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Hello Sorry Staters! The weather has been beautiful and here in North Carolina. The pollen is starting to come out in full force! It’s a win-win, really; allergies bring beautiful flowers and the birth of my favorite time of the year, spring! This week I haven’t been listening to too much music just because life can be busy like that sometimes. I have, however, started digging into more Japanese music, specifically dream pop/shoegaze.
One band that came up over and over while reading blogs and reviews is “my dead girlfriend” (not to be confused with the American manga of the same name). The band formed in 2005, releasing a couple of demos before compiling them on a CD in 2007 called 6 songs from the happy valley. Then in the next year they released sweet days and her last kiss. This was a collaboration album between my dead girlfriend and another Japanese shoegaze band called ShoujoSkip.
Over the next few years, it seems like they really tightened up their sound and explored new soundscapes by adding some synth and back-and-forth vocals between Ishikawa and Ideta, really honing in on the “noise-pop” aspect of their sound. My dead girlfriend’s most popular album and one that made it overseas to the western world is Hades (The Nine Stages Of Change At The Deceased Remains).
This album is just amazing and could stand up to any more popular shoegaze band in the past decade. It’s lofi shoegaze at its best without losing the authentic feel from the first few records. I hope everyone that is into shoegaze/dream-pop will check this out and let me know what you think! Anyway, until next week! Later Nerds!