research into Ethereal Goth and Dreampop (and other stuff for fans of early 4AD and Projekt)

Sixth Comm is/was basically Patrick Leagas who was a former member of Death in June. Content With Blood is the only thing I've heard by them and I like it very much, although it seems to me very much a follow-up to DIJ's Nada! album (which showed Leagas' influence to a great extent). It's more neofolk with some electronic beats than ethereal goth imho.

Yeah, never thought of 6th Comm in that category - indeed it's a continuation of the more eletronic side of mid-late 80's DIJ. Nothing earth-shattering

The Eskimeaux s/t could be yr cup of tea though - it was a bit of a one-off as her newer stuff isn't very ethereal or gothy, and neither is the old collage-type material before it.

Listening to some songs from Mors Syphilitica - Feather And Fate, "Hues Of Longing" and "Galatea" are totally stunning. One of my favourite albums in the genre. Really wish Primrose would get reissued, it's supposed to be one of their best releases.

Forgotten to mention ambient artist Dark Muse. She has one officially released album called Sounds From Beyond The Silver Wheel. She made a crazy amount of albums in a short time.
I remember when she had a MySpace and was sending out burned CDs but now she has a bandcamp.
http://darkmuse.com/
"Haunting etheral ritual dark ambient experimental"

Are there any of those you can actually listen to before you buy? I just clicked through like ten and none will play.

Don't know. Sounds From Beyond The Silver Wheel should have samples on Amazon.

Ah yeah there it is. Not bad!

Forgot to mention Heavenly Bodies, with one of my favourite This Mortal Coil vocalists Caroline Seaman.
Should have bought their Celestial album earlier because it's very pricy right now. I've wanted to hear it quite a while.

A thread for them here
am i the only person who still listens to that heavenly bodies album from 1988?

Finished listening to Lycia - Quiet Moments, it's very good. "Spring Trees" is such a happy optimistic song for them, really beautiful. The last four tracks are a departure, they're so crackly, distorted and noisy.

Ashrae Fax

Holy moly! I have A LOT to talk about in this thread! It's my favorite genre, and I used to consider myself an expert on it, but I've fallen out of touch with it in recent years.

Anyway, just a thought, I'm curious as to what band we might consider as the first fully realized ethereal one. If we agree that the Twins/This Mortal Coil/etc. were just laying the groundwork for Projekt, Hyperium, and so forth, then...

Ummm. Let's try an analogy, though I doubt there's enough crossover for most in this thread to understand it.

Heavenly Bodies : Schooly D :: Love is Colder Than Death : NWA

I guess Heavenly Bodies were the first fully realized ethereal band, but things only really got going with Love is Colder Than Death.
I mean, even early black tape were only playing around with gothy ambient at first - not completely realized ethereal.

(Yes, although all the ancient 4AD and related things are truly ethereal, I still consider it all a little more experimental in the first place. Kind of like how some say The Beatles were the first rock band.)

I have A LOT to talk about in this thread! It's my favorite genre

Cool, go ahead. I haven't heard Love Is Colder Than Death yet. I'd appreciate if you gave a breakdown on their albums and any other bands you want to talk about.

I haven't listened to much recently but soon I should be listening to the new Lycia album.

You're my bro, Robert! Thanks for starting this thread!

No time to post much right now, but: There was some talk upthread about Elysium, Orange, and Dewdrops records, and I would like to emphasize how important all of this is.
Everything you can get your hands on by Elysium and Orange is absolutely essential, though extremely obscure.

Elysium's album, 'Glisten', is wonderful. That chick just had such a beautiful voice, and it's similar to Lynn Canfield's of Area/Moon Seven Times. Well, the album is a little MOR for the ethereal genre, but the song, "Glistening Ganache" is a heart-stopper. It's one of my favorite songs ever, and it's the first song on the album -- the rest of the album is a very pleasant comedown.

Orange were like a happier, softer Cranes. Their eponymous album is just exquisite. The production's a bit lo-fi and dirty, but the songs themselves are as ethereal and poppy as imaginable. Start with "Starwheel" and "Feijoa" from that album. Also search their "Pearl/Grey Rooms" single. "Grey Rooms" is basically everything that early Cranes ever strived for. Wonderful.

Just for clarity: that Orange single is actually called 'Auto De Fé' (and it contains "Pearl" and "Grey Rooms").

This more properly belongs on a thread for "neoclassical darkwave" ala Dead Can Dance, but the new Irfan album The Eternal Return is the best thing in ages spotify (maybe in Bulgaria), youtube, bandcamp.

A fair number of Neoclassical darkwave bands have come up and it has basically the same audience so I think this thread is this best place for it, unless it suddenly and unexpectedly becomes a huge phenomenon that swallows the thread.

Monster Mash- Listened to those suggested tracks (though couldn't find anything from Auto De Fé). Somebody must have linked "Feijoa" by Orange upthread because I knowhow heard that, it's very nice.

I haven't heard Love Is Colder Than Death yet. I'd appreciate if you gave a breakdown on their albums

I can't quite do that, but, believe me: You need their first ep and first album NOW. I tuned out after their second album, when they went all dance-y - but I should give it another chance.
If you like Dead Can Dance, you might like them. They're actually one of the better DCD imitations, as far as I know. However much you like or dislike Love is Colder Than Death, they're very important to the small history of this genre.

I'm about to go all fourfa.com on you now, and blow yr mind.

This is a somewhat contentious issue, and it took me about five years to figure it out, and wrap my head around it (I wasn't there at the time):

There are two "dark-waves".

There is "dark wave", and then there is "darkwave".

Dark wave just means Clan of Xymox/Xymox, 80s bands on Third Mind, and so on. It just means dance-y goth, usually with treated guitars and drum machines (but it doesn't approach EBM, necessarily).

Darkwave is just a catch-all term for goth in general. It was started by Sam Rosenthal of black tape, either in his 80s zine or the Projekt catalog (can't quite recall atm). It includes actual dark wave, old-school goth, dark cabaret, post-dark ambient, and every other gothy-related genre.

It's kind of like. . . ever cat is a mammal, but not every mammal is a cat.

Just, if you read old zines and ancient things online (like I do), it's easy to get the terms confused. "Darkwave" became the word in the mid-90s, just as actual "dark wave" was on the decline, anyway.

Darkwave just means bloody goth, now. If you ever need actual modern dark wave, start with industrial rock and industrial dance, or even the Alpha Matrix label, but it's basically all hard, hard, hard, post-EBM, now.

So, yeah. This is why we call bands from black tape to Cranes to DCD to Love Spirals Downwards darkwave, now.

and, it isn't off topic!
as far as this thread goes, i just call this genre -ethereal- period. (because i'm american. i think they call it "etheric" in non-english speaking countries). i call it ethereal darkwave when i have to differentiate/be very specific.
(but sometimes, i think it's funny to call it swirly goth!)
(i think nabisco once said that darkwave can only be pronounced correctly by whispering it (shush: darkwave: shush) - he was joking and rad!)
but, in any case, it's a subset of darkwave now, thanks to sam rosenthal, who i love.

It includes actual dark wave, old-school goth, dark cabaret, post-dark ambient, and every other gothy-related genre.

Darkwave just means bloody goth, now.

Doesn't that mean the meaning has stayed the same if it was already an all-encompassing term? Or are you saying "darkwave" only means basic goth now?

I always assumed "darkwave" excluded death rock and the other punkier, harder and metally stuff.

Ethereal Wave is the most common term I hear for most of the music on this thread.

Doesn't that mean the meaning has stayed the same if it was already an all-encompassing term? Or are you saying "darkwave" only means basic goth now?

that's what's so confusing about it all, is that the terms overlap. it's probably not worth getting into in this thread, but it's just something i needed to get off my chest. it was "dark wave" (and meant bands like clan of xymox, handful of snowdrops, beautiful pea green boat, etc. (all of which i'm sure you'd like)) in the 80s, and because of mr. rosenthal and the projekt catalog, it morphed into "darkwave" by the early/mid-90s and its meaning became diluted, as it became an all encompassing term for goth in general.

this is actually probably the wrong thread for this discussion, and it's a pretty complicated history to go over -- especially as all of these odd little genres barely even exist in the first place.

yeah, as an american, i just call the bands we're talking about in this thread either "ethereal", "ethereal wave", or "ethereal darkwave" (but usually just "ethereal" for short. from what i can tell, "etheric" or "heavenly voices" were popular terms as well, especially in europe in the 90s.

anyway, we're pretty in the weeds now. i just really wanted to put these ideas out there on ilm, though.

--

ANYWAY: i'll get around to talking more about other great, obscure ethereal records here at some point. but, for now, i just wanna say how wonderful it is that lycia has finally gained a wider audience now outside of the goth-o-sphere. everyone loves them, now. seems odd to me that that's not yet happened with love spirals downwards or soul whirling somewhere yet, but hopefully it will someday, and hopefully threads like this on ilm will help.

I tuned out after their second album, when they went all dance-y - but I should give it another chance.

Two of my all-time favorite songs to hear in a club are "Wild World" and "Down and Out"!

I'm definitely quite sure I'd really like later Love is Colder Than Death now! I was just enamored with their early DCD-aping material (early LICTD sounded so evil! it was a ton of fun!), and so I was a little put off when they got all dance-y. I've definitely come around to the dance-y side of goth/darkwave/etc. now. I know I'll get a big kick out of later LICTD when I eventually get around to it!

Probably said this above but Delirious by Trance To The Sun was when I learned that dancey stuff could be as gorgeous as the standard ethereal mode. That and parts of Azalean Sea are the only time Trance To The Sun went very dancey I think. I think Skinny Puppy has something in common with that, even though they are very different.
Early Lycia vocals are a bit like Skinny Puppy.

I thought that Sisters Of Mercy were probably didn't have much influence on these bands but "Colours" could be a Lycia track.

I think Soul Whirling Somewhere are too derivative of Red House Painters to find major favour. I think their best stuff is incredible though.

Still only got the first 2 Love Spirals Downwards albums and I like them too, but again, not as original or contending for Lycia level greatness.

But I've said early on in this thread who I do think deserve comparable acclaim.

I really need to learn to stop typing "I think" more than once a paragraph.

What is up with Lycia/Projekt's refusal to reissue Ionia, anyway? Do they disavow it or something? Not figure they can move enough to make repressing it worthwhile?

i would ask the same question about so many obscure, ethereal goth records that projekt never had anything to do with, but could easily press and make some money on (there's more c'est la mort and third mind bands, besides are (who i love) that sam r. could make some money on).

funny thing. i'm definitely not interested in an 'ionia' remaster. let that old album sound dirty and scratchy! it's supposed to sound that way!

Just seems like an iconic early Projekt release... all the other early 90s Projekt releases are still pretty much available!

really pissed me off that there was not ONE projekt released song on that rhino box about 10 years ago.

it was a great box, but... how the hell could they leave off lycia!!! or, black tape or lsd!?

Was gonna repeat myself and point at the Heavenly Voices as manna of this genre

Wonder how many of these bands ever did anything else (sorry for the bad formatting)

1-1 –Rise And Fall Of A Decade Pure Hands 3:22
1-2 –The Moon Seven Times Giannis 2:59
1-3 –Stoa Infant Joy 2:43
1-4 –Love Spirals Downwards Love's Labour Lost 4:19
1-5 –Chandeen Journey To The Land Of Wisdom 3:38
1-6 –Eventide Ave Gloriosa Mater 3:40
1-7 –Gitane Demone Gloomy Sunday 3:40
1-8 –Speaking Silence Immunity 3:15
1-9 –Ordo Equitum Solis Playing With The Fire 3:48
1-10 –Black Rose (2) Liebe 4:33
1-11 –It's A Secret (2) Gabriella 3:15
1-12 –Die Form Cantique 3:48
1-13 –Manic P. Lost In Silence 4:33
1-14 –Jack Or Jive Behind The Line 3:15
1-15 –Sabotage - Qu 'Est - Que C'Est?* Fait De L'Er 3:48
1-16 –Mellonta Tauta Pull The Carriot 4:14
1-17 –Attrition I Am 2:54
1-18 –Malka Spigel Yesitney 4:06
1-19 –Annabell's Garden* Winter Moon Descents 5:57
2-1 –Love Is Colder Than Death Oxeia 2:58
2-2 –Collection D'Arnell Andrea* L'Aulne + Lamort 4:34
2-3 –24 Hours [Dark Orange]* The Sea Is My Soul 4:46
2-4 –In The Nursery Sesudient 4:19
2-5 –black tape for a blue girl Overwhelmed Beneath Me 3:23
2-6 –Pupilla Jealousy 3:11
2-7 –Sleeping Dogs Wake Swan Song 5:55
2-8 –Sunwheel Walk Upon The Grass 7:36
2-9 –Kirlian Camera Twilight Fields 1:24
2-10 –Donna Regina Siren Call 5:13
2-11 –Anchorage Abandoned 6:22
2-12 –Taras Bulba Barune 4:51
2-13 –Bel Am* Winter Lanterns 2:16
2-14 –Dreamscape (3) Finally Through 3:47
2-15 –Kosova Republike Sleep Silent 4:44
2-16 –View (2) Bike Ride 4:29
2-17 –Eleven Shadows 56 In 81 2:49
2-18 –Andromeda Complex Where Has It Gone The Kitten? 4:41

The Moon Seven Times (and its precursor, Area) would be considered "dream pop" today, filed alongside Beach House. LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser. Mellonta Tauta's album was essentially Argentine (or Italian?) shoegaze. Malka Spigel was doing things with hubby Colin Newman, so be considered Wire ephemera. LiCtD is great in small doses, but tiresome at length. The real gem I discovered through the Heavenly Voices comp was Collection D'Arnell Andrea. Both Les Marronniers (1992) and Villers-aux-Vents (Février 1916) (1994) are legit classics of the genre. Unfortunately, they thereafter veered into less striking dance beat driven music.

^ might be

My kingdom for a 1 minute editing window.

First two Chandeen albums are really good, and Ordo Equitum Solis are kind of fun. Swan Song by Sleeping Dogs Wake never fails to crack me up, the chorus is top tier goth poetry.

impressive new ethereal track

Acre Tarn - Lantern

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/new-music/song-of-the-day/acre-tarn-lanterns

Continuing in the distinguished vein stretching through from the likes of Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins up to Bat For Lashes, Cumbria’s ACRE TARN, the electronic art pop project of Anna-Louisa Etherington, lays her own fine brick on that road with her latest single, “Lanterns”.

soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/acre-tarn/lanterns-1

additional, there is a single track from earlier this year from Acre Tarn

Acre Tarn - Flex
https://open.spotify.com/track/6nZ7zvxaR5RKIlzhDRblPg

and remix

Acre Tarn - Flex - saycet remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/5uy0xsmrFKwTHs6cUJpJEB

Another new find:

Kria from Iceland

there is a transcendental, immersive ethereal purity to this track as reflected in the video

KRÍA : hiding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Z-fc5NhEw

3 track ep on spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3H5Pj7oTO9Yjd8aGqbhbuM

=== Also Posted on: Johnny Fever's Not Pop Not Indie Shambhala 2015

Hope to check out those samples soon.

Lycia's new album is surprisingly loud and rocky in places.

The Moon Seven Times (and its precursor, Area) would be considered "dream pop" today, filed alongside Beach House. LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser. Mellonta Tauta's album was essentially Argentine (or Italian?) shoegaze. Malka Spigel was doing things with hubby Colin Newman, so be considered Wire ephemera. LiCtD is great in small doses, but tiresome at length. The real gem I discovered through the Heavenly Voices comp was Collection D'Arnell Andrea. Both Les Marronniers (1992) and Villers-aux-Vents (Février 1916) (1994) are legit classics of the genre. Unfortunately, they thereafter veered into less striking dance beat driven music.

― Humean froth (Sanpaku), Tuesday, November 17, 2015 11:40 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry for such an early repeated post, but this one is worth emphasizing. this post is pretty spot on.

M7X and Area are beautiful. For Moon Seven Times, search: first album, "Her House", "Miranda", "This and That" "Straw Donkeys", "Crybaby", and their Area cover of "Anyway".
For Area, search: the 'Between Purple and Pink" album, for it is the softest and sweetest and prettiest dark wave you will ever hear. Also: "Anyway", "OUR CORNER DROWNING", "Michael Writes His Parents", "All There Is", and so on.

M7X and Area are basically dream pop by today's standards, but, this is complicated. Both bands are ethereal, at least, and both of their associations with darkwave in general have to do with record labels and such. Both bands were part of the 'scene' if you will (which, admittedly, barely ever existed).

^ Both bands are two of my favorites. I love Lynn Canfield's voice to pieces.

Collection D'Arnell Andrea are wonderful. Such gothy fun.

Mellont Tauta: "Pull the Charriot". This is one of my favorite songs ever, and the epitome of the genre. Damn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSr1JkGADO0

all of mellonta tauta's other songs sound shoegaze, though.

The gothiest thing about Area was the cover of their second album:

http://www.projekt.com/store/wp-content/uploads/ARC00016.jpg

Granted, the goth/darkwave "scene" in 1986 Urbana-Champaign likely would have fit into a modest bedroom.

Personally, I'm more a fan of Radio Caroline (1987, pictured) and The Perfect Dream (1988) than the two albums produced by the keyboardist and Canfield after guitarist Henry Frayne left. M7x initially came off as a Frayne/Canfield reunion, with big/real drums. I've followed Frayne's intrumental project Lanterna off and on for two decades now, and he deserved a way higher profile amongst American "post-rockers".

yeah, area/moon seven times definitely weren't really goth/darkwave, exactly, at least in the sense of this thread (but they're both associated with the 'scene'). however, if you'd like to define the goth thing in terms of excessive-romantic-ness and torch songs, they fit in. this also has a lot to do with projekt re-issuing all the area albums and also redefining the darkwave category through its catalog.

i'm deeply, deeply, ashamed to admit this. . . i never did get around to sitting down and listening to a lanterna album. i feel like i know what to expect, that it would be wonderful, that it's probably something very important missing from my life (i always absolutely loved the area/m7x guitars), etc. but, which album to begin with? which is the most tuneful and also ethereal (in the sense of wisely used reverb)?

I've only got Elm Street but it's beautiful.

xxpost: mr. sam rosenthal of projekt is definitely gonna see this thread now, for you hotlinked that area image!
oh, i hope i didn't say anything too bad/weird about him. i frickin' love him and black tape. i guess we sort of disagree on what "dark wave" and "darkwave" should be/could be/and is, but:
cheers, sam, when you see this!

As the first post indicates, I welcome dreampop that that early 4AD and Projekt fans would probably be into.

LSD mimicked Cocteau Twin's instrumental sound, but had a choir girl instead of Liz Fraser

I don't agree with this entirely. I'm listening to 'Idylls' right now, and Love Spirals Downwards always had a much larger, more expansive, fluid sound to them. Now and then, it'd even topple over into this really over-the-top ethereal-new age-ambient territory (which I doubt they'd even take my saying so as an insult), and they navigated it better than any other ethereal band. The Twins never really went there except for their collaboration with Harold Budd (which, as the Twins/Budd/and everyone else seems to agree, that album only sounds like four Cocteau Twins songs and four Harold Budd songs, anyway).

^ First two albums ('Idylls' and 'Ardor) are absolutely essential, obviously. After that, eh. 'Ever' is nice if you like trip-hop/'Flux' is nice if you like jungle/d'n'b.

This reminds me, I always wished Ryan Lum of LSD would make a solo ethereal-new age-ambient album himself, in the vein of those early LSD instrumentals.

I think Soul Whirling Somewhere are too derivative of Red House Painters [...]

I definitely disagree with this, with all due respect. Everyone says this, but I've never heard much similarity between the two. Sure, they're both extreme sad sacks with acoustic guitars, and I'll even grant that Michael Plaster of SWS is very likely a big RHP/Mark Kozelek fan, but it always sounded to me like they were coming at it from different angles. Kozelek is more of a sad-sack folk-rocker, almost Elliott Smith-type, with a some small dream pop flourishes early on in his career, whereas SWS always seemed like such a depressive affair that it would actually just collapse unto itself and morph into full-blown, slow motion ambient, with electronic flourishes and much more guitar treatment to boot. I mean, I guess I might agree that SWS sounds like RHP with about 10 X more reverb/20 BPM lower.

I'm glad you said you still really like Soul Whirling Somewhere anyway though, Robert. I still hate for people to think their a Red House Painter clone, though - I've just never heard them that way.

(forgive my type-os/misspellings/grammar above. i really need to start re-reading my posts before hitting submit.)

but, which (Lanterna) album to begin with?

The first self-titled one, originally on IPR but re-released by Ryko and easily found for cheap... it's by far the best one, although the later albums are all quite strong.

oops, the first Lanterna album was on Parasol, just the packaging was done by IPR... and they have new album called Backyards I haven't heard!

Oh, and btw, sorry, but I really wish Michael Plaster of Soul Whirling Somewhere would just do a full-blown instrumental ambient-ethereal album, as well. Or, better yet, perhaps, a similar kind of collaboration with Ryan Lum of Love Spirals Downwards. I'm surprised nothing of the sort has ever happened, actually. I always hoped Plaster or Lum would take a cue from Mike VanPortfleet of Lycia and just do it.

VanPortfleet's solo ambient album, 'Beyond the Horizon Line' is fantastic, by the way.

Jeez, now I also have to mention how wonderful Sam Rosenthal's (of Black Tape for a Blue Girl) first instrumental/progressive electronic solo album, 'Before the Buildings Fell' is, too! I never did hear 'Tanzmusik', though. Is that one any good? Rosenthal's other solo ambient material, including As Lonely as Dave Bowman, is stellar as well. Although pleasant, that old Terrace of Memories album definitely isn't essential, but if you like the other stuff here, you'd may as well go for it.

xp, thanks, f. hazel! i think i actually have that lanterna album sitting around on my hard drive somewhere? i have an album of mp3s, transferred from a cassette release, and it's 90 minutes long, and i know it's kind of ancient - never have listened to it, though. in any case, i'll assume i should start with the earliest stuff, especially since i was always just enamored by the area/m7x guitar sound, so i'm sure whatever's closer to that time period is what'll do it for me.

Oh, and while I'm still rambling about ethereal-ambient, I should also take this time to mention a random/obscure album called 'The Witch's Garden' by Abandoned Toys. It came out six or seven years ago, and it's by no means actually important or anything (I only checked it out on a whim because it was advertised at the projekt:darkwave webshop). However, if you love mid-period ambient Black Tape as much as I do (a la "Fitful", "Wings Tattered, Fallen", etc.), then you're definitely gonna wanna hear it. It's a wonderful, wonderful lost little ambient-ethereal album.