Written by Faye Allego Wishing It Was Sunday is not only an impressive debut album; it is a cohesive album that explores the coming of age, but not in a deep, intricate, or deleterious way. Cinema Lumiere, derived from the Lumiere brothers whom of which invented cinematography, stay true to their band name– they create cinematic music that assimilates the true essence of the Slice of Life idiom. When listening to this record in one sitting, you’re guaranteed to feel some ear tingles every time a xylophone is used in a track. It’s a record that you can listen to at any time of day, whether you’re sitting in a library and cannot be arsed to create a study playlist, or when you’ve finally succumbed to your main character syndrome and all that’s missing now is your very own OST. The theme of coming of age along with melodies that sound very Slice of Life are most prominent in tracks like “Longing For You” and the first track which shares the same title as the album. Tracks like “Like A Dream,” “Into The Sun,” and “Act Happy” also seem to follow inspiration from Japanese dream pop where airy vocals mixed with stretched-out, lushful synths create an atmosphere similar to the 80s music scene. It is also worth noting that the terrific album art is an illustration that takes place in Japan; you can see a young adult holding a Japanese Koinobori Kites that are typically brought outside during the months of April and May (spring), symbolizing and representing children, childhood, and childlike ambition or perseverance. On the first listen, I questioned if Wishing It Was Sunday was the type of album that you play in the background to muffle the silence in your surroundings. Looking at Cinema Lumiere’s only existing music video on YouTube, I wanted to see the visuals of the tunes that they make. Could “Change of Heart” have a Wong Kar Wai-inspired music video made on an old digicam? Or is it up to me, the listener, to decide what visuals I want to associate this album with? I asked myself: do your conversations with friends overpower the music? Or does this album make you want to stop and just listen? After a few adventures outside with only this album on the loop, I think the latter question is the easiest to answer. Yes, I want to stop, close my eyes, and listen. Support the art & the artist:
Tag: Dream pop
TRACK REVIEW: aunt robert – Mad
Written by Elijah P. Gabe Gomez, better known through their solo project aunt robert, explores indie rock and dream pop with a diaristic approach. Their Spotify bio emphasizes “I like writing short songs,” wholly embodying this sentiment by focusing on emotional depth rather than song length. In their latest single, “Mad,” Gomez is accompanied by a powerful wave of sonic textures—layered guitars and electronic swells of reverb—that create a walloping wall of sound. This sonic backdrop either ushers in a blissful catharsis or points to a bold new direction, moving away from their bedroom pop roots. “Mad” seeks to sound grandiose yet it remains grounded. It is a statement to the entirety of aunt robert’s material. The buildup in the track’s verses creates tension as aunt robert’s whispered vocals and the accompanying band build towards the chorus. The result is a peak that is both cathartic and a display of emotional unease. While it might may seem elementary to craft a song with both quiet and loud dynamics for some, the contemporary execution of these ideas makes “Mad” especially satisfying. The blend of uncompromising electronica, transcendental dream pop, and the innocence of singer-songwriter formulas comes together beautifully. aunt robert consistently delivered a powerful track, making it clear they know how to create something special. Support the art & the artist:
ALBUM REVIEW: Memory Drawers – Memory Drawers
Written by Faye Allego Picture this: It’s 2014, your entire personality is based on photos of succulents with a VSCO app filter that is reblogged on your Tumblr page, a poster of Unknown Pleasures hanging by a thread (in this case, tape that has lost its purpose of sticking on the wall above your bed), and your element of mystique is buried with every emotion that bedroom music playlist makes you feel. Although the pleasure of being an angsty, indie-music-centered-teenager back then is a well-known phenomenon, Memory Drawers seems to bring back that unique feeling of individuality and whimsicality in their long-awaited debut album. It goes without saying that this album perfectly fits in the dreamscape milieu of Indie Pop. The lyrics, composed by Kevin Ingco and Paula Castillo, read like a prologue to a retrospective novel about one’s memories of youth that were never to be just written in a diary tucked away in a drawer. Found in the final couplet of Lovingly, Andrea Alegre sings: “Didn’t think, didn’t think I’d hear a word/ Said ‘There’s nothing left for me, in this world, in this world.” This alone uses repetition in a way that isn’t – for lack of a better word – repetitive to hear. This track along with others such as Luuv and Esc Esc Esc feels like changing the color of my laptop’s cursor to black and opening a blank document to write whatever I want at the expense of depression and for the sake of expression. However, I find myself asking if every track creates cohesion to the album and builds an overall narrative, or if it is just a polished compilation of their past, tempting the listener for upcoming endeavors that may sound even better in that said dreamscape milieu. Nearly a decade has passed by since Hart found its way as the first track of Memory Drawers. The original version first appeared on SoundCloud and was later revamped to fit the precision found in Ingco’s mixing, and the mastering by Diego Mapa. The same can be said for the following track, Maybe, originally released in 2016. I hesitated at the thought of these songs resurrecting on the debut album instead of leaving them as hidden gems to be found on their own. The last track, …For Any Of This, was also previously released as a single but now acts as a beautiful epilogue through its upbeat nature that makes you feel like you’re knee-deep into the night; as if Ingco and Castillo along with Alegre’s voice planted a Whomping Willow that would later produce seeds for a mystifying glowing Willow throughout all these years (not to mention the album art looks like a tree’s growth rings). This is the “upcoming endeavor” I mentioned earlier. Indeed, I yearn to hear more.
ALBUM REVIEW: Noa Mal – The Anatomy Of Emotional Hijacking
Written by Louis Pelingen Starting around 2019 and onwards, no one is putting in the amount of output that Noa Mal has churned out year after year. In other parts of the world, there are a lot of artists like Noa Mal wherein they’re getting a widespread reputation due to how many projects they can consistently release – think King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Viper, and the smattering of obscure electronic, folk, and black metal acts that have that artistic capacity to just brute force their way into a year with 3 or more projects done – looking into the local scene, there is no one like Noa Mal at this current moment. And despite carrying that sort of reputation might be interesting and outstanding to some, that can also be the kind of title that can get frustrating and lead to bigger expectations. Mostly because, with that brand of ‘quantity over quality’ release cycle being stretched over in the consecutive years, the worries surrounding sonic and thematic retreads; lack of surprises in the formula; and meager interest towards improvements across the board will come up more and can lead to going through that kind of discography to be daunting and may end up being less interesting when those boxes are ticked off. Now, after going through Noa Mal’s entire discography, the results can be a mixed blessing. While her brand of lo-fi grunge rock and slowcore comfort zone definitely mesh together easily – her gloomy topicality surrounding relationships and personal angst starts to get extremely thin due to her plain way of writing as well as persistent mixing and mastering issues that doesn’t allow the recordings to blend altogether – there are projects that do show her improving on the composition and production front. ‘Everything Is Science, Baby’ is a good starting point as it best represents Noa Mal’s sound across the board, which you can then follow up on her other 2022 released records like ‘My Corrupted Hard Drive’ that leans on the softer grunge and slowcore cuts and ‘Fear Fiction’ for some synth implementations that she’d eventually explore even further just this year with ‘Suspended Animation’. Going through with her tradition, ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ is her 3rd record that she released this 2023, just after the volume and banger heavy ‘Holy Hour’ and the synthetic drum and synth-inflected ‘Suspended Animation’. It continues to retain Noa Mal’s compositional strengths on the record, from the moody drenched ‘The Actress’ where Noa Mal’s prim vocal lines work well with the wavering guitar licks and percussion beats, the trudging indie rock of ‘Luci’ and ‘Deeply Tinted Glasses’ as the former staggers through due to the quicker flash of melodies alongside these carefree vocal lines and the latter coasts through grungier guitar lines that adds into the smoked out vibe of the track, the sunnier indie rock of ‘Dance For Me, Puppet!’ with the gliding vocal melodies amidst the stable fuzzy drums and brighter guitar lines, and the tempered acoustics of ‘Sepanx ka nanaman’ that brings an open space away from the numbness of the moment. As said before, with her writing surrounding numbing cycles of relationships and personal angst that has gotten stale that doesn’t give her a lot of favors at this point, the writing this time opens up Noa Mal’s writing scope as there are a couple of songs that provide more context towards the relationship that eventually fluctuates before it even started. The universal sorrow of ‘Luci’ that tackles the loss of everything and everyone as well as the social exhaustion of Noa Mal’s generation represented through Luci is an example of this that continues further with ‘Dance for me, Puppet!’ through the puppet metaphors as well as the glancing subtext of familial disappointment on certain tracks like ‘Intro: Hijacked’, ‘My Golden Town’, and ‘Sepanx Ka Nanaman’. These moments do add more to Noa Mal’s dulled-out relationship throughout the record like the tiring cycles of everyone showing her how to love on ‘The Actress’ which eventually colors how the numbness that she feels creates a different tone to the “love songs” of ‘The One Who Really…’ and ‘My Golden Town’. Songs may have this emotionally intimate tone to them, but given the context of social exhaustion from her peers and the personal dullness from all the cycling relationships, it’s now put into darker framing wherein Noa’s numbness has now bordered into irrationality, making the relationship an emotional hijacking that she eventually disposes away on ‘Sepanx Ka Nanaman’ and eventually succumbs to more layers of numbness that makes her feel free at the very end. Despite the strengths that Noa Mal has honed in on this record, the mixing of the record does get a bit uneven, more so the guitars and drums that do peak on the mix. While this issue does permeate on her 1st 2023 record, ‘Holy Hour’, it is at least consistent in terms of how loud it can be that does get compensated with punchy grunge melodies just flooding through and through, while ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ takes those grunge melodies with a sunny like flair that does need more balance on the mix. And despite her writing that does work a lot more in this record, it did stumble on ‘Angel of Romantic Death’ with the plainspoken metaphors that may show Noa Mal’s agency but just ends up being clunky as a result. But overall, ‘The Anatomy of Emotional Hijacking’ might not feel special in Noa Mal’s ever-growing discography at first glance even if the composition still does come off as developed, the writing and emotional throughline on the relationship Noa Mal is presenting here offers a different layer and side of her style and framing thus far. A lot more tangled and is paired with an extra set of context around it that does broaden Noa Mal’s skill as a writer given her plain style of writing hasn’t stuck out much in her past records. It’s very
TRCK REVIEW: girlcharmm – infatuation
Written by Louis Pelingen The ongoing output of this dream pop sapphic band girlcharmm aims to deliver letters for the heartbroken group of sapphic lovers in the Philippines. Their second single, ‘infatuation’, is a letter for those who yearn for that desired love, only to unveil the heartbreak within as the process of recovering soon comes after. It’s a message that’s delivered with a direct and conflicting scope, where Darl Alba’s sweet vocals are surrounded by Anna Gella’s layers of fuzzy drum machines and layers of synths both blaring and floating as well as Kaya Katigbak’s chunky guitar riffs flooding in. There is intent in that hemmed-in production as the melodies keep rambling around the instrumentation in a free-flowing way – clearly purposeful in order to encapsulate that exhausting thought process of that sad realization that is way too sudden for a lot of sapphic individuals to eventually figure out on their own. As much as a lot of the elements from the melodies and the production clearly hit home what the track is going for, it also makes it tough to get back into due to the rambling motion of the melodies and the feverish fog of the production. It doesn’t take away from the track’s quality, however, as it never shies away from revealing how tiring the process of going through that bitter phase of infatuation is. Clearly, what’s important to take note of here is that girlcharmm delivers what needs to be delivered, embracing sapphic relationships in the local music scene that will resonate a lot with a sapphic audience that has their broken hearts still in healing. Support the art & the artist:
TRACK REVIEW: Angelo Shinohara – sayo
Written by Elijah P. Angelo Shinohara’s TikTok account is nothing but your typical “pogi cover” singer-songwriter. Cherry picking the latest alternative in the musicsphere and earning 6-digit views day in and day out, Shinohara in the light is the cliche viral artist, but in the dark, he’s different. Enter the shoegaze/dreampop version of Angelo Shinohara: the noisier, vocal fronted and fuzz-drenched pretty face side of the singer-songwriter. The ambient slowcore to quietgaze pipeline is evident in acts like Title Fight, Whirr and Starflyer 59, but Shinohara doesn’t make himself a copycat of either of the aforementioned bands, but rather a painfully shameless second-version of his inspirations. The influences have depth, grit, and an overarching narrative between the noise. Shinohara has neither. “sayo” is touted as the viral shoegaze love song of the rainy season. Shinohara and friends are saluting to their shoegaze idols heavily, both sonically and lyrically. “sayo” is arguably the first ever shoegaze track that draws on so many influences but the result of which becomes a blank canvas of ideas for Shinohara. And as much as the track is an exploration of soundscapes for the songwriter, the sound and writing barely carried the track in its dragging 4-minute runtime. The longer “sayo” lasts, the more it proves to be a one-dimensional hugot track amplified by muffled distortion. In repeated listens, the track magnifies in substandard production textures. “sayo” and its perfumed pedalboard doesn’t make it any better and neither does Angelo’s Greg Gonzales-esque voice and chiseled jawline doesn’t make this any more tolerable. Angelo Shinohara is a walking-singing example of a bedroom artist releasing a demo that has multiple errors than the average trials of a bedroom-shoegaze artist. Support the art & the artist: