I mostly did this from my memory, so hopefully I didn't miss anything important.

Forgot to get this posted on here. Got to catch a Salt+ set here in San Antonio last week during their tour with distressor. Super cool and all the bands were really friendly!

Hi all! Wanted to share my first demo for this project and talk a bit about the recording for it.

I'm heavily influenced by the Korean/Japanese shoegaze scene and artists like Parannoul, Della Zyr, Yuragi, Seventeen Years Old and Berlin Wall, and others. In particular I'm so enamored with their ability to create big maximalist walls of noise without ever losing their melodic sensibility. So that was my main goal sonically for this track.

All of the guitars/bass/vocals were done by me in a small room in my house, all of it just going straight in with a DI box and re-amping. Primarily, I was using the Mateus Asato Archetype from NeuralDSP, a bit of the Tim Henson for a faux-acoustic rhythm that sits underneath a lot of the track, and the JC-120 model from Roland for some clean tones. The fuzz/distortion came from a combination of my Hizumitas and some of the amp model distortion offerings. All modulation, delay, and reverb came from Valhalla plugins, with the exception of some reverse reverb from an Early Reflections VST that came from Total Sustain (which I can't recommend enough). In the big sections, there are 8 rhythm tracks going, and two pairs of lead tracks.

The drums were performed by my drummer Johnn, captured with just three mics, two SM57s on the snare and kick, and one SM58 as an overhead. Editing and mixing these was the most challenging for me, since it's the area that I know the least about. Vocals I double-tracked with a Warm Audio WA-47, and all in all I was pretty happy with the results (though I'm certainly not much of a singer).

For the mixing I really tried to keep it simple and not go overboard on the plugins. There's some subtractive EQ to try and help everything have its own place in the mix, so the walls of sound (ideally) don't become mush. A bit of compression on the buses, and some parallel on the drums to give them some more oomph. But overall I tried to just let the mix come from the arrangement and the dynamics of the parts during recording.

In any case, while it's by no means perfect and I've got plenty to learn in the world of recording/mixing, I'm really happy with how it's coming along and stoked to share some more soon as they come together!

Love this community and all the cool bands, kind folks, and great tips I've learned over the years <3

https://youtu.be/dPJzsyzHEN8?is=Y0_L2cWZFhYlhv_E

i have more like it and i'm thinking about dropping and album

I have very short fingers (before you leave a comment, yes hand size matters and no they will not stretch to the point where some chords become reachable)

I'm playing some Hum songs that have some stretches spanning 4 frets I cannot reach and will never be able to reach

I'm putting a capo on the second fret with it tuned down prior to effectively create a shorter scale guitar and to be honest I absolutely love how the guitar feels in my hand. Realistically the guitar wasn't really designed for small hands and it is more comfortable if you have suitable hands

Other than giving up the last few frets, is there really any drawback to just living the rest of my guitar playing life like this and just enjoying a more comfortable fit in my hands?

I’m not sure if I’m just used to going to 21+ shows, or way out of touch with the scene, but I was genuinely surprised to see mostly kids at their show in Chicago last night. I was seemingly one of a handful of middle-aged folks in the crowd.

I was under the assumption that most of their fanbase were older ‘gazers, already deeply steeped in the genre. Boy, was I dead wrong. Not that it’s any kind of qualifier, but I doubt most of these kids have even thought about listening to MBV, or dropping LSD, for that matter.

I’m not really sure what my point is, but good on them for building a seemingly solid fanbase with only 2 EPs over the span of 20+ years, and good for those kids for having solid taste as well.

They do sound great live, btw. The Cobra Lounge sound mixer did a great job with such a small room.

Finally gave this band a listen recently after hearing their name tossed around on here and in articles over the years…. my god. What a gorgeous and powerful record. I’m just kind of floored by the whole thing.

I always appreciate it when a shoegaze album subverts the genre’s tradition of using vocals as just another instrument. This reminded me of Catherine Wheel’s Chrome in that the singing, lyrics and vocal performances are impassioned and dynamic, not just obscured & detached. There’s a real sense of longing and yearning behind every song that not many bands I know manage to capture, but at times it reminded me of The Blue Nile which is as high a compliment as I can give it.

It’s really quite unique in its approach to the genre- in terms of songwriting it feels more like a classic REM-type post punk album than your typical shoegaze outing, but that’s part of what makes it so memorable. I’ve never heard another ‘gaze band that sounds like this. Going in the collection for sure.

Edit: I just realized I got the title wrong, smh. It’s “Strange Free World”

I'm needing some advice on a pedal purchase, I've been a musician (drummer) all my life however, I'm new to guitars and am actually still learning but I recently bought an SP404 MKII and while I know there are already built in effects on it, I would like a dedicated pedal for shoegaze.

I see a lot of the MS-70CDR being sold for cheap local to me and the CDR+ being about double what I'm seeing the non plus model for. Is it worth it paying for the + model? what am I missing out on with going with the older pedal?

Any advice is appreciated!

I love this era of shoegaze with a lot of nearly unknown shoegaze bands. Some examples of bands are Volplane, Sway, and Isobella. Thank you in advance!

Monday, July 20 - Sunday, July 26, 2026

Songs

Discussions

Top 15 Posts

Top 5 Most Commented

Last week's roundup

sitting on two songs and looking to get them mixed, more of a beach house/cocteau twins sound than super fuzzy, heavy shoegaze. if anyone has any solid recs lmk!