‘The Dreamer’ is out now.
Watch ‘The Dreamer’ video here:
Guests on the album include two musicians who have featured in the PBE live line-up – Tom Sharkett, music producer and guitarist with W.H. Lung, and music producer and musician Lewis Johnson-Kellett.
“The new album comes with a new landscape,” says Matt…“I hope the result is uplifting. The album reflects the end of an era and embracing new beginnings. But when we were unpacking in our new house in Sheffield we found an old slide projector that had belonged to my mum and Dad. We spent hours looking through the old 35mm slides and decided to use one for the album cover. The album arrives on the back of extensive and emotional transit, a record of time reflecting on a lifetime of memories – but now beside a world of new beginnings.”
The album will be released on classic black 180g vinyl, limited edition transparent blue 180g vinyl and CD. There will be an exclusive limited edition with Rough Trade that includes a clear 180g vinyl + bonus 7”. There will also be an exclusive signed print for anyone who pre-orders their copy through DRIFT record shop in Devon.
The band have announced a full UK tour for April 2025:
Thu 3rd – Thekla, Bristol
Fri 4th – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sat 5th – Room 2, Glasgow
Sun 6th – Bodega, Nottingham
Tue 8th – Hare & Hounds, Birmingham Gorilla, Manchester
Cruel Nature are delivering a slew of releases on 21st February – an overwhelming volume, in fact. We’ll be coming to a fair few of them in the coming weeks, but first up, is the second album from Lanark / Reading based sludgy shoegaze project Chaos Emeralds, Passed Away, which comes in a hard-on-the-eye dayglo green cover which is catchy and kinda corny in equal measure.
According to the bio, ‘Chaos Emeralds is Formerly the solo project of Charlie Butler (Cody Noon, Neutraliser, Mothertrucker) with releases on strictly no capital letters, Les Disques Rabat-Joie and Trepenation Records, Chaos Emeralds has now expanded to a duo with Sean Hewson (Monster Movie, Head Drop, This) joining on lyrics and vocals.
Passed Away combines the lo-fi slowcore, shoegaze and doomy post-rock sounds of the previous Chaos Emeralds releases with a more song-focused approach to create a set of scuzzy emo gems.’
For some reason, despite ‘sludgy shoegaze’ and ‘lo-fi slowcore, shoegaze and doomy post-rock’ featuring in the above description, I didn’t quite expect the Pavement gone Psychedelic vibes of the title track which raises the curtain on the album. A primitive drum machine clip-clops away, struggling to be heard above a tsunami of feedback and waves of distortion on ‘Count Me Out’, which adopts the kind of approach to production as Psychocandy – quite deft, breezy and ultimately melodic pop tunes almost completely buried in a blistering wall of noise.
‘Juggler’ brings a wistful tone – somewhere between Ride and Dinosaur Jr – amidst ever-swelling cathedrals of sound, a soaring lead guitar line tremulously quivers atop a dense billow of thick, overdriven chords which buck and crash all about. The way the elements play off one another, simultaneously combining and contrasting, is key to both the sound and the appeal. It’s one of those scenarios where you find yourself thinking ‘I’ve heard things which are similar, but this is just a bit different’, and while you’re still trying to decide if it actually works or not, you find yourself digging it precisely because of the way it’s both familiar and different.
The vocals, low in the mix, feel almost secondary to the fuzzed-out wall of guitar, but their soft melancholy tones, sometimes doused in reverb, add a further minor-key emotional element to the overall sound, especially on the aching ‘Matter’.
When they do lift the feet off the pedals, as on ‘Welcome Home’, the result is charmingly mellow indie with a lo-fi sonic haze about it – and a well-placed change in tone and tempo, paving the way for the epic finale that is ‘In Our Times’, a low-tempo slow-burner which evolves from face to the ground miserabilism into something quite, quite magnificent, Hewson’s near-monotone vocals buffeted in a storm of swirling guitars as the drum machine clacks away metronomically toward an apocalyptic finish.
Cardiff Shoegazer’s ‘WYLDERNESS’ are back with a brand new single. ‘Big Idea’ will be released digitally on Monday 18th of November 2024.
Taken from their forthcoming new EP entitled ‘Safe Mode’ which will be released in 2025.
Woozy sun-drenched pop wrapped in a wall of stabbing fuzzy guitars and mesmerising shoegaze,echoing the sounds of Ride, DIIV, Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.
Wylderness’ eponymous debut album, released in 2018, was championed by Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music), Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 1) and was part of Radio 1’s Best of BBC Music Introducing. It garnered critical acclaim from Clash, DIY and Drowned in Sound, with the song On a Dais being featured on the US version of the TV show Shameless.
Wylderness have played shows for Huw Stephens, Sonic Cathedral, Swn Festival and support with Acid Mothers Temple.
The Cardiff band’s second album, Big Plans for a Blue World (2022), was recorded with an expanded line up and featured added layers of vintage synths and clarinet. It placed no.28 in Far Out Magazine’s Best Albums of 2022 and charted in the North American College & Community Radio Chart.
Wylderness are Ian (guitars/vox), Jim (bass/guitars), Ben (drums/percussion), Dan (guitars/vox), and Harri (clarinet/keys).
Shoegaze band Mondaze will release their second album Linger on 22 November via Bronson Recordings.
The opening track, ‘Lines of You’, showcases the recurring tension between presence and absence, reflecting how this internal struggle is ever-present in daily life. Haunted by lingering ghosts and memories that refuse to fade, Mondaze’s melancholy isn’t merely a stylistic element—it’s a deep exploration of the collective labyrinths faced by a generation longing for connection. It sounds as powerful as it is necessary in our times. There’s a strength that stems from reflection and observation.
The video was directed by Clement Pelo, and it stars Yannis Beck and Benedicte Bonpunt.
Watch it here:
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The band have previously released two singles: album title track ‘Linger’, a song that explores memory and nostalgia. and ‘Son of the Rambling Dawn’, a track that creates an immersive experience with intricate layers, smoothly blending different influences to convey a modern sensibility.
Since forming in 2018, Italy-based Mondaze have defined themselves as “heavy shoegaze”, taking inspiration from bands like genre-giants Swervedriver and Ride, but also contemporary bands pushing through the limits of the genre like Nothing and Ringo Deathstarr. With Linger, they aim to amplify the melancholy tones of their frustration and rage. These sonic characteristics drove them to work with Chris Fullard (Idles and Boris) on mixing, and Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher) for mastering. The result is an album with roots, yet distinctly modern featuring arrangements that skilfully blend contemporary styles with dreamy and eerie atmospheres.
In the debate of nature versus nurture, it’s noteworthy how many artists find themselves influenced in no small way not only by their formative years, but also the place or places where they grew up. There’s an entire thesis to be made from this, but here I make the observation because on Allens Cross, Empty Cut – a duo consisting of Douglas Fielding-Smith and Robert Bollard – have forged a work ‘Inspired by their childhood growing up in Birmingham they blend together all their experience and inspirations to create a noise that holds a heavy solid groove mixed with harsh noise and fuzzed out reverbed bass, topped with psychedelic synths, and chopped and screwed vocals.’
Birmingham, the city which gave us Black Sabbath and UB40, the second largest in England, with a population of over two and a quarter million, and has long been renowned for its diversity, and is a truly multicultural melting-pot. It’s perhaps unsurprising that cities like this – in contrast to so many predominantly white, often middle-class towns – are the source of musical innovation: throw in an element of social deprivation, the frisson of frustration driven by class and cultural disparity, and inevitably, this backdrop will fuel the fires of those with a creative bent.
Allens Cross is exemplary: as the blurbage summarises, ‘mixing together drums, bass, samples, effects and vocals they have created a sound that incorporates punk, hardcore, electronica, jazz, drum’n’bass, experimental-industrial and shoegaze.’ It’s one of those that on paper probably shouldn’t work, but thanks to the dexterity if its creators, works far beyond imagination.
It grinds in on a sample looped and echoed across a dirty bass and slow-building beat… and then everything slides into a doomy, sludgy sonic murk. ‘Bloodline; makes for a dank and difficult opening, five minutes of feedback and dinginess sprawling and lunging this way and that, culminating in a manic howl driven by frantic percussion and driving bass.
‘Fidget’ whips up a howl of feedback against a juddering stop/start bass, and with shouty vocals low in the mix, it brings a quintessential 90s Amphetamine Reptile vibe with a hint of Fudge Tunnel… until things take a detour into dub territory in the mid-section. When the noise blast returns, it hits even harder.
With none of the album’s eight tracks running for less than five minutes and the majority straying beyond six, it feels like there’s an element of slog, of punishment, inbuilt. ‘The Well Beneath’ certainly mines that dark seem of metal that plunges underground, but with the contrast of jazz drumming and some quite nifty bass work, at least until they hit the ‘overload’ pedal and everything blows out with booming distortion.
If ‘Fluff’, by its title sounds cuddly, like a kitten, or a bit throwaway, like that which you’d sweep up from the corner or the room, the reality is quite the opposite: a six-minute seething industrial sprawl, it’s slow-burning, dark and menacing, and a clear choice of lead tune… Not, but then again, with an echo of Eastern promise and a certain ambience, and the strains of feedback a way in the distance, it perhaps is the most accessible cut on the album.
We’re proud to share a video exclusive of ‘Fluff’ here:
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Elsewhere, ‘Hymn to Then’ pitches cold synths and rolls of thunder to conjure dark images, a stormy backdrop to an eye-opening hybrid of prog rock, industrial, and krautrock: the result isn’t only epic, but conjures images of Dracula and unseen horrors with its icy atmospherics, while the last track, the eight-minute ‘Shatter’ begins with an eerie take on Celtic folk
Allens Cross is a highly imaginative work, an album that draws together a broad range of styles in a cohesive form. Its impact lands by stealth, building as it does across a range of styles, often creeping under the skin, unexpectedly, to register its effect. Sparse synths laser-cut across distorted, arrhythmic percussive blasts, as a low-level crackle and hum of distortion hovers around the level of the ground. Fractured vocals add to the disorientation, and the experience is uncomfortable. You cower, and will for release, not because it’s bad, but because it’s intentionally claustrophobic, torturous, and so well executed.
This is perhaps a fair summary of Allens Cross as a whole. It is not, by any means, an easy listen. Enjoyable would be a stretch. But it is utterly compelling.
Shoegaze band Mondaze will release their second album ‘Linger’ on 22 November via Bronson Recordings.
They have recently shared their new single ‘Son of the Rambling Dawn’, which adopts a visceral and physical perspective. It delves into “the fleeting nature of life and the unavoidable fate that accompanies it, where uncertainty reigns and everything is destined to change.”
The sound is a contemporary and dynamic take on shoegaze, with guitars returning as a central element that creates an immersive experience and intricate layers, smoothly blending different influences to convey a modern sensibility.
Listen here (click image to play).
Since forming in 2018, Italy-based Mondaze have defined themselves as "heavy shoegaze", taking inspiration from bands like genre-giants Swervedriver and Ride, but also contemporary bands pushing through the limits of the genre like Nothing and Ringo Deathstarr. With Linger, they aim to amplify the melancholy tones of their frustration and rage. These sonic characteristics drove them to work with Chris Fullard (Idles and Boris) on mixing, and Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher) for mastering. The result is an album with roots, yet distinctly modern featuring arrangements that skillfully blend contemporary styles with dreamy and eerie atmospheres.
‘Crippled Crow’ is the final single by Norwegian band Mayflower Madame’s much anticipated upcoming album Insight, out on 1st November via Night Cult Records/ Up In Her Room/Icy Cold Records.
Compared to the album’s previous singles, this newest track expands on their distinctive fusion of edgy post-punk and dreamy shoegaze, incorporating aspects of noise-rock and darkwave. Driven by a driving bass line and dynamic drumming, the song leads you on a captivating journey – from the haunting verse melodies to the intense guitar passages in the choruses, culminating in a powerful ending. It evokes feelings of longing and remorse amidst the wintry streets of Oslo, intertwined with a burning desire for transformation and catharsis.
Check the video here:
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Mayflower Madame return to the UK and Europe for a tour in November. Tickets are available here.
‘Never Sever’ is the third single from Norwegian band Mayflower Madame’s eagerly awaited album Insight, set to release on November 1st.
While their previous singles, ‘A Foretold Ecstasy’ and ‘Paint It All in Blue’ refined their signature blend of post-punk, shoegaze and psychedelia, this new track reveals the band’s more direct and energetic side. Their sound is still spun with alluring dark textures but is now profoundly interwoven with rays of light and a bittersweet melancholy.
Additionally, the track introduces a touch of rock‘n’roll swagger in the verses seamlessly merging with dream-pop elements in the choruses, making ‘Never Sever’ one of their most accessible songs to date. Lyrically, the song captures a nostalgic feeling of being unable to reclaim—or unwilling to let go of—a haunting past.
Watch the video for ‘Never Sever’ here:
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Mayflower Madame have announced they will be returning to the UK and Europe for a tour this Autumn.
FULL DATES (with ticket links):
Sat 5 October – Return To The Batcave Festival – Wroclaw, Poland – Tickets
Aural Aggravation 