well in case you hadn’t noticed, today has been all about the rediscovery of the fuzztone guitars and melancholy emotions.
oh yes, the return of swervedriver, the warlocks, earth the californian love dream, the somatics, ride, pale saints and the ignored (until now that is) the black angels, whose album is fantastic making me feel bad that i missed it when it was released, to the top of the pile may indicate that a certain checking out of my mud covered shoes has taken place @ ireallylovemusic hq.
well, yeah, i can’t deny that for a few months back then, i loved the excess fuzzed up madness of the aforementioned bands (that were around then of course!), despite not having seen any of the scenes leaders, other than ride at the sheffield octogan theatre, in 1990, but that’s another story altogether. all the associations that the genre brought along with it, i never really got into the wallowing in self pity side of the scene. for me the music had more of a simplistic primal gutteral impact. you see, until i felt the force of the volume at that ride gig i had become fed up with the light weight guitar led indie that was being paraded about (my playlist at the time comprised of 90% worn out chicago house tapes, public enemy and age of chance basically).
however, once i had been wrapped up in that maelstrom of noise and melody that mark gardener and his gang created on that night, i realised just wanted more and more of those layered effects and fuzzed up bass lines to wipe away the college induced mental cobwebs once and for all.
other than the classic albums by swervedriver, i rarely really delve into this area of my past, but when the mood hits, it hits in a big way.
like today.
anyway, the scene that fashion ignored, is having a sort of comeback, and this time it’s ok to grin and enjoy it and look to the stars not the floor. the main lead in all this is the brilliantly named sonic cathedral empire that alongside a regular club night has now branched out into the real world of releasing records.
obviously the people behind this moniker are doing things right as all manner of supposedly forgotten names are lining up to appear at the club either in slimmed down acoustic form (oh the irony !), or on the wheels of reinforced steel.
the list is bloody impressive for old timers like me, however, a little digging indicates that its not just those of us with kids-n-mortgages that get a hard earned passout that are reliving our misplaced youth, but there is also a new generation of folks wanting to have songs that stretch beyond the limitations of haircuts and jerky 3 minute angular guitar pop, new bands are appearing out of the darkly lit corners, and yes, as before, the music even has a media friendly tagline : nu-gaze.
rather than me going on about it, read this excellent interview with, nat cramp, the man behind sonic cathedral as sorted out by those lovely people at the white noise revisited blog as this basically tells it like it is.
interview @ the white noise revisited : the night that celebrates itself
more detail : sonic cathedral