They say:
Shoegaze melts and soothes the soul. It gets its power from the dichotomy of beauty and noise, and both properties are much needed in 2019. Like many genres and subgenres in this day and age, shoegaze doesn’t live in a vacuum—it bleeds into other genres and has seen much evolution since its ‘80s and ‘90s heyday. Many of the artists listed below aren’t solely categorized as shoegaze—they adopt adjacent genres like dream pop and slowcore or they might even dabble in more distant realms like industrial or electronic music. However you might square these albums, Paste rounded up 10 of our favorite shoegaze (or shoegaze-like) full-lengths from the past year for your reading and listening pleasure.
3. Gnoomes: MU!
Gnoomes may lurk in dark electronic shadows, but their shoegaze guitar chops shouldn’t be questioned. The Russian quartet’s most recent album, MU!, merges the experimental sides of Stereolab, Wand and Neu! with furiously gyrating guitars. The LP shifts between states of matter, and getting sucked into their dynamic compositions is easy. “Glasgow Coma State” is positively gleaming and vigorous while “Ursa Major” is wispy and discombobulating. Their color schemes change too—songs like “Progulka” are filled with bright hues, while others like “Sword in the Stone” and “Irma” have a distinctly monochrome smog. Like many albums of heady hypnotics, you know the finale is going to melt your psyche, and the two-track curtain close (“How Do You” and “Feel Now”) is a shoegaze-tinted psych-pop hurrah for the ages. MU! is so memorable because it brushes the same pleasure centers as the genre’s titans without retracing the steps of their predecessors or peers. With MU!, they’ve cleared a space for themselves in electro-shoegaze heaven. —Lizzie Manno
See the full piece here: Paste
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