Tag: shoegaze

Leavings – Sell and Shark – 21st November 2016

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Cat #: 189TZM

Leavings is a three piece punk band from Brisbane, Australia which takes cues from post-hardcore, indie rock, shoegaze, krautrock, and the vibrant DIY cultures of Australia, China, and South-East Asia.

Combining driving, aggressive bass and drums, shouted vocals, and wiry guitar with catchy, muscular hooks and cavernous noise and drone-scapes, the group’s songs generate a bold, vigorous energy that is both affirming and cathartic . 

RIYL: Unwound, Flying Nun records, The Men, Rosetta, Fugazi, Japandroids, Sonic Youth, Blank Realm, Neu!, P.K. 14, mewithoutYou, Turnpike, A Place to Bury Strangers.

Sell & Shark is Leavings’ debut release and the first single from their forthcoming LP.

On side A is “Sell”, a reckless punk rock clanger in which the band belts out grumpy yells drenched in reverb over the top of a collection of distorted major-key hooks played at full tilt.

Exclusive to the 7″ is a brooding slab of noise rock in the form of B-side “Shark”. The track begins quietly with a faint, nervous guitar riff and muted, tense drumming encircled by a menacing bassline which swims around them tightly until all three instruments attack each other, exploding into dissonant fuzz and dry screaming.

Together, the tracks represent the band’s response to the frustration of living in an Australia whose leaders become nastier and more cynical with each passing year. “Sell” is defiantly spirited while “Shark” is the band at their grumpiest, but not without a sense of humour. 

Both tracks were recorded in Brisbane at Tym Guitars with Donovan Miller (FOREVR, No Anchor) over one weekend in the winter of 2016.

For interviews, press, and bookings, please contact leavingsband@gmail.com.

Chui Wan – 30th August 2015

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Cat #: 176TZM

Three years after releasing their debut album, White Night, Chui Wan brings their sophomore, self-titled album into the world.

Over the last few years, Chui Wan has progressed with a new drummer, Li Zichao, while its core members — bassist Wu Qiong, guitarist Liu Xinyu, and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Yan Yulong — have striven to perfect their musical ideas. On Chui Wan, the focus is less on the unbridled, reverb-drenched inflections of White Night, drawing more from the band’s wide palette of influences, including Sufi music, Southeast Asian folk tunes, and 20th-century avant grade composition. With confident, driving rhythm, they aim to embody a pop-influenced idiom of rock music, creating their own musical language in the process. Beyond the infectious melodic hooks on Chui Wan lies a near-constant fluctuation of beat and tempo, a deliberate maneuver calculated to create a simultaneous sense of fluidity and disjuncture.

Compared with White Night, Chui Wan’s sophomore album is structurally more complicated, yet simpler and more direct in its studio approach. It eschews White Night’s complex, repeated overdubs and adds more intricate lyrical work, which reflects the dynamic of calm and tension that stands out in Chui Wan’s live performances.

Chui Wan’s guest musicians also contribute significantly to the album’s distinct temperament. You can hear the trademark noise guitar wails of psychedelic free improv master Li Jianhong on the album’s closing track, “Beijing Is Sinking”. The album also contains a hidden gift: a remix of the second track, “Estivation”, by Dead J, one of Beijing’s most established and progressive electronic music producers. Dead J’s “Estivation” remix is a minimal, ambient, rhythmically more angular take on the original.

It is also worth mentioning that Chui Wan bassist Wu Qiong lends her vocal abilities to “On the Other Ocean” and “Silence”. Her voice adds rich choral accents to the album, a long-player already brazen in its Baroque sonic ornamentations.

Chui Wan was recorded and produced by Yang Fan. 

All songs written by Chui Wan, recorded in Beijing, in the winter of 2014.

Yan Yulong: vocals / guitar / violin / organ
Liu Xinyu: guitar / percussions
Wu Qiong: vocals / bass
Li Zichao: drums / celesta

Yang Fan / Li Qing: background vocals, “Only”
Li Jianhong: guitar, “Beijing is Sinking ”
Dead J: remix, “Estivation”

Recorded/mixed/produced by Yang Fan at Fan Fu Studios.
Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studios.
Cover art: Lv Junlin
Design: Ruan Qianrui

Chui Wan thanks everyone mentioned above, as well as: Josh Feola, Kai, CC Wang, Deng Chenglong, Liu Lu, Cao Lingfeng, Snapline, Yan Jun, Zhu Wenbo, Zhao Cong, Lu Wei, Li Ping, He Fan and Zhang Mengyao.

Alpine Decline – Night of the Long Knives – 10th October 2013

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Cat #: 155TZM

One year after spiriting off to China, Alpine Decline return with their fourth album, “Night of the Long Knives”. Descending from the high altitude visions of their previous records, the duo walks us gassed out and head numb through chaos and time sickness, deep into the ruins of ancient alleyways and naked skyscrapers. This time under the expansive sonics of producer (and China punk godfather) Yang Haisong, “Night of the Long Knives” is Alpine Decline surfacing from the Beijing haze maze at the height of their powers, crafting songs with the ghost-memory quality of myths and guiding us deep into the cinematic and stereoscopic landscape of their world, real and apocryphal.

Somehow sounding both clearer and denser than their previous albums, “Night of the Long Knives” opens with “Day 213”, a broken transmission from the site of the band’s crash landing. Stepping away from the rubble, we again walk with the duo through a landscape that is equal parts fascination and horror (although never cynical, never sneering). This fourth album presents some of the bands most accessible, nearly pop moments, masterfully folded into experimentation and sonic exploration. From the deep hooks of “Drunk on Crystal Fire” to the zombie lurch of “Industrial/Domestic”, “Night of the Long Knives” is an album that proves, once again, Alpine Decline are making some of the most creative, exciting albums anywhere on the planet.

Alpine Decline – Disappearance – 8th October 2013

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Cat #: 152TZM

Something is amiss in the world of Alpine Decline. Just months after releasing their sophomore album “Visualizations”, the band returned to M. Geddes Gengras’s Green Machines studio in East Los Angeles to record “消失/DISAPPEARANCE”. Whereas the previous album found the duo wandering through some ghost world without a map, on “消失/DISAPPEARANCE” they are in control, pulling you down by your ankles into their deep deep sleep. Opening track “The Anesthesiologist” twists radically from bone-crushing guitar and drums into a warped brain-burning seven minute dronescape. When it finally lets you get up, brush yourself off and look around, you are undeniably in uncharted territory.

Haunting melodies, vocals that flutter in the ripples of a gas leak, cryptic guitars, bleeding synthesizers, and hypnotic drumming combine into something both headphone-ready and made to make you move. This is rock music for the mythically inclined. “An Accident” and “Now You Believe in Vanishing” are radio singles for an FM that never existed, and the band fearlessly steer the ship into the polyrhythmic got-down-on-the-one bump of “The Other Side” and the strobed-out hypnosis of album closer “Frontier Religion”. By now, putting on an Alpine Decline album has become a kind of ritual passage, stepping into a space both instantly familiar and completely otherworldly, but when the tape reels stop spinning and the machines cool down, the band is nowhere to be found. Before the album hit the pressing plant, Alpine Decline themselves had disappeared, not to resurface again for almost a year in the rubble and chaos on the outskirts of Beijing. 

Chui Wan – White Night – 12th February 2013

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Cat #: 128TZM

Chui Wan get their name from Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s “Qi Wu Lun”, a mystical work on the relationship between nature and human life. The spirit of Zhuangzi’s thought is reflected in the modern Chinese idiom “When the wind blows, every sound may be heard therein.”

Inspired by this concept of seeking the infinite from the mundane, the core of Chui Wan’s sound is formed by the improvisational compositions of multi-instrumentalist Yan Yulong and guitarist Liu Xinyu. Their lush arrangements of guitar, keyboard, viola, other assorted instruments and random sound samples often eschew reliable melodies and vocal harmonies in favour of occasional passages of minimal drone or maximal sonic layerings.

Boyz and Girl – 8th July 2012

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Cat #: 096TZM

This four-piece shoegaze outfit quickly raced to the forefront of Taipei’s fast growing independent music scene – and for good reason. The completion of their warmly received eponymous freshman album has cemented their place in the hearts of an ever-growing fan base.

Though Shoegaze is hardly a new phenomenon, Boyz & Girl has found a contemporary home in the genre, due largely in part to their fresh sounds and mature songwriting. The raucous yet dreamy guitars of Jon, pieced masterfully with Sonoko’s artistic drumming and Guo Guo’s steady basslines, creates an impeccable balance with the juvenile youth and innocence discovered through BenBen’s vocals.

Dear Eloise – Castle – 16th February 2012

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Cat #: 070TZM

This is the first 7″ single from Dear Eloise. The A Side “Castle” is take from their debut album The Words That Burnt on Maybe Mars/tenzenmen (2011). 

DEAR ELOISE 

Yang Haisong – Guitar / Drums 
Sun Xia – Vocals 

Produced by Dear Eloise 
Recorded & Mixed by Dear Eloise at No. 13 studio 

Released in conjunction with Genjing Records, Maybe Mars and Share in Obstacles

Crouching 80s Hidden Acronym​/​Rara Avis – 11th August 2011

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Cat #: 061TZM

Once described as “feel good hip-core”, ‘Crouching 80s Hidden Acronym’ only resist easy classification through a complete lack of musical attention span. Refugees from the country-music embattled north west NSW, Crouching 80s move with the flexibility and martial arts skill of the movie they are loosely named after (but which none of the members have actually seen). The band’s latest release ‘Truth Masseuse’ could be described as math influenced indie punk. 

The disc is a split EP with ‘Rara Avis’, a shoegaze outfit which includes most members of Crouching 80s and friend Andrew Rutherford. This latter half of the split is called “Itch Bin” and sports chunky 8-bit drum sounds. Completely self produced, this split showcases the creativity, versatility and good humour of this group of guys.