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

My favourite tracks from Lycia's A Line That Connects are the three that sound quite like something from Tripping Back Into The Broken Days and Time Has Come And Gone. "Blue" is particularly good. It's a great style and I wonder if they could explore it much further.

Black Tape For A Blue Girl have a new album and they've returned to their original style (weehee). Oscar came back and brought his daughter into the band.

Yup. Entertaining stuff.

Faith And The Muse - Annwyn, Beneath The Waves. Apparently all based on Welsh mythology, there's a Welsh folk song, one track takes some Goethe for the lyrics, the sleeve has lots of centuries old poetry. "The Dream Of Macsen" and "The Birds Of Rhiannon" are brilliant.
Really love this album, it's probably even better than Elyria (although my memory of it isn't too sharp). Bigger soundscapes I think.

Slightly relieved that Tara Vanflower doesn't like Trump.

Lycia uploaded a lot of pre-Wake material

https://soundcloud.com/lyciummusic-lycia

And speaking of Projekt -- interviewed Sam himself for my latest Bandcamp piece:

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2016/11/09/projekt-records-guide-sam-rosenthal-interview/

Thanks for the article. Only taken me two months to finally read it. Somehow never noticed they were going more in an ambient direction. Interesting that Plaster is on the new Black Tape album.

In the last days of 2016, Trance To The Sun's newest album Via Subterranea came out.

Faith & Disease - Insularia.

Maybe their most varied studio album (haven't heard the final one yet), taken me an unusually long time to get into this and I might need to come back to it another year to get a fuller effect from it.

"Yellow Dress" must be one of their best songs. I much prefer the first half of "Marie Don't Sleep In Your Makeup" to the second part. There's a cover of Cowboy Junkies "Witches" (not familiar with the original). I like the pairing of "Violet II" and "Space Song II".

Rosewater Elizabeth - Faint

Such a lovely album, more enjoyable overall than Le Petit Morte, but I like the latter just as much because it's more adventurous, unique and the best parts are possibly better. Not sure though. Faint is definitely more watery.
"It Swallows Me Whole" has beautiful drumming.

Great band, they should rank fairly high among the bands on this thread. Now I have to check out the band that came after: Underwater. Odds and ends of Rosewater Elizabeth are probably too hard to find right now, apart from an album of remixes which I'll pass on for now.

Quiet revive to note that Projekt, no doubt in response to my post from two years ago, have re-issued Lycia's Ionia in a limited run of 500 CDs! With t-shirts and tote bags, even, so I can bring Lycia to the farmer's market.

It sounds great, especially blasting it driving down country roads on a freezy winter night.

I've been enjoying Speaking Silence and I'll write more about them soon.

Demen - Nektyr should probably be mentioned here, TMC probably the closest comparison.

If we're rounding up thislisty albums from 2017, NOÊTA - Beyond Life And Death also merits a mention. Sounds like something on Projekt from 1996, drawing from Black Tape, DCD and a touch of Americana. The album alternates between a funereal ("Beyond Life") and more organic ("In Drowning") tracks.

rose chronicles

(kristy thirsk)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-6pP2iMggM

reminds me a lot of lush

That Demen album was among my favourites from last year. Guess I should start listening to This Mortal Coil – my knowledge of the precursors is pretty limited.

Awesome thread, btw.

Thanks guys.

Meant to note a bunch of Japanese bands but I can't remember the tracks I was going to pick.

Fiction and related bands Gille' Loves and Luci'fer Luscious Violenoue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwWHLNb8flM
Could have swore one of them had a good song called Sepharita

Jack Or Jive (should have got one or their albums years ago, their presentation is very 4AD but with more extravagant costumes and stage design)
Pale Cocoon (very early band in this genre, probably ahead of their time for sad bedroom goth)
Funeral Party - Double Platonic Suicide
Gilles De Rais - Vampire (1981)
Kuroyuri Shimai and related band Juri Et Lisa(neoclassical leaning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60DLx281Tv0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uhdgz6jXy8

Interesting list here. You might need to leave the page to load for several minutes. Has a separate section for EPs. Might be a minefield because there's some obscure choices I adore and quite a few I was underwhelmed by. A lot of new bands I've never heard of. Don't know why some famous bands are listed but no Cure, they even feature a Cure clone.

https://www.dreampop.it

Demen - Nektyr should probably be mentioned here, TMC probably the closest comparison.
― Siegbran, Monday, 8 January 2018 21:30 (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you for this - been playing it all week. Really does sound like TMC or Dead Can Dance.

FVNERALS might fit in here, maybe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMAdkcR-az8

I wish I had more knowledge of mixing and production because I'm not quite sure what the issues are with the two Speaking Silence albums I've listened to recently.

Their debut Speak In Silence is really good but maybe some things don't stand out as much as they should? Rise And Fall Of A Decade had a substantial part in the album and it's easy to hear (I think Trees Dance was a full collaboration between Speaking Silence and RaFoaD, it's one of my holy grails).
RaFoaD have done a couple of excellent Cocteau Twins pastiches and Speaking Silence have "The Call From Inside" which is about as good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmv7BTSaE0
I wish there was a youtube video of "The Lost Tale" because it's them doing their own thing and probably the best track.

I'd be surprised if the third and last album The Twilight World sounds the way it was supposed to. I found it far too dense for their style but the songs are still quite good, particularly the first two.

I just paid a bit too much for their second album, so I hope it's good and closer to the earlier more rococo style. They later joined the band Am'ganesha'n.

I recall looking up the people Rise And Fall Of A Decade mentioned in one of their songs years ago and finding a lot of them were Nazi sympathizers but on checking again I don't know why I though this was so. Back then I didn't know who most of these people were but now only half are unfamiliar: Boris Vian, Jacques Brel, Simone De Beauvior, Raymond Queneau, Robert Doisneau, Jean Paul Sartre, Bernard Blier, Michel Audiard, Antione Blondin, Juliette Greco, Serge Gainsbourg, Serge Reggiani.

huge fan of Irish artist Catscars and this EP is incredible: https://soundcloud.com/catscars/sets/ep1-faster

Years ago when I was delving into goth lists for stuff I would never find in regular music shops (really the start of my finding the sort of music this thread is about), Arcana's Dark Age Of Reason kept getting mentions, so I've wanted it for a long time. It's neoclassical and I'm sure lots of metalheads will appreciate it, sleeve art is gorgeous. But I think that the acclaim is probably mostly based on the first few tracks, but seriously, check out "Source Of Light", it's really wonderful.
https://arcana.bandcamp.com/album/dark-age-of-reason
Only a small sample of the album, "Angel Of Sorrow" is lovely too if you find the whole album.

Cantar de Procella is pretty great, album after Dark Age of Reason... I actually just bought Petrichor the other day, a collection of b-sides and other ephemerata.

I might have to resort to MP3 for Cantar de Procella. Very expensive second hand.

expensive on vinyl, you mean?

Just the CD copies

Bel Canto - Shimmering, Warm & Bright

There's a bunch of good songs, the slightly aquatic german track is lovely and "Mornixuur" is gorgeous but overall it's just okay and probably suffers from the departure of Geir.

It was a couple of years ago but the few webcam performances on Lycia's official youtube channel are worth seeing.

I totally missed this Mike VanPortfleet interview from 2013 somehow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS72VwlXsxQ

Orange - Complete Recordings is the length of a regular album and it's a typical case of occasionally pleasant but poorly written and extremely derivative, formulaic dreampop.

it's a better album that at least two by the cocteau twins though

than

Oooh.

I owned the original LP release in 1994 (hi Brent et al from Dewdrops Records and the 4AD-email list), and if I recall, I'd rank it as 6.5 best amongst a 9 album CT discography. Ie: Head Over Heals > Blue Bell Knoll > Treasure > Heaven or Las Vegas > Victorialand > Garlands Orange > The Moon and the Melodies > Milk & Kisses > Four-Calendar Cafe.

Orange (13) (as discogs number them) was the only 90s dreampop which really appreciated how important Ella Fitzgerald and vocal improv was to CT's formula. Most everything else at the time was morose hymns by former choir girls.

It's not all as good as the following, but this is an ideal that the Projekt folks never aspired to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IC_KR75liQ

That said, Orange wasn't the best thing on Dewdrops. For that, I'd recommend Glisten by Elysium (4), which remains one of the best late autumnal records I've heard.

Lots of good dreampop in the mid-90s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxFhd1k5enM

I like April March too, but at the time considered them on the shoegaze side of the fence.

But there, hear how all the vocal lines are these long things without syncopation that line up with measures? That's part of what I grew to dislike about dreampop/etherial/etc through the 90s. Even in an obscure genre indie musics there was a conscious rejection of rhythmic play, as if to syllabylize on upbeats might mean one's giving in to the urban music juggernaut. Liz Frazer may have sounded like a wounded dolphin live, but at least on the releases she sounded like she was playing against the beats. Like Ella.

that's an interesting observation!

don't sleep on rose chronicles, kirsty thirsk's former band

I think the singer for Orange has a great sounding voice but doesn't sing very well, like even the "writing" of the vocal parts just isn't very good. Almost seems like she didn't care to learn all the lyrics for the Pixies cover.

Just revisiting the two Salt Garden EP's by Fovea Hex, they haven't been mentioned on this thread. Somehow they're classified as ambient or avant-folk, but to my ears it's much closer to DCD/'ethereal goth' than anything else.

Area - Between Purple And Pink

Fantastic, I rank it above Radio Caroline but just below The Perfect Dream. "Brave Parade", "Rail", "Our Corner Drowning" and "Dry Spell" are all particularly fine.

"The only thing crueler than an emptiness is a promise winding over our heads"

"Take me where the water runs deep and chain me there so that I might sleep"

"Someone said it's getting boring, for about the hundredth time"

Sorry to Lynn Canfield if I got the lyrics wrong.

Just two Area albums to get and one more Moon Seven Times album. Then there's Shotgun Wedding and I whole bunch of Lanterna.

First Lanterna album is 100x classic (as are the first couple Moon Seven Times records... don't think I ever got Sunburnt?)

My Medicine is like the most midwestern shoegazing track ever

Faith & Disease's fifth and final studio album is a bit like Insularia (third album). I liked things about it but again it taken quite a while and never clicked as much as I wanted it to. Even Beneath These Trees (fourth album) was a similar experience but sounds distinctly different (pretty much a folk album) and features probably their best song ever. But I really prefer the first two albums.

Black Tape For A Blue Girl - As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire

Could this be called a concept album about a Marcel Duchamp piece?

I've got quite a few albums still to get but I'll be surprised if "Given" isn't one of their top 3 songs. Marvelous.

The sequence of "Your One Wish", "Dulcinea", "The Green Box" and "Denouement/Denouncement" is a great string of tracks.

Not one of my favorite albums by them but the highlights are as strong as they've ever been before.

It's a great record yes. Any thoughts on the Black Tape and DCD records they put out this year?

Have you always been into this stuff? Only really noticed you were a fan in the last few years.

Not really as deeply as into the other stuff I post(ed) a lot about here over the years but yes I've always been into the ethereal/ambient side of it, way more than dancefloor/pop goth which most of the time gets way to hysterical for me.

I don't really know a lot about the obscure stuff and I'm not a 4AD/Projekt obsessive, but the big names I've mostly followed throughout the years, DCD/Cocteau/ITN/Black Tape, later Bel Canto, etc and later the whole Coil/NWW/DI6/C93 axis, and the neoclassical side, Amber Asylum, Elend, Vas, Arcana, DVKE etc.

Lycia?