When I read the words ‘Shoegaze’ in the Genre tags, I said to myself : ‘It has been a while! ‘ . Maxwell, a musician from Long Island sent me the link to his album ‘Strange Being’. After hearing the tracks, I have to say it brings back memories of The Cure and surprisingly, the earlier works of The Smashing Pumpkins from their Siamese Dream and Machina Albums. The sound apart from being mostly shoegaze also incorporates other sub-genres like psychadelic rock, dreamy-synth and chillout . All this is only the beginning until you listen to the vocals, which are smooth, crip and one of the better voices I’ve heard all year. The melodies are haunting, catchy, and don’t ever jarr your ears by overdoing the distortion effects, which some bands go haywire with these days. The lyrics are well-written, meaningful and stuff you can relate to. To sum it up this is collectively an accomplished piece of work by a very talented musician\song-writer\vocalist. It looks like he is severely underrated\under-valued at the moment and if this were a stock on the stock-exchange, I would pick it up now and enjoy the billion dollar returns later. Ergo, the stuff is legitimately downloadable for free at: Bandcamp (smaller file sizes here) and Soundcloud .
I had a hard time choosing which ones to share as the whole album sounds too good, but here are the Top of the Tops:
Karan Khurana
Karan Khurana ( Born in 1982, Mumbai, India) makes photos and mixed media artworks. By using popular themes such as pointlessness, old monuments and nightlife, Khurana creates intense personal moments by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
His photos don’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. By applying abstraction, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.
His works are saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes. They question the coerciveness that is derived from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic appearance of an image. By parodying mass media by exaggerating certain formal aspects inherent to our contemporary society, he makes works that can be seen as self-portraits. Sometimes they appear idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times, they seem typical by-products of consumer-oriented superabundance and marketing.
His works often refer to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created.
Karan Khurana currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany!
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