Shoegaze is one of the most retrospective genres in music as critics lauded this movement for its dominant releases such as My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Slowdive's Pygmalion, the list finitely goes on. At the same time as these albums were getting the Ambient 1 treatment, several smaller acts in this movement were veiled in mystery, though stood out beyond the "essentials." Somewhat in relation to yesterday's review of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Love Is A Stream, here is-- what I believe-- a prime example of a beautiful collision between the lovely and the harsh sides of sound: Astrobrite's 1999 gem of an EP, Sugarblast.
If Sugarblast was a tortoise, Loveless would be the hare; in creating what could have followed in the exact same footsteps as these 90s heavyweights, Astrobrite managed to conceive seven "songs" that foretold what would come of experimentalists like The Goslings. Observing the same blueprint as most shoegaze, this EP has an extreme emphasis of guitar effects, to such an extent that they seem completely undefinable: the opener "Lollipop" has trash-like percussion forefronted by a guitar tone akin to a pitch-shifted police siren in an attempt to create a melody, and "Tearjerker" (the closest Sugarblast comes to providing a pop song) features some hissing white noise contrasted by extremely warm, reverberated Kevin Shields-isms. Suffice it to say, this EP is perfect for puzzling guitar nerds.
There are two reasons that come to mind when I wonder how this EP never had its praises sung. For one, it was self-released by Scott Cortez (also of Lovesliescrushing) on his label Wavertone. Second, and most importantly, Sugarblast was recorded to a four-track. This is where the disconnect (and for me, love) comes into play: the recording technique accounts for how absolutely punishing this EP sounds, it even borders on being noise music. As made apparent on the aforementioned opener and the aptly titled "Cherrybomb", the ratio of guitar to rhythm section is about 10:1. This may be where traditional shoegaze fans draw the line-- but I find that the fidelity enhances the psychedelic feel by rendering the musicianship almost formless.
Sugarblast's hallucinogenic noises may be relentless and blown-out, but at no point do they emanate dissonance. This is an embrace-- one that immerses you in ecstasy-- the presentation of it is just more abrasive than one would expect. Nonetheless, Sugarblast is an absolute classic in my book.
[Astrobrite Myspace]
[Buy Sugarblast from Wavertone]
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