#kranky

[musicollage]

Belong — Realistic IX. 2024 : Kranky.

— 

New Orleans-based duo Belong set a high bar for themselves with their 2006 debut album, October Language, a masterpiece of deep, formless, textural drone that sounded like shoegaze with every last trace of song subtracted, leaving behind just the beautiful and mesmerizing sound of the dust on the record needle. The group introduced more structure to their sound from there, with their 2011 sophomore album, Common Era, having discernible vocals, rhythms, and melodies rather than just thick blurs of guitar noise. Realistic IX, Belong's first new album in 13 years, refines their abstract sound world even further, landing somewhere between frayed, deconstructed guitar rock and submerged ambient fuzz. The mystical, whammy-bar riffs, cooing vocals almost inaudible in the mix, and steady drum machine beats of songs like "Souvenir," "Realistic (I'm Still Waiting)," and "Jealousy" sound like more obscured takes on the My Bloody Valentine style, in particular the songs that showed up on their pre-Loveless EPs Glider and Tremolo. The sound is so similar to the classic shoegaze template that it gives these tracks a nostalgic, familiar feeling, but also renders them somewhat generic. It's the way Belong ties together these relatively straightforward tracks with more repetitive, caustic ones that keeps Realistic IX interesting. "Bleach" is little more than a dubby kick drum and hi-hat pattern barely holding together overlapping loops of brittle noise, and "Crucial Years" buries its minimal rhythm so deep beneath waves of sputtering, decaying sound shrapnel, it becomes easy to lose the tempo completely, much like the blissful confusion of a Gas track. Belong rides the line between dreamy songs and noisy nightmares expertly throughout the album. Most of the band's records are best experienced in full, front to back, and Realistic IX is the same but in a different way. Taking any one song on its own wouldn't reveal the tension, uneasy wandering, and moments of resolution that all play out when these disparate pieces interact and disagree with one another, and that captivating balance is what continues to set Belong apart from any number of shoegaze revisionists. — Fred Thomas

— 

Belong is an underrated group. Initially having been around just long enough to put out two EPs and two LPs, including the phenomenal Common Era, they seemed to flicker like embers in a dying cathode ray TV, some cellophane ghost escaping in powdered silver nitrate. Their sound was on the noisy end of shoegaze and dream pop, calling to mind groups like Astrobrite and loveliescrushing, taking the sonic experimentalism of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and applying the same gothic sense of haze and decay we might associate with William Basinski, This Mortal Coil or the like. That final album of theirs, Common Era, has been a mainstay of mine since its release, hovering like a ghost, scoring the process of finishing writing a novel that was more like an exorcism and some periods of intense inward turmoil that made me feel like I was boiling alive. Then, they disappeared.

So when I saw 15 years later they were back I actually, no shit, cried. It felt for me similar to the return of Duster from their long slumber and, similar to that esteemed group’s return, Belong’s new record feels like a fitting continuation of their legacy, neither slavishly adoring of their own previous successes nor so radical a shift that you wonder the wisdom in sharing the name. The most shocking shift present on this record is the sudden presence of, gasp, songs?! That’s right; despite their earlier material positioning them as stalwarts on the bleeding experimental edge of the fusion of noise, dream pop, ethereal wave and even glints of internet-savvy micro-genres such as witch house and the like, all forms that typically evade the easy categorical of songs, this new set, at least initially, has clearly structured work that wouldn’t feel out of place on a modern My Bloody Valentine record.

It forms a strange complaint, especially given that much more esteemed group’s prolonged silence despite teases of activity, Belong’s own long slumber and, to be frank, the incredible strength of this material. Originality is overrated anyway; genre workouts are amenable to anyone with open ears and an open heart so long as the art compels, and this does handily. That said, it is a great relief when, as the tracks ease on, you are overcome by waves of roaring noise, amorphous clouds of rattling hiss, lapped at by the waters. In a certain sense, it’s hard not to still yearn for the proper songs on the LP to be covered in a bit more affected grime, but this is fantasy football, not criticism. The structure of the album still allows that always intriguing sense of disintegration, material pockmarked by burned holes in the tape, with it fraying into wild noise and the shapelessness of the malevolent sea by the end.

The key aspect they have maintained, after all, is that image-rich substrate that motivates this kind of music. Rhythms punch and hiccup and scrape in a very tactile way; the uses of noise and synth pads and layered sound feel like how dissociation feels, struggling to remain yourself inside yourself (through the drugs, through the anxiety, through the depression, through the deathward tug of sleep). The thing that made their early work so powerful, that intense and immediated sense of imprinting a whole interior world on their abstract soundscaping, is still preserved here. There is a subset of the world and its listeners who treat material like this as the Bible, not because of some abstract critical greatness but because of how in its sinews one can see, like a strained and striated mirror, clear reflections of some interior self. It’s the same thing that makes The Cure at their best not just the best goth rock band of all time but one of the best bands, period, this mystical sense of depth, like stepping into a puddle that takes you to some undreamable drowning world. — Langdon Hickman

— 

After more than 13 years of silence, Belong (aka Michael Jones and Turk Dietrich) return to where they left off in the past decade. While the duo has always been close to noisy textures, it was their last LP, Common Era, that began utilizing them into pop songs. While that record may have left off some of the entrancing atmospheres of their first album, it was definitely an interesting change of pace, one that probably required a bit more time to fully bloom into a really satisfying record. Fast forward—quite—a few years and you’re now listening to Realistic IX, the LP that expands upon the seed that the duo planted a while back with Common Era.

Realistic IX shines most when it opts for this pop approach, which is a welcomed step forward, as I said, I myself preferred the duo’s more ambient type of tracks, but on this new record the tables have turned, as it is the pop songs that impress the most. They’re always really catchy, nice and direct tracks, they seem to know that there’s no need to do anything particularly fancy when their main riffs and hooks are just so solid. The sound of these cuts is also pretty alluring, the guitars are quite lo-fi and give the songs this really textured feel that makes them pop; that being said, the production is always clean, so even these rougher tones end up being smoothened out in the end, giving the whole LP a bright sound that’s especially noticeable in how snappy the drums are.

On the other hand, there’s also a lot of atmospheric tracks here. They aren’t quite purely ambient pieces, as even in these instrumental cuts you still have drumbeats playing; truthfully, I do believe the percussion hinders these tracks sometimes, as it prevents them from really setting an atmosphere, but there are exceptions to this rule, especially with the final track “AM / PM,” which I’ll get to later.

For starters, the opener “Realistic (I’m Still Waiting)” is easily one of Belong’s best songs. The way it kicks off right off the bat makes it a great way to open up the record, and I just can’t help but be dragged in by how quickly the song develops; just 10 seconds of introduction and the track has already moved into its first verse, and it does so really smoothly, as every chord change throughout the song happens as sharply as this initial switch up does, so you’re constantly getting a new motif to hum along to. And speaking of, the riffs in this track are the catchiest on the whole record, they’re so straightforward and simple that they operate in a really ’90s shoegaze fashion, where it doesn’t really matter how sophisticated the playing may be when the sound is so satisfying on its own.

The following “Difficult Boy” is rather similar with its approach, but it lays off the vocals entirely, only offering some crunchy and energetic guitar playing to keep the momentum of the opening song. Following with “Crucial Years,” the album goes even deeper into this purely noisy instrumental approach, leaving aside any guitar riffs and focusing purely on the noise; there’s still some tonality here, mainly with the background chords that are what ultimately keep the track so gentle and soft, instead of letting it be a chaotic noise fest.

“Souvenir” strikes back with yet another catchy shoegaze hit. It is pretty similar to “Realistic (I’m Still Waiting),” but it’s a lot cleaner and smoother than the opener. It doesn’t strike with super dense guitar riffs nor with the same immediacy of its sister track, instead it’s quite a bit brighter and punchier, especially with how snappy and almost plasticky the snares sound here. The piece is just as catchy overall, but with a quite different feel, as it is a pleasant and ethereal track instead of an immediate blast.

The two following tunes, “Image of Love” and “Bleach,” don’t particularly spark as their siblings do—they can’t quite settle a proper atmosphere due to their background grooves. The noise in both tracks is pretty satisfying, more notably in “Bleach,” which really emphasizes its chord changes, they become really apparent due to its repetitiveness and each one comes as a new wind blowing in favor of the track. Still, both pieces feel a bit timid, as satisfying as their noise may be, it does end up being tiring after a while.

The record picks back up with its last two tracks, with “Jealousy” being yet another effective shoegaze number, and the last track in particular being quite the change of pace. “AM / PM” is not far different from tracks like “Crucial Years” or the just mentioned “Image of Love,” as it opts to make the noise its key element. Where it switches things up is in its rhythms, because instead of offering some catchy drum beats to keep energy levels high, “AM / PM” decided it wanted to be minimal techno when it was a kid, and there it is now. While a really simple track overall, the use of noise on a techno beat like this isn’t quite the norm, as often times you get some really clean and slick futuristic pieces in this style; “AM / PM” stays true to the sound of its LP, and instead makes minimal techno noisy, still as atmospheric as most minimal techno is, but with a bit of spice to it. It’s a really satisfying combination, and the noise is really really good as well, with these big pads that almost seem like they were taken from a messed up recording of an ambient piece.

Generally speaking, Belong’s return with Realistix IX is quite a success. They improve significantly on where they had left off and also make use of their noisy aesthetics, combining the two into a satisfying sonic collection. The rock numbers do, indeed, rock, while the atmospheric cuts don’t quite capture the feel of what was on October Language—truth be told, you’d be in the wrong thinking they’re trying to, as almost nothing on this album is trying to be atmospheric and solely atmospheric.

It is a both a fulfilling and a promising return, and if Belong were to expand even more on their pop songwriting, I’m sure that great things would be ahead for the duo, considering that Realistic IX is already a really solid and firm step into that direction. — Igloo Magazine

— 

For the uninitiated, some facts about the band Belong: (1) their moniker does not adhere to any degree of nominative determinism at all as they don’t “fit” anywhere, (2) they take their sweet, sweet time with things, and (3) they really don’t like to label their music as shoegaze.

Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones have been making music together as Belong since 2002, but this is only their third LP in that time. 2006’s debut October Language is a wonderful collage of soundscapes and experimental compositions that weave and ebb, rapturously conjuring up ideas of meandering nothingness in the manner of Tim Hecker or Stephan Mathieu. Its exquisiteness is juxtaposed with a suffocatingly haunting sense of melancholy, and it needs your attention if you haven’t yet had the pleasure. 

By 2011’s sophomore record Common Era, there was a more defined sense of drive to the band’s sound. There were still hazy waves of distortion deep within an obfuscated audio mix, but there were also signs of – gulp – structure, and what might even be called “songs” (chord progressions, recognisable hooks and all!). “A Walk” has echoes of bleak early 80s goth like The Cure and Christian Death, while the splattering drums on “Make Me Return” sound like a New Romantics version of Joy Division. Common Era divided many as some saw it as a bold departure, others just wanted more of the same. October Language feels like serene disorder, whereas its predecessor was more linear, more purposeful.  

The eight tracks that make up Realistic IX lean more on the Common Era template, but there’s also a melding of the sonic approaches of both of the band’s previous records here. Although it’s clearly *not* shoegaze (according to Dietrich and Jones, remember), any reviewer would be hard pressed not to mention My Bloody Valentine or the early work of Medicine as reference points. “Image of Love” would have been the best thing on MBV by some distance, for example, but that’s not to say that Realistic IX is derivative – it’s exploring the same aural boundaries as Kevin Shields’ lot, for sure, but in their own way. However, it probably works best as a body of work if you know something of the back catalogue and Belong’s journey to this point. In this way, the point reached feels more organic, perhaps even more wholesome.

Album opener “Realistic (I’m Still Waiting)” has a distinct earworm riff, with an almost pop sensibility to it, albeit one hidden by washed-out guitars and almost imperceptible vocals. The interplay between the cold drum machine patterns and the lackadaisical voice is interesting, highlighting the dualities at work at the heart of the record. There are many juxtapositions here, whether it be the territories covered by the two previous records and re-explored here, or the relative creative pull of the duo at the core of the work, that runs through the veins of Realistic IX. 

After sitting with the album a while, you begin to realise that it flows in a different manner depending on your mood and ability to focus. “Bleach” is a blissed out ethereal wall of noise with a clipped, minimal beat behind it and this subtle element doesn’t always come to the fore as much on each listen.

The playfulness between freedom and restriction is central to the album as a whole, the dichotomy of structure and disorder resonating throughout. This is felt most on album closer “AM/PM” which would sit perfectly on October Language. There’s a nostalgic feel to it, and its shimmering nature brings to mind ideas of sepia toned film stock of nothing in particular. One main gripe here is that at a little under eight minutes long you feel robbed of really being able to lose yourself in the track as it easily could have been three, maybe four times longer. 

There’s a directness to tracks such as “Jealousy” and “Souvenir” which is quite unlike anything Belong have put to tape before. The underpinning drums on both tracks add a sense of moderne kosmiche musik, and the chord progressions offer a sense of quiet optimism – something entirely lacking from the band’s output to date. The hazy production on “Difficult Boy” masks its post-punk riffs, while “Crucial Years” adds a Fennesz style sense of electronica that takes us off into another direction. 

Not only do the flow and the mood of the album change on repeated listens, so do the inevitable comparisons to Loveless. As landmark albums go, few sound so disparate and apart from others under the same label. So, when you press play on Realistic IX there’s no denying that maybe this album is as close to Loveless as any other band (heck, maybe even My Bloody Valentine) have got. Yet with each listen these obvious comparisons fall away bit by bit, leaving Belong to explore the same territory but from a slightly different angle – same terrain, different path. Realistic IX is a wonderful record on many levels, just don’t say it’s shoegaze. — Todd Dedman

[ontheothersideofthehill]

2009

[dustedmagazine]

Clinic Stars — Only Hinting (Kranky)

Photo by Ivan Fucich

When you listen to the debut album from Detroit duo Clinic Stars, it’s not surprising that one of the tags on its Bandcamp page is “shoegaze” (not least because the genre is having a bit of a moment). But it does feel like a slightly ill-fitting label. Yes, Only Hinting has plenty in common with shoegaze both sonically and emotionally, but even when the guitars do get a little noisier (particularly on the Flying Saucer Attack-esque intro to “I Am the Dancer”) it never quite hits that submerging, jet engine roar often taken as characteristic of the sound. It makes this album a fascinating counterpoint to all of the acts marrying those kinds of sonic washes with more overtly aggressive forms (heavy metal and stoner rock in particular). Instead, Clinic Stars most overlap with shoegaze in its quietest, most reticent forms, shading over into more ambient and dream pop territories.

Going back to “I Am the Dancer,” after about 90 seconds of that compellingly directionless static squall, the harsh cloud gradually lifts to make way for… well, still a haze, but a lighter one, with acoustic strumming, a surprisingly gentle drum beat, and Giovanna Lenski’s hypnotically whispery vocals. The longest song here, it’s given plenty of time to deepen its spell, the title looped over other vocal snippets and that gorgeous backing. It’s almost too clear to be shoegaze, even if it hits that sweet spot of melody and enveloping sound right on. Lenski and Christian Molik maintain an uncanny calm throughout, and the result feels almost supernatural.

It’s a highlight of the more immediately ingratiating first side of Only Hinting, which begins with the brief “Kissing Through the Veil” setting the tone with lilting, diffuse melodies. A track like “Remain” both has a refrain you might catch yourself humming and keeps itself at a mysterious distance, feeling like it’s loping out of and then retreating back into the trees as it goes. The B side is no less compelling but even gauzier, with the likes of the gracefully fading “Shiver (Walking Over Time)” and the closing fog of “Thoughtless” feeling less like songs than atmospheres. If the gold standard for ambient music is still Eno’s dictum that it be “able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” this is a shining example of the form.

Clinic Stars have been putting out EPs since 2021 and been working on this LP since 2022; listening to it, that length makes sense. This is patient, intensely layered and considered music, even if all of that is in service of it having tremendous sonic and emotional impact. And as good as the first side is (both the title track and “I Am the Dancer” are among the better songs of their type you’ll find this year), it’s that second half that might be even more exciting when considering the duo’s future. Managing that tricky balance of the abstract and visceral is a rare talent, and Only Hinting demonstrates that they have a knack for it. Shoegaze, ambient, dream pop; when it’s made at this level, you just want more of it.

Ian Mathers

[zef-zef]

Tim Hecker - Monotony from: Tim Hecker - No Highs (Kranky, 2023)

[mon-nid]

[disease]

DISORDERED MINDS GROUPER | SHADE, 2021

[iamlisteningto]

Belong’s Realistic IX

[mymelodic-chapel]

Lotus Plaza- The Floodlight Collective (Dream Pop, Shoegaze, Ambient Pop) Released: March 23, 2009 [Kranky] Producer(s): Brian Foote

[caviarsonoro]

loscil - Drained Lake

Maybe it's not about happy ending. Maybe it's about the story. - Albert Camus

[bruce-adams]

Brian McBride 1970-2023

I got the word this past Saturday morning, August 26, that Brian McBride has passed. The news was not easy to hear. It was my good fortune to have been working for kranky when Brian and Adam Wiltzie agreed to release Stars of the Lid recording on the label. Before I left the label, I was also lucky enough to promote his solo album, When the Detail Lost its Freedom.

It was my great fortune to have known Brian and spent time with him. In addition to his musical work, Brian was a college debater and coach of great skill and renown in the field. I wonder if the ability to examine and articulate the sides of an issue, so crucial in debate, was reflected in Brian's music - so focused on detail and gesture. I have memories of evening conversations, cats, and half-lit rooms in Chicago when I think of Brian. And now I have the accumulated regrets we sometimes get when someone dies - why didn't I stay in touch? Why didn't I follow up on that unanswered email?

So if you love the music Brian made, drop a line or make a call to a friend you haven't talked to for awhile.

[musicollage]

Tim Hecker — No Highs. 2023 : Kranky.

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #1,187 - April 1st, 2023

Album: Ruins (Kranky, 2014)

Artist: Grouper

Genre: Ambient

Track Listing:

"Made Of Metal"

"Clearing"

"Call Across Rooms"

"Labyrinth"

"Lighthouse"

"Holofernes"

"Holding"

"Made Of Air"

Favorite Song: "Call Across Rooms"

[dustedmagazine]

Michael Grigoni *  Pan•American—New World, Lonely Ride (Kranky)

Mark Nelson has long constructed aching, elegiac reveries out of slow-blooming guitar tone, with Labradford first and later Pan•American. His solo works do not proceed as much as they hover, the scratch of picking subsumed into moody, sustained auras that can evoke dawn light, rainy introspection, memory and loss. His partner here, Michael Grigoni, is less well known but like-minded, favoring pedal and lap steel and dobro, to add faint suggestions of Americana to these lingering compositions.

Grigoni teaches religion at Wake Forest, and though he keeps his music and academic careers separate, it is not difficult to infer a spiritual attunement in these ten limpid pools of sound. Per the titles, these cuts meditate on nature, evoking rivers, canyons, sunlight in their placid textures. “Silver Streams,” for instance, leads with a sound that is, indeed, silvery, derived, I would guess, out of pedal or lap steel but tethered only loosely to what you’d think of as guitar sound. A bit of picking frames this eerie vibration, just a few notes scattered across the surface, and the rough echo of footsteps emerges sporadically, just out of reach.

It’s hard to separate these compositions into discrete movements. They flow, one into the other, with a watery ease. Still “South Canyon” is, perhaps the most beautiful, its looming, radiant sonic textures allowed to hang and shift and evolve over prolonged moments. You can just barely make out some sort of field recording under this one, though not to place it accurately. A crackle like campfire, a howl like distant wind gives this cut a wondering naturalism.

Not much is shared about how these two artists came together or what their work process might have been, but they evidently share an aesthetic. If you’ve enjoyed recent albums by Pan•American, you’ll find much to explore and enjoy here in glacially paced, luminous movements of pure, enveloping sound.

Jennifer Kelly

[thedaysofdisorder]

Monotony II - Tim Hecker and Colin Stetson (No Highs, 2023, kranky)

[lesdeuxmuses]

Nudge - As Good As Gone (Kranky, 2009)

[mymelodic-chapel]

Atlas Sound- Logos (Indie Pop, Neo-Psychedelia, Dream Pop) Released: October 19, 2009 [4AD Records/ Kranky] Producer(s): Bradford Cox