For the past week, I’ve been quite inseparable from my new book: still in a dream: shoegaze, slackers and the reinvention of rock, 1984-1994. Written by the highly valued British music journalist Simon Reynolds, still in a dream tells the musical story of the second half of the 1980s. The book covers many of my favourite bands including Cocteau Twins, Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Kyuss, PJ Harvey, The Breeders - it’s the era after post-punk happened and before the internet took over from analogue music culture. The book is about music where sound and feeling matter more than lyrics and meaning. A definite must-read!
In the introduction, Reynolds pleads for a notion I deeply share. He states that although commerce is a necessity for alternative culture in order to survive, it still opposes “the commercial”. Buying records or merch, going to concerts — in a way, these transcend consumerism, because what you get back far exceeds the monetary price. He talks about the uncompromising nature of alternative music and how involvement in a music subculture is seen as “a form of participation and engagement, rather than passive spectatorship”. Reynolds says:
Certain kinds of music, it’s felt, exist outside the realm of the corporate record business. The paradox of underground music as an economy is that it works through the selling of “no sell-out”.
With this in mind, I share with you my favourite alternative records for this month. Enjoy, go get that specific album and support your favourite band by buying some merch!
Deeper - Auto-Pain
Chicago-based band Deeper found each other in a DIY scene and a shared love for Wire, Devo, Gang of Four, and Television. Their sophomore album, Auto-Pain (2020), takes its name from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World — where the drug "soma" erases all feeling. "Auto-pain", by contrast, is about the desire to return to a connection with thoughts and clarity. To feel, even if it’s painful. You hear it in the music - tense, angular, with rhythms that won’t let you drift. And somehow, for all that tension, the songs are genuinely catchy.
post-punk | synths | Brave New World | catchy
The Medicines - Desert of Loneliness
The Dutch guitar-wave band The Medicines just released this new EP, co-written around 2021 with former band member Ricardo de Miranda Azevedo, who passed away in 2022. The songs on this tribute are recorded as close to the original demos as possible. Desert of Loneliness has a rich sound and feels even darker and more melancholic than previous Medicines releases. A beautiful, personal darkwave homage.
darkwave | coldwave | gothic rock | post-punk | tribute
Big Black - Atomizer
Atomizer (1986) is the first full-length of the American band Big Black led by Steve Albini. Although the band is known for their aggressive sound - characterized by metallic clanking guitars and a Roland drum machine - Atomizer is actually quite a melodic album. Big Black rejected love songs altogether, choosing violence as their main subject instead, often sung from the perpetrator’s point of view. The band had a certain fascination for human behaviour that goes beyond training and morals - people listening to their urges. They identified authenticity with the worst in the human soul, as Simon Reynolds puts it beautifully in still in a dream.
industrial | hardcore punk | guitar noise | Steve Albini
There is no “old” music - only music you have already heard and music you haven’t.
Ja Deeper Ja.