Tag: shoegaze

The Frenetic Layers of Colorful Sound and Rhythm on A Place To Bury Strangers’ “Let It All Go” Has Perspective Altering Qualities Akin to Avant-Garde Cinema

A Place to Bury Strangers, photo by Ebru Yildiz

“Let It All Go” hits immediately with the crackling and headlong energy we’ve come to expect from A Place To Bury Strangers’ more frenetic offerings. But something about the mix and production conveys an almost visual sense experienced as music. The hyped up motorik beat is insistent but guitar tones flash and fade downward and sideways like the streaks in a post-impressionist painting style lending a sense of suspended time. Oliver Ackerman’s voice echoes rapidly like a dub ghost haunting the beat, the rapid fire guitar melody both pushes to the forefront of the track and then pulls back into the rhythmic and tonal maelstrom so that throughout the focus of sonic field shifts like the musical equivalent of a Stan Brakhage film. Listen to “Let It All Go” on Spotify and follow A Place To Bury Strangers at the links provided.

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Elegant and Tender Shoegaze Single “Freeze Frame” by Chicago’s Slow Mass is a Masterful Evocation of Processing Heartbreak

Slow Mass, photo by Madi Ellis

The video for Slow Mass’ elegant and tender “Freeze Frame” is a black and white collection of scenes from studio work with the band and it looks like something from another decade. The music itself with its layered rhythms, minimalist aesthetic, great delicacy of feeling and entrancing melodies is reminiscent of something from the later era of Unrest. Musically it has an increasing dynamism reminiscent of one of the early slowcore bands like Codeine and Low. The tension and the tranquility breaks toward the end with surges of guitar distortion and an opening up of the rhythm but it all shifts effortlessly into the quiet and heartbreaking outro. Its a master class of arrangements that work perfectly and smoothly together to deliver the emotional peaks and valleys in a way that makes you feel better in the end if with a touch of the bittersweet. Watch the video for “Freeze Frame” on YouTube and follow Chicago’s Slow Mass at the links below. The band’s new album Low on Foot released May 16, 2025 on Landland Colportage on limited edition colored vinyl and digital formats.

Slow Mass on Instagram

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