My Bloody Valentine, A Place To Bury Strangers, Maps, Ride, SPC-ECO, UNKLE, Slowdive, Telescopes, M83, Sennen, Velvet Underground, Ulrich Schnauss, MexicoSmall, Engineers, Hearts Of Black Science, Chapterhouse, Sonic Youth, Walker, Smashing Orange, Low, Ian Brown, Fleeting Joys, Doves, Beatles, Heaviness, Lush, The Legend that is Mani, Spiritulized, Boo Radleys, Galaxie 500, Aviator, The Joy Formidable, DJ Shadow, Skullflower, Kevin Shields, Mono, Cosmicdust, Jesus and Mary Chain, Massive Attack, Mark Gardener, Stereolab, Loop, Air Formation, Wedding Present, Kyte, Lo Fi Allstars, Portishead, The Fauns, Swervedriver, Two Evil Barons, The Voices, Mechanism For People, Stellascope, Early Verve, Spacemen 3, TearWave, AceFighterPilots, Mogwai, Club AC30, Curve, Sonic Cathedral, Terminal Cheesecake, Noise......
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Here's a special DiScover column of new bands who fit beneath the arc of "shoegaze".
93 Million Miles From The Sun
As stereotypical visions of people and places go, the good folks of Doncaster aren't exactly at the top of the list when thoughts turn to embracing new, experimental music. Indeed, having spent the occasional stag night in DN1 and its dens of iniquity also known as night clubs, the nearest anyone could expect to come to encountering new music would be the "Indie half hour" in Seventh Heaven, where Oasis, The Enemy and Ocean Colour Scene are the so-called alternative. Thank heavens for small mercies then, as 93 Million Miles From The Sun not only manage to dampen stereotypes, but their self-produced, self-titled debut long player could (whisper it) just be one of 2009's most exquisite offerings on the album front. Combining layered, textured guitars over an array of effects and choral vocals, 93 Million Miles From The Sun is one of those records that, while evoking memories of the likes of Slowdive in their heyday or even a more sonically enhanced Maps, stands tall and proud in its own right due to the dazzling range of variation across its thirteen tracks. Another key element of 93 Million Miles From The Sun's extensive make-up is that not only do they express a desire to take their sonic experimentation one step further, but they also never lose sight of the fact that beneath all the reverb and delay lay actual songs that would sound just as affecting stripped down. 93 Million Miles From The Sun are:- Nick Mainline (guitars/effects/vocals), Rob Hogg (bass/effects) and Jack Straker (drums/effects). The album 93 Million Miles From The Sun is available direct from Parallax Sounds.
MySpace.com/93MillionMilesFromTheSun
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It’s not rare to find myself wondering what makes musicians choose a band name -a name that can sometimes make or break their career. Perhaps there is a higher meaning behind it? Or simply it’s something catchy and easy to remember? Difficult to say… All I know is that, no matter how long, funny, or weird a band name is, if the music sounds good in our ears we tend to love it anyway.
Equally difficult is trying to understand how 93millionmilesfromthesun came up with this awkward name! Ok, the distance between Earth and the Sun is indeed 93 million miles but living in the moody surroundings of the industrial Midlands had something to do with this too -after all, this is a place where you can easily realize that the Sun is indeed far far away from the Earth!
But all these are small words when the music starts. And 93MMFTS’ first full album takes us to an ecstatic journey outside reality!Entering their official website, makes it clear that 93MMFTS’ music is well within the realms of shoegaze and dreampop -where vocals are “hidden” behind waves upon waves of distorted soundscapes. And 93MMFTS do not break this (successful) formula. Nevertheless, they manage to generate enough heat to melt the polar ice, and transform the barren landscapes of Everest into green heavens!
Album opener ‘’Step Into The High’’ is a psychedelic frenzy opus that - as the title implies - lifts you from the very first second, while at the same time bringing back memories from the best days of Spacemen 3 and Loop. In the 12 minutes long epic ‘’The Times We Have now’’ you find yourself transported to their music galaxy through seas of swirling layers and fairily vocals.This astral journey continues with the gorgeous “Yesterday Morning” where 93MMFTS remind us the art of Ride on building their compositions equally around melody and tones of distortion and tremolo effects, while the pounding drums and underwater guitars on ‘’Forever Soon’’ celebrate the landing to the heart of the solar system.
You can write much more about the 73 minutes this majestic trip lasts. So far Shoegaze music was all about looking at the sky or gazing at the stars tremble. On the contrary, with their debut album 93MMFTS, exhort us to spread our wings and soar towards the Sun without the danger of falling down like Icarus……
8,5/10-------
Taken from http://albatross2.wordpress.com/- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
THE SECRET GARDEN Vol 1 Nu-gaze: The New Wave of Shoegaze
Worth buying for the five and a bit minutes of 93MillionMilesFromTheSun’s ‘Take Me Away’ that’s a reminder of Slowdive at their celestial, dreamy peak.
That means it’s really, really ace.
They may be a long way from the sun, but they’re not that far from heaven. Taken from :-
www.hearthefuture.org.uk - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
With a name like 93MillionMilesFromTheSun, you can pretty much work out what kind of sounds you'll hear upon clicking, and expectation is duly rewarded as 93 MMFTS (even the acronym is long!) head off on an LSD tinged journey across the stars, lead by swirling walls of guitar that pretty much bury everything else. The My Bloody Valentine presence lies heavily across these tracks, unashamedly dream pop in origin, but few have pulled this off so convincingly, or with as much panache. The supposed existence of a shoegaze revival would seem to bode well for these two effects junkies from Doncaster, and if the tracks from the myspace page are anything to go by, they should be pretty intense live, the kind of band that makes you hear colours and taste sounds before waking up in a field, wondering what the hell happened to you the night before. Melodically speaking, if you can hear the melodies, there are even vague hints of bands such as the Stone Roses and Ride, proving that it's not all guitar wash, and that there's a real sense of songwriting underpinning the whole operation. Taken from :- www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What anyone writing about music nowadays really should try and avoid is simplistic pigeonholing of bands into little boxes marked 'genre', partly because it has actually got more difficult to do this. Bands and the musicians who form them are as inventive and talented as they've ever been, and when a band takes on board some well-referenced influences and redeploys them into something barely recognisable, while at the same time quite definitely asserting their own talents, the results are very often greater than the influences which began this process. Such as with this twelve track opus of structure, skill, and irredeemable rock noise.
93 Million miles From The Sun have created a masterpiece which defies easy categorisation. Over an hour in length, these symphonies of abrasive ambience and incessant angst driven technological neurosis are the sound of a group only beginning to chart the measures of their own abilities and re-writing the sonic alphabet as they do so. 93 Million Miles From The Sun haven't spared either themselves or us here. The guitars are uncompromisingly distorted, the vocals understatedly muted. The production is expansive and the resultant epic grandeur is something few bands possess the courage to attempt nowadays. And hanging thickly over everything 93M are the unbroken clouds of the late 80s. As an entire genre of bands look back over two decades for the inspiration that some wonder technological overload has knocked out of guitar music then it's proper to reference a time when ProTools meant a Chorus AND a Flange pedal. But so many ideas from that period never really developed fully, as mockney britpop cheeriness overtook some of the more imposing trends of two decades ago. 93 Million Miles From The Sun must know they're setting themselves up for allegations of pretension, plagiarism and more. They also sound as if they know who's dealing out the clichés.
There are subtleties at work here on every level. First track 'The Times We Have Are Now' is the template for everything 93M are capable of and it is glorious, glacial sheets of keyboard giving way to an incessant drum pattern around which builds a swirling swaying wave of chorused and delayed riffs which spin a backlit hypnosis of repeated crescendos. And at around seven minutes 93M give themselves ample time to develop the track to its fullest conclusion. This approach continues over the next eleven tracks and second number 'Yesterday Morning' quickly demonstrates that 93M are very much more than just ambient droners. The pounding drumbeats which introduce this track declare it an altogether harder edged creature for make no mistake, 93M are a ROCK group, and as the rhythm patterns shift and collide across the distant vocal, the instrumentation stomps onwards remorselessly, like some kaleidoscopic thunderstorm that refuses to end. 'Gone For Today' takes a metallic techno start point and breaks into a soaring guitar riff which suddenly drops into a drum & bass noir frenzy, 'From Here' is proto-glam energy that rewrites the entire canon of early 70s excess, 'ElectroDroneStarr' is a sheer riot of white noise, and every track here sounds as if it would have been hailed as groundbreaking and startlingly original, were this 1989 and were 93M
the band Creation signed instead of Ride.
It's the sound of hazy summer evenings, of car headlights stretching off into infinity, of lasers and fireworks, of that painting you cannot afford, of the shapeless fractals that shape our lives in every direction. It's Spacemen 3 and the Bunnymen jamming in an industrial museum, produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto and with visuals by Salvador Dali. It is 70 minutes of music that points exactly the direction that what we listen to is about to take.' 93 Million Miles From The Sun' is the best album of its kind since The Asteroid 4's 'An Amazing Dream', and that was, and is, quite a good one. Taken from:-
www.tastyfanzine.org.uk - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Last year Invada Records put out a pretty nice little compilation of new and upcoming shoegaze groups called The Secret Garden: Vol 1. Many of the bands featured on it have been written about on the blog or thrown on to a mix or two at some point or another. However it wasn’t until this past week that I got a chance to hear one of the standout groups from that compilation at length, 93MillionMilesFromTheSun. Thanks to guitarist/vocalist Nick I was able to receive a fairly lengthy CD full of demos that in my opinion sound way better than a typical demo.
The band draws a bit from both sides of the shoegaze realm, working probably more so in the direction of Slowdive with that almost pristine feeling of atmospherics and dream-pop. However, what I enjoy a lot about 93MillionMilesFromTheSun’s sound is the slow burning distortion that rolls along with a notable smoothness while the vocals are set to a low whisper underneath the constant squall. It somewhat takes on a Spacemen 3 vibe from time to time as the band puts on their display of effects to great results. While it’s been awhile since I’ve spotlighted a shoegaze inspired band on the blog, that’s been for a good reason and that’s because there just hasn’t been anything come across my desk that really deemed it necessary or worth the time. However, thanks to 93MillionMilesFromTheSun there is another band that I can honestly look forward to within the genre. It makes me wonder how much these demos will change, as they already sound great, but that alone is a testament to the focus and talent that these songs possess within. For fans of shoegaze and dream-pop, there is no reason to not keep an eye on this band. Taken from:- www.builtonaweakspot.com
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This track is inspired by Aphex Twin and free/avant garde jazz artists like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. Sampled electronic beats with sampled jazz drums, saxophone and bass loops
hey thanks! I actually caught wind of you guys through Paul from doves over pompei, and the shoegaze uk forum. You guys are great! Thanks for taking a listen to our first song, there will be more soon. :-)
